2001’s Final Scream (Also known as “Final Stab”) presented me with an actually quite nice moment as It’s, in effect; a little bit of a J.R Bookwalter reunion. Reuniting the SOV Six packs producer David Decoteau with Matthew Jason Walsh of “Zombie Cop” and “Legend of the Mummy 2” fame. From what I can see, I don’t believe I’ve covered a Decoteau written or directed film on this channel yet…well…barring the L.A portions of chickboxer…but I hardly think they count. The main reason I’ve tended to avoid Decoteau’s work stems largely from the same place as to why I don’t cover more Jess Franco movies honestly; Davids work is…uneven. I think thats the kindest way I can put it. While he has had some modest hits with things like “Puppet Master 3” and “Witchhouse”, a lot of his other works, I would argue, barely constitute films.

Stuff like his “1313” series of movies which are LITERALLY 70-90 minute features where 2-3 veteran horror actors or actresses will kind of wander around a set and say slightly mysterious stuff while a load of hunka-dunk guys ALSO wander around a set or location taking there tops off and saying things that are moody or also mysterious (theres 14 of those)… and If he isnt doing stuff like that he works in the lower end of MOST of the major genres. Producing films where the quality is SO uneven in SUCH large volumes that if I stopped reviewing anyone else and JUST focussed on his movies from now, i’d have a stable run of reviews to see me through to the end of the 2030’s. Whether it’s seasonal fodder, family flicks or his traditional ground of horror. Decoteau’s a machine just…pumping out 6-10 films a year. And with a staggering 176 directing credits and NO sign of slowing down, It was all but inevitable that i’d end up covering one of his movies at some point.

So what is “Final Scream”? Well…if the box art and the fact it was made in 2001 didnt give it away, “Final Scream” was an attempt by Decoteau to cash in on the “Scream” franchise. Scream 3 came out in the year 2000 and, in an attempt to try and trick people into thinking “Scream 4” was a thing, Decoteau rushed through a movie with ZERO connection to the Scream franchise apart from the fact 2 of the characters like horror movies, shot it in 4 days and kicked it up the arse and out the door as “Final Scream”. After a while Dimensions films, the owner of the scream franchise, clocked this and threats of legal action were sent Decoteau’s way. Forcing him to change its name to “Final Stab” which, in itself, is a reference to the “Scream” universe.

The film’s main characters of Angela and Charlie. And the film opens with Charlie watching a horror movie when he gets a call from Angela who’s vying for some “Bouncy Bouncy” Charlie goes to freshen up, but while he’s in the shower theres a powercut. After some moody wandering around a dark house where someone appears to have left a strobe light on. Charlie eventually bumps into Angela the pair start preparing for the night. Charlie hears another noise and after exploring a bit more a scary killer jumps out and stabs him! But Oopsy doops! It’s just a dream! (ugh.)

It turns out that this is a reoccuring dream that Charlies has every night for years, and after trying medications, therapy and more nothing has shifted it, Angela is supportive of Charlie but just wishes she knew the best way to try and help him. anyway; this is basically a precusor to the next days events as we’re then introduced to Doug and Kristin. Kristin is Angela’s estranged sister and Doug has a history with Charlie and the pair are about to lay down some serious havok.

See; Kristin wants to reconnect with her sister, so she’s decided to throw a party and invite the pair over. The location of the party? Is the infamous ‘Palero Estate” so called because according to local legend, in 1995 the Palero family were all living their best lives when someone broke in and butchered all of them, with no witnesses and next to no evidence. At this point in the film the plan for the party itself is a bit vague, but Doug alludes to the fact that he’s not happy with what Kristins got planned. Kristin however has dirt on doug and basically says she’ll go public with it if he doesn’t help, She then tells him she wants him to go see Angela to invite her to the party acting as a kind of ‘middle man’ between Angela and Kristin because Kristin doesnt think that Angela will give her the time of day. Doug reluctantly heads off and Kristin starts work on preparing the house for the party.

Meanwhile; in the woods just behind the house, some dudebros are shooting the shit and one of them reveals that he’s found a flyer asking for actors to appear in a project that Kristin is working on. They think it’s some kind of play or art project, and because Kristin comes from a rich family and has always been a bit of a prep, the dudebros decide that nows the perfect time to dish out some sweet sweet bullying and they all agree to go stake out the house with the aim of sabotaging shit. Y’know, cutting the power, slashing peoples tyres, destroying any props needed…all that bollocks.

Its here that we’re introduced to some of our other characters for the film. Theres Steve and Brett our Jocks for this picture…AND NOTHING ELSE. and then theres Julie and Patrick, a couple who’ve agreed to help set things up and while setting things up Julie gets chatting to Patrick about Charlie and reveals that when she slept with her mums therapist (ugh.) she found out that Charlie had a lot of issues growing up. When he was a kid he witnessed his mum and dad get butchered by a random killer, noone was ever caught, no evidence was ever found and Charlie spent a not insignificant amount of time in asylums, therapy and on heavy medication…somehow the way Julie explains this makes it sound like Charlie is somehow a lesser being for having had that happen to him, and almost makes out that Angela could do better because of it…which is a bit odd.

As an aside, because it doesnt really fit in anywhere but I feel like I cant omit it. While this is all going on the dudebros start scoping out the house using cellphones and one by one each of these dudebros is picked off by the killer barring one. Who also gets killed but just…a little bit later into the movie. They don’t add ANYTHING to this picture. They eat up a not unreasonable amount of time given the films only about 74 minutes long. Honestly? I have no idea why they even made it into the final cut given they don’t actually interact with our main cast in any way apart from, I think, angela finds one of them dead in the final act.

Anyway! It’s the night of the party and Charlie and Angela have both been coerced into going and…I’ll try to keep this as brief as possible because I don’t want to overegg EXACTLY whats going on here. The pair enter the house and it’s revealed it’s a surprise party, but when everyone jumps out it triggers Charlie who has to go get some air. When things get a bit calmer Angela and Kristin bury the hatchet and the night finally gets underway. Only it doesnt, because almost immediately a “Killer” pops up behind Steve and “Murders” him! This traumatises Charlie who immediately bolts from the house again, Angela gives Doug her keys and tells him to go get help before she runs out of the house to try and find Charlie and it’s here the whole point of the film is revealed. And boy howdy is it convoluted.

So; it transpires that EVERYONE at the party with the exception of Doug hates Charlie. Like…they don’t just dislike him, they ACTIVELY hate him. Kristin thinks Angela can do better and doesnt want Charlie to join their family, so…shes told her friends that they’re doing a dry run of a murder mystery party and she wants Angela and Charlie to be the unknowing participants in this murder mystery party to see if it works out and to make sure all the clues are correct. That’s the OVERT interpretation of the plans though, what the friends are doing COVERTLY though is basically an attempt to break Angela and Charlie up. They’re pretty much ALL aware of Charlie’s background and they hope that if they can ramp up the scares enough it’ll make Charlie flip out leading to either Angela realising she’s let herself in for more than she bargained for, or Charlie being sent back to an asylum. Either way resulting in them splitting up.

They’ve all got fake blood pouches, they’ve hired an actor to play the killer and the plan is to have them all get “Fake” murdered one by one, then whoever is left will meet up at a gazebo outside the house where it’ll all be revealed as a funny joke and apart from Charlie being sectioned everything will be fine. Unfortunately; they didnt factor on their being an ACTUAL killer also on the premesis who begins to ACTUALLY murder the friends one by one. And…thats pretty much the rest of the movie. The friends slowly get actually murdered, and every single time they play the “Oh no! It’s the killer *PLEASE* don’t murder me!…oh wait he’s real! AGHHHH!” card. Angela and Charlie have a few heart to hearts, and all this builds to an final act finale that is BEYOND convoluted and was INCREDIBLY underwhelming…in a film where, I swear to god they TELL you the ending in the first 15 minutes and then act SUPER proud of themselves in the last 10 minutes as they retell you the ending again. Will Charlie and Angelas relationship survive!?, Who is the mysterious masked killer?! And did David Decoteau ACTUALLY watch any of the ‘Scream’ movies before writing this thing? All this and more will be answered if you check out “Final Scream”.

And what I find ridiculous about this film is it’s structure is INSANE. For the vast VAST majority of the 2nd act, this is one of THE most generic 90’s slasher movies i’ve ever seen. It’s not particularly badly written and they do handle some of what they’re trying to do with a modicum of respectability, but theres literally NOTHING here thats standout from any other slasher movie from the time. ALL the tropes are present in this thing from having multiple killers, to EVERYONES A SUSPECT! To the aforementioned final act where the final girl runs around the murder house one by one finding her dead friends and being all like “Oh no! My friends are dead!” it really doesnt miss a beat. But then bookending this generic middle bulge is some of THE most convoluted writing for a slasher i’ve ever seen. I’ve got to spoil the ending really to prove my point so a warning from here on in, but at the end of the film Kristin basically reveals herself to be the killer, and her plan was to basically kill off all her friends, who she didnt like anyway AND Angela and then pin it all on Charlie. Resulting in Kristin being able to claim her family’s FULL inheritance rather than having to share it with Angela. Charlie then reveals that him and Angela *THOUGHT* that was what Kristin was up to and so they COUNTER planned for it by making sure Angela’s “real” knife that kristin stole was swapped for a prop one. Angela then murders Kristin with a real knife.

But just before the credits roll they pull back a FURTHER layer by ending on an open ending that implies Charlie IS in a fact a killer and that he murdered Doug (and possibly others) for his own modus operandi (which…I mean, killing Doug would make sense because appatrently him and Doug had a sordid history…but the rest? I have no idea). Honestly the ending of this film reminds me of the ending of “Bill and Teds Bogus Journey” where everytime the bad guy has a “AHA! I’ve got you moment” Bill and Ted retort with their own “AHA! We knew you’d do that! So we did this!” it’s just…Such an odd contrast because that middle part of the narrative is SO predictable that when all this 4d chess bollocks turns up at the end, I had to kind of. Pause to take stock as it genuinely caught me off guard.

Thats not to say I think the ending is clever or particularly interesting. I think if your average stoner watched this thing they’d probably be like “WOAH! MATE! This is…WOAH!!!!” but for anyone NOT high as balls, it comes out of left field, feels tonally out of step with the rest of the narrative and doesn’t really hold up to much scrutiny. If Kristin knew that Charlie had a traumatised past, why even BOTHER setting the party up. Why not just kill Angela at Charlie’s place and then make it look like a domestic incident? I just…don’t get why it needed to be this elaborate grand set piece for any other reason than; “It makes a movie!”

Barring the beginning and the end of the film which are predominantly info dump sessions or dreams, the pacing of this thing is fairly fast, im not going to lie there is padding here, but it’s not intrusive padding…for the most part. Whats been done here is a “Pinch an inch” technique where they take an underrunning script and just make some scenes run on for a *few* seconds longer than planned. We’re not talking 5 minute sequences where nothing advances the plot, we’re talking, making driving sequences or establishing shots, juuuuuuuuuust a bit longer than they should be to just try and grab back 10 seconds here, maybe a minute or two there. The Dudebro subplot takes about 8-10 minutes and even though it adds NOTHING to things ultimately, the fact they spread those scenes out into 1-3 minute long bursts across the opening 30 minute runtime, makes it feel less like padding. Its nuanced padding, unintrusive padding, it’s there to just get it over the line, but not to the detriment of the rather generic main plot.

There isnt really much of a solid act structure either honestly; everything up to the party starting is really just kind of happenstance, theres no script structure that ties all these threads together, we’re just having characters thrown at us and being asked to weigh up how we feel about them. Theres almost no interaction between cast members outside of the pairings they’re introduced to us as. Basically up to the point where Charlie and Angela attend the party, the footage in front of that? Might as well be flashcards for all the coherence it offers in terms of a structured opening act. The 2nd act then BULGES out for i’d say about 40-50 minutes of the run time being slightly better structured but not by much, which ends up with a crushed 10-15 minute long third act that tries to come across as hyper intelligent but just, totally fails to read the room. In that regard, it is really kind of a mess.

The dialogue’s not too great either honestly, with some really rather flat lines that just about put the point across and progress the narrative, but they arnt inspiring or particularly interesting, nothing quotable or even really memorable on show here as we just kind of…grind through the plot from dawn to dusk. I was going to say that this film feels like someone “Half watched” Scream and then decided that writing snarky was ALL you had to do to win over Gen X’ers and Elder Millennials. But to be fair to Scream, at least it stuck to it’s premise of “Horror nerds get stalked by a killer who knows about horror movies” I mean; I don’t particularly like Scream, but at least it is what it is.

Final Scream is Non committal to it’s source material. Charlie and Kristin both mention they like horror movies two…maybe three times in this film altogether at the very beginning and very end. And apart from literally two mentions of both Friday the 13th and Halloween, this film doesn’t reference, mention or raise ANYTHING to do with horror movies. No references, no nerdy film maker talk, no mention of directors, NOTHING. And; in a way, i’m relieved, because one of my pet peeves with horror movies is when they get all self indulgent and fan wanky about existing horror IP’s to the point that they start dropping references or flat out naming horror movies to try and endeare themselves to the “Horror community”. But theres no worries of that happening here! Other than the mentions above, this film doesnt do ANYTHING like that…which totally defeats the point of it being a “Scream” knockoff…but I kind of don’t care.

As mentioned the script was written by Matthew Jason Walsh, we’ve already covered him off as part of our adventures into the SOV six pack, but I will say that this film falls just under halfway through his writing career and seemingly in a period where he was writing predominantly sequels and films based on other films, in fact, the film he wrote before this one is called “I’ve been watching you” and seems to be trying to do the same thing “Final Scream” is doing here, but with “I know what you did last summer” instead. As for the other writer AND director of this? David Decotau has 176 directing credits and 45 writing credits as of the time of writing, with notable entries including “Puppet Master 3”, “Sorority Babes in the Slime ball Bowl-a-rama” and “Creepazoids”. The mans a machine, a roger corman, Godfrey ho, jess franco type who fires films out faster than they’re loaded in. that is NO sign of quality…but in terms of volume…yeh…im pretty impressed.

On the direction front. *Sigh* its passable. This looks like a late 90’s/early 2000’s horror movie. And while they maybe overegg a few tropes here and there, the biggest issue I personally had was the fact they had a STRONG overreliance on strobe lighting to imitate lightning. But they had the ‘strobe’ set too fast and the intervals arnt random enough, so it just looks like someones left a strobe light on accidentally in the other room. For the most part I’d say the direction was perfectly serviceable for a film of this time and budget. In fact, i’d say given that it was shot in 4 days, i’m actually kind of impressed at how solid this has actually turned out. I mean; I want to be careful not to overestimate it’s quality here, in the grand scheme of 90’s and 2000’s slashers this is NO trendsetter. But it looks the part for the most part. I think if you’re looking for that, this might actually be up your ally.

Direction of the cast…isnt quite so sharp mind, while the in studio stuff is more than serviceable barring a couple of slightly jerky moments, the location work is a little disappointing honestly, cast members seem a bit lost, don’t really confidently deliver their lines and it feels (to me at least) almost like something was going on during the location shoots that made it difficult for the cast to focus on what was at hand. Whether it was time limitations, external distractions or just a case of the director or cast not being in their A-game headspace during these scenes. I cant say, it’s purely speculation. But I just feel like the cast really weren’t as solid outdoors as they were under studio conditions.

The cine, i’d say is probably this films strongest element. It still doesnt quite match the creative highs of mid budget horror cine. But it does feel like effort has been put into making this thing look as nice as it can be given the budget and time limitations. Shots mostly have decent composition of frame, theres a nice variety of shot types used and even some decent lighting implemented in places to help create a low light, but moody atmosphere without getting SO dark you cant see what’s actually going on.

Is it perfect? No. I personally feel that while the sequences are solid, they have a bit too much room to breath. I’d have preferred a much tighter cut edit with more experimentation in the shot types implemented. Dutch angles, dutch pans, All that good stuff. The energy in this edit is rather lacking, and I feel with a few more shot types and quicker cutting it could have created something that was a bit more engaging to the audience. As it stands, its more than functional and even looks great at some points. I appreciate given the budget and scope they probably didnt have time to be ultra out there or creative on construction. But it still would have been nice to see something beyond “Solid”.

Performance wise, ehhhhh…it’s TV acting. And not good TV acting…I dunno. Everyone here is trying, i’ll give them that…but ALL the performances are just…SO thin on the ground and so fake. An example being Michael Lutz and Forrest Cochran as Steve and Brett. 2 characters in this who…pretty much have NO point being here. What does Brett do in this film? Like; whats his actual function. As far as I can see, it’s to be a foil to steve for about 5 minutes and to help pad the runtime with an extra death scene. Steve doesnt fair much better getting about 10 minutes to actually have purpose in the film as the first “Fake victim” before getting 5 minutes to be the first “real victim” barring the dudebros and then he’s dead for the rest of the film. Neither of them, in my opinion at least, bring ANY presence to the role or the film even. I’d say they give a bad performance, but when the script gives them so little to work with in the first place, it’s no wonder they underperformed.

Probably the best performer in this is Erinn Hayes as Kristin, and even then thats a case of “The best of a bad bunch” shes playing it melodramatic…or at least…I HOPE she’s playing it melodramatic. And she really gets into that Bitchy badness with a zeal and relish that I felt quite passionately about, she made me dislike the character, which was absolutely the scripts intention. So I have to take my hat off to her. While I wouldnt say her performance was great, she got the job done without making me question her existence.

As for the rest of the cast. They’re the beigist performances i’ve ever seen. Part of that again is down to the script. Part of it may have been down to a lack of directional steer or direction that didn’t really give the actors much motivation as to the nature of their roles, but part of it HAS to be down to the actors just…not really giving these parts their all. I didnt feel passionate about any of these characters, non of them made me care about them or what happened to them. Ultimately; when a film leaves you thinking “Does it matter if these people are in the movie or not?” and they’re the some of the main characters…you know something hasn’t gone quite to plan here.

And finally; the soundtrack. If you’ve ever seen a full moon production, you’ve heard the score for this movie. Decotau has close ties to Charles Band and Full Moon Films. So it’s unsurprsiing that the scoring for this movie would pool from the same people who are seemingly on licence scoring for Full Moon. but yeh. It’s a somewhat generic midi generated border orchestral slush. It’ll make you feel something. But exactly what is hard to define. It’s not quite boredom, but it’s a feeling of muggy familiarity that’ll creep up on you and then leave you largely feeling unremarkable. Definitely not one I’d seek out. It helps to set the mood. But it’s just WAY too generic for my blood.

Final Scream was released in the UK on DVD by Third Millenium Films in early 2002. I’m having a bit of trouble pinning down an exact month of release in the UK but I can narrow it down to between January and June of 2002. After a brief circulation as a standalone release it would later end up being one of the STAPLE films for release as part of the various Prism Leisure multi film DVD packs that were often bundled up with DVD players to help make it look like you were getting a better deal. And when I say a staple, I am speaking anecdotally here. But from memory this thing was EVERYWHERE. I struggle to think of a time I didnt see one of those DVD bundle sets where that film wasnt included SOMEWHERE on it. As a result amazon is PLAGUED with DVD copies of this movie going for next to nothing. The DVD copy was also quite sophisticated for a low budget pressing. Theres a trailer, scene select a photo gallery. And an interactive DVD menu. Which genuinely surprised me as I was concerned this film wouldnt even have a play button quite honestly.

After its DVD release it pretty much disappeared into the ethos until 2022! When Massacre Video announced a VERY nice looking Bluray reissue under it’s alternate title of “Final Stab” and I feel that through a mixture of mixed reviews about selling the film as something it isnt, the misleading promotional material and the lawsuits. Massacre have learnt a valuable lesson here and have VERY wisely chosen to release the film with alternate artwork on the packaging. It now bears ZERO resemblance to the “Scream” franchise…and honestly; I feel that that’s the best way to package this as I feel people may get on with it better without the pre-established subconscious bias. Features include a 2k Scan from the original 35mm print…THIS THING WAS SHOT ON 35MM!?…GOOD LORD…. … anyway. Theres a new audio commentary with Decoteau and some trailers..so extras ARE a bit thin on the ground…not that it matters because this was a limited edition release thats now out of print. But i’d put money on their being a standard edition reissue in future…so..if you want one. Maybe give it a year or two…

Final Scream isnt as bad as it could have been. But thats faint praise when you consider that it could have also been SO much better. This is just a fairly run of the mill slasher that doesnt rock the boat much…which really is part of the problem. It’s a solid enough production with a script that doesnt exactly wow, but it just about does enough to keep a feint interest held to it… some of the cine and direction gives the impression it’s probably on a bigger budget than it actually was. But with a mixture of bizarre script choices in places, mixed to poor performances and a total unwillingness to really do ANYTHING interesting with the pitch beyond “Stick to the formula” this movie left me somewhat tepid. A middling slasher thats notable really more for it’s blatant attempt at trying to rip off a then popular franchise more than anything else. I’d say this might be worth watching as a bit of an oddity. But otherwise, there are PLENTY of better slashers out there to explore.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/final-stab/

2004’s Dawn of the Living Dead (Also known as Curse of the Maya, also known as “Evil Grave”) is…an experience. I think thats fair to say and puts me in a bit of an unusual position really because I honestly cant figure out if this is one of the WORST movies i’ve ever sat through, or some kind of weird work of counter culture genius in the same vein as Neil Breen or Barry J. Gillis. While the film itself is a TOTAL mixed bag of weirdness and monotony, it’s the director David Heavener who’s really caught my interest in this whole thing because. Well…he’s a character.

Not only does he have his own self styled paywalled broadcast network that charges $6 a month to discuss fundamendalist evangelical christian news and the upcoming end of days. But this is unusual (well…unusual to some of you, anyone who’s hung around the church long enough will NOT be surprised) because Heaveners kind of duel wielding at this point, marketing himself as a crusader and preacher, while also maintaining a strong anti PC stance. Before moving into evangelical christian broadcasting he previously ran shows like “David Heavener Live” where he did serialised specials talking about how the Deep state is coming to take your land, or whether radicalised christians are a threat to the Hollywood system.

He currently has a series called Xposed. I mean, David Heavaner Investigates, where he looks at bizarre claims of acts of god and investigates if they really ARE acts of god. The item that caught my eye was this image featured on his IMDB listing for his live shows basically trying to appeal to a christian alt-right audience. Now; in my opinion, a grift is a grift, if someone wants to send this guy $6 a month so he can tell them that illegal immigrants and the deep state are stealing their pens, thats between them and Jesus. I personally think it only adds to the echo chamber of bilge thats bought most of the major high performing economic countries to their knees over the last 10 years+ But thats just my opinion. What Im trying to get at here is that Heavener gives the impression of wanting to be an auteur.

And I mention these things because a third pillar of Heaveners career is that he makes exploitation films…which…is a bit of a contrast to his other projects…Dawn of the living dead wasn’t an outlier, the vast majority of his film career has been spent making Horror movies, Sci fi films and action thrillers, some of which have had a Christian edge. Now if anyone can explain to me how someone can simultaneously be an exploitation film maker and a latter day evangelical preacher AND a member of the anti PC brigade who believes the deep state is trying to kill us all, I’d be fascinated to chat. But im getting off track here.

I do need to make it clear at this point before we get to business, this film has a LOT of racist language used towards mexicans. And I personally don’t believe it’s being used solely for the purpose of character development here. I just wanted to flag that up right off the bat because, while some people would say that was ME being politically correct. I’d prefer to frame it as, me not being an arsehole and needlessly upsetting people for no good reason. So if you are bothered by that kind of thing, don’t bother with this movie it really isnt worth your time, and im going to try and keep any rhetoric to a minimum.

The film opens near the mexican border as we’re introduced to Jeffrey and Renee. A couple that have recently purchased a property on ebay with the aim of escaping the rush of the city to start a new life out in the desert. When they arrive at the house, its in serious disrepair, in fact it looks like whoever lived their previously left in a hurry. Renee isnt phased by the awfulness mind, in fact, the idea of a fixer upper delights her and we’re then treated to an extended montage of Jeffrey doing light repair (largely painting and replacing rotted wood) while Renee wanders around the house to get a better grasp on her surroundings.

While exploring the grounds Renee finds an old bust of a persons head in the grass and decides to bring it into the house, this seems to start something as it becomes apparent that something appears to be watching them from the scrubland. That night when the pair go to bed, Renee has a strange nightmare that a girl she saw in a photograph in one of the rooms is calling to her. She wakes up in a cold sweat and gets Jeffrey to scout the house out, but he finds nothing. The next day Renee finds a hidden room in the house with some toys and playthings, which in turn starts her off hearing even more childrens voices calling out to her, but she cant pinpoint from exactly where.

After getting a bit overwhelmed by the voices Renee heads out into the desert to explore the scrubland and its here that shes set upon by guy in overalls who has learning difficulties. He’s fended off however by non other than David Heavener himself who plays a strong, quiet loner type who speaks with a vague heir of pseudo wisdom Michael. Michael helps maintain wind turbines in the area and the guy he fended off is his co-worker. Renee almost immediately swoons for the great galoop. But shes in a committed relationship and engaged to Jeffrey, so while finding Michael UTTERLY irresistible (it’s worth reiterating here that David Heavener wrote, directed, produced and is now starring as the hunk a dunk of this picture) She has to break away to get home. But she does invite Michael back to the house for dinner.

And it’s over dinner that the tone of the film kind of fundamentally changes. It’s revealed that the reason Jeff and Renee left the city to go and live on the border was because Renee had only just gotten out of a psychiatric hospital. A few years prior her daughter was killed by a hit and run driver while in the care of a foster family because Renee is an addict. Her daughters death triggered a full psychological breakdown that led to 2 years of recovery under Jeffrey, the pair started having a relationship and when she was discharged from the service and released from the hospital the pair thought retreating to a quite house away from all the hussle and bustle might be a good way to work on Renees recovery.

Shes a manic depressive with paranoid tendencies that has to be constantly medicated or she goes psychotic. And wouldnt you know it shes recently stopped taking her meds, and WOULDNT YOU KNOW IT shes also started drinking a lot more booze than before AND WOULDNT YOU KNOW IT! Jeffreys also a bit controlling!…Seriously this dinner just drops all that on the audience within a 3-6 minute window…basically he reminds renee that she loses control of reality if she doesnt stay medicated and gets quite upset when she starts being assertive about not being arsed about taking her medication leading to clear signs that theres trouble in paradise.

Anyway; after that Renee asks Michael about the house, he informs her that it was basically a stopgap for illegal immigrants crossing the border, they’d stay at the house for a few days rest up, eat, drink and get well enough to make it to the nearest city to set up (which…apparently is established as being 400 miles away sooo…I dunno about that.) he also repeatedly refers to mexicans here under a couple of different racial slurs which NOONE pulls him up on. So I just have to assume all the characters in this film are big racists on top of all being quite unlikable people. Anyway, post dinner Jeff heads out and Renee and Michael stay up flirting outrageously with each other (again David wrote this for himself) before the pair go their separate ways.

The next day things get even more interesting as Renee starts to see phantoms all over the ranch, and she also nearly gets drown while tending a pond near the house where a hand comes out of the water and tries to drag her in. Renee is adamant that something DEFINITELY grabbed her, but when Jeffrey gets to her, the first thing he asks is if shes back on her medication, Renee says she isnt which leads Jeffrey to question if she really was attacked by lake zombies or if her DIAGNOSED psychosis (which she IS supposed to medicated for) might have potentially caused her to manifest accidentally slipping into a pond and getting tangled in some weeds as something trying to pull her into the pond. Renee is furious that Joe doesnt believe her and stomps off.

A short time passes and in a scene I cant show you due to nudity, Renee decides to have a bath to try and calm down, only for a hand to pull her under the water. At which point, she is dragged into a vivid flashback in which, the phantoms shes seen wandering around the ranch are all gunned down, drown or just straight up murdered. Including a little girl who ran to hide in the secret toy room that Renee found near the beginning of the film.

When Renee wakes up, she’s on a sofa in the hidden toy room and after moving some of the toys she finds a dried blood splatter on the floor in the exact spot the girl in the flashback was shot to death. Renee goes to tell Jeffrey who simply reiterates that he cant take anything she says seriously until she’s back on her medications. Oh. did I mention that for some reason its also now 5am?. The editing of the film implied the bath scene took place maybe an hour or two after the pond sequence so I was guessing it was mid to late afternoon when the flashback sequence took place. But no, apparently 12-15 hours has passed since the previous scene…also; what was Jeffrey doing awake and fully dressed at 5am!? Ugh…

Anyway in an attempt to prove that she isnt crazy, Renee begs Jeffrey to go check a cornfield thats at the bottom of the ranch’s fields as that’ll prove that these people who got murdered actually existed. Jeffrey humours her and when Renee gets to the spot where the cornfield was, it’s all gone. Jeffrey reiterates that the best thing they can do right now is abandon the renovation work and get Renee back to the city to re-evaluate her mental state and review her medications (which again; given whats going on and that non of the other characters know of an incoming mexican ghost zombie invasion…seems reasonable.)

Later that night Jeffrey comes home drunk and attempts to sexually assault Renee. This causes some strange editing where it gives the impression that Renee dissassociates from the attack and goes into her own mind where a fantasy plays out of her making passionate love to michael. When the deed is done, Renee realises that it WASNT in fact a dissassociated dream and that she really has had sex with Michael who plays things very cooler than thou. And it’s here really that the main drive of the film FINALLY kicks in (WELL over 45 minutes into this hour and 25 minute movie)

Renee begins to research Mayan culture, given that Michael has repeatedly mentioned something about mexicans bringing Vood doo stuff over the border *sigh* and its while researching the Mayan culture that she realises whats going on. Apparently when someone dies a very specific set of rituals need to take place in order to purify the body ready for it’s journey to whatever the mayan version of Heaven is. Because this family were executed without being given the proper burial rituals after 3 days of being dead, they have been resurrected as flesh eating zombies. They then have 5 days of restless hungry zombie mode with which to get someone to perform the official burial rituals otherwise they go to the Mayan version of Hell.

Armed with this information Renee is then set on performing the rituals and releasing these spirits from their pain. Unfortunately; the zombies don’t realise this is what Renee is up to and instead begin to attack the house and people in the surrounding area. In a final 20 minutes that honestly just left me with more questions than answers. Will Renee be able to complete the ritual?, Is Michael all he appears? And will Jeffrey make it to the end credits? All this and a HELL of a lot more will be answered if you take a chance on “Dawn of the living dead”.

So; right off the bat it needs to be said that this script is SO PADDED. Its honestly more stuffing than movie. A lot of the film is dedicated to Renee roaming around the scrubland surrounding the house, long sequences exploring the house itself or cyclical discussions about if the zombie ghost thingies are real, Renee’s medication issue and Mayan culture. There are entire subplots I missed out of my synopsis just because they literally add NOTHING to the film apart from an excuse to get the first gore scene into the film at 38 MINUTES into the run time and to possibly drop more mexican slurs into the mix.

The pacing is all over the place and I think the script was trying to play clever with all the “Is it all in Renee’s head or are there REALLY zombies” angle, but because that plotline isn’t developed much beyond Jeffrey telling her to take her meds and Michael telling her she doesn’t need to take her meds, there’s never any sense that her medication is the reason why all this weird supernatural stuff is happening. It’s like the film WANTS you to think thats an option, while doing everything in its power to make that CLEARLY not what’s going on. We’ll spend 4-6 minutes info dumping our two main characters’ entire backstory over lasagna, then waste 10 minutes with Renee just opening boxes and doors around the house. It’s so uneven. It could have maybe gotten away with it had they played up the psychological elements a bit more, made it a bit more suspenseful or tried to create more of a sense of unease. But theres just…non of that.

The continuity is boned too, characters are introduced and then vanish until they’re convenient, time is constantly being played around with (it goes from night to day almost instantly in places,It can be broad daylight at 5am in this thing) the whole plot about mayan burials way too convoluted honestly, Theres a subplot about weirdo racist bounty hunters that’s just randomly inserted throughout the 2nd act and ultimately adds nothing to the main plot. Michael establishes that the house is near a wind farm which is never utilised bought up, or mentioned again outside of michael giving two passing references to it being his job to maintain them…a job he MUST be doing pretty poorly as he spends most of the film hanging around with Renee…hell; even the end plot twist is SUPER predictable (I guessed it 20 minutes in) and is riddled with continuity issues, it’s just a bit of a mess honestly.

The film this most reminded me of from a Script perspective was “The Day Time Ended” because both films DO have interesting and weird moments that happen within them and I could see someone really enjoying this thing. But the gulfs of total inactivity between those weird moments really tested my patience. This is one of those movies where you’ll sit through 15 minutes of total nothingness to be rewarded with 3 minutes of just…utter oddness. And the worst part here is I cant really describe the oddness to you because A: out of context it wont seem *That* odd and B: a lot of the oddness is tied to spoiler heavy scenes that would take way too long to explain and would ruin the surprise. But trust me when I say that there are moments in this thing that left me full on snort laughing at just how absurd things got so quickly. Whether this was intentional or not is very much up for debate. I personally think David Sincerely wrote this script believing it to be a genuine horror movie. I certainly don’t believe this is satire.

Add in totally underwhelming dialogue that borders and occasionally steps over the line into melodrama campy goodness, a total lack of consistency for our core characters, seriously the intelligence of these people fluctuates wildly. The biggest oddity being that throughout the film the sun is shown to turn purple and split into 5 miniature suns and NOONE says ANYTHING until the very end of the movie and everyone just kind of goes, “Ohhhh thats what that was..” theres barely 1 act, letalone 3 when it comes to act structuring, scenes just kind of melt into each other and because of the experimental editing sometimes cuts will be used mid scene to show hours or even days worth of time passage. Which again, would be great if they were playing this up as a psychological horror…but they arnt.

The script for this is FAR from great. With long dragging sections, no narrative cohesion, poorly written and defined characters, an over reliance on racist language, frankly bizarre scenes that I think were supposed to illicit horror, but instead only made me burst out laughing, and dialogue thats bordering on the inept. I honestly don’t know if I love or hate this thing. It’s left me with SO much confliction and I feel a revisit in the near future is almost a certainty.

As mentioned this film was produced, written, directed and stars David Heavener. He has 29 directing credits and 28 writing credits. He initially started his career working in Action, horror and the occasional scifi movie, before branching out into Christian action and christian drama movies and nowadays he predominantly works on his own streaming platform doing investigative journalism on faith, but he does still churn out the occasional horror or christian action film on the side. With credits including “Prime Target” and “Twisted Justice”.

On the direction front. Im actually not too down on it truthfully, Davids style of direction seems to predominantly be grounded in wide angle shots, fish eye shots and handheld work. Which…well it isnt my cup of tea, but it does leave an ultimately distinct mark, with this being shot on film as well it just gives the picture a little bit more of a boost, just a tiny push that takes it over the line from being something that could have looked cheap being shot on digital video tape to something that, I’d say in the macrocosm of low budget horror actually looks quite respectable. The horror scenes themselves are quite well handled and while it would have been nice to see more gore in these shots (they’re not nearly bloody enough for me) I think they’re handled about as well as they could be. I just wish there was more of them and more blood honestly.
There are nitpicks I’d can pull up, his Day for night work is frankly atrocious, some of the worst i’ve seen in a good while. Some of the choices on how shots are framed aren’t exactly the most professional in the world and the directional choice to shoot some of the scenes handheld to me felt a bit overly unnecessary. Its almost nausea inducing in places, particularly in the day for night sequences where, at points, it can quite literally look like someones just shaking a camera pointed at the colour blue.

I wasnt entirely thrilled with his direction of the cast either. I felt real awkwardness with them. A lot of the pacing beats between line deliveries are off, meaning sometimes there are strong pauses between actors while they’re having a very basic conversation, it all just has an heir of uncertainty about it with only Davids performance itself being relatively rock solid. Which, I assume is down to the fact he actually took the time to not make himself look too much like a doofus in the edit. Set spaces are utilised quite well which is commendable, but I feel like he’s tried to make up for a lack of directorial vision on the location footage by just using funky lenses and colours to try and distract from the fact he just didnt really know what to do to make miles of scrubland look all that interesting.

From a cine perspective. Its…inconsistent. Shots quite often lack focus within the composition barring shots that are only focussing on one person. As mentioned, the choice to shoot a lot of the film handheld is problematic resulting in shaky and often (in my opinion) unprofessional looking shots. The sequences are pretty poorly constructed, they in some cases use smash cuts to try and show passage of time and play with what’s real and whats not. But its so half hearted in committing to that type of play it results in disorienting cuts that,rather than making me wonder what’s real and what isn’t, it ultimately left me wondering if there’d been a mistake in the edit resulting in a jump anywhere between a few minutes to a couple of days within the narrative. Theres a limited range of actual shot types on display and a lot of the heavy lifting is seemingly being done with limited CG effects, strange colour grading or odd lens choices.

To me? It feels like a film where the director got the rushes into the edit and realised that the film looked quite flat and dull. So he shot some materials with weird lenses and then played around in post till it looked more interesting at the cost of its coherency. It also has to be stressed that theres a near total lack of lighting in this film, you say chiaroscuro. I say lack of budget. I counted at least half a dozen scenes in this thing that were underlit and underexposed to the point where I thought it was maybe part of the narrative, like maybe the underlighting was the phantom zombies doing something…but no. this film just doesn’t have very good (if any) lighting direction and minimal lighting in general.

Performance wise; Jesus christ. So right off the bat I feel like Joe Estevez was a miscast. I like Joe, I think he’s a fine enough actor and he seems like a super cool guy in real life. But at the time this film was being made, and at that point in his career. Of ALL the roles you could present him with, “Toxic partner whos an alcoholic and into sexual assault” would be the FURTHEST thing away from what i’d cast Joe as. He’s just too cuddly for that role. Its just all kinds of wrong and works against what that characters supposed to be. I don’t believe his performance as a doctor, I don’t believe his performance as a toxic partner. It’s just…wrong! So wrong!

David’s turn as Michael Richards in this is hilarious, I feel like when he was writing the script for this, his thought process decided he wanted the character he played to be wise, charismatic, charming he wanted the character to be the love of every woman and the envy of every man basically your typical mary sue. But then he realised that it probably wasn’t going to go down well to have this amazing and loved character who gets to snog and act bang Amanda Bauman also be completely faultless to the point he ends up saving the day and also by sheer chance be the same guy who wrote and directed it. So in order to play down what feels like a guys attempt to just have a shot at kissing attractive women and playing the hero for 90 minutes they rush out a 15 minute plot twist ending to give him a MASSIVE fault that’s completely out of line with anything that’s happened in the film up to that point. His character in this is ridiculous and whenever he was on screen I literally couldn’t help but stifle a laugh at his performance.

Amanda Bauman by contrast kind of ends up stuck between these two guys and I’d say she is VERY representative of the middle ground for this film. I feel her casting was appropriate, and I think Davids written her to be a flawed but understandable character, I think Amanda plays it well. Is it a perfect performance? Absolutely not, there’s a few moments where she falters and…in honesty the material (to me at least) is pretty bad so she’s working with a bad hand. But, she does amicably. Shes decent enough. So i’d say thats an absolute win. The rest of the cast are awful. Most of them have no lines and the ones that do feel like they fell out of an early 2000’s Troma movie. And not a good early 2000’s Troma movie. Lines are delivered stiffly with little to no animation, It’s a bit of a shit show honestly, which was a dissapoitnment.

And finally; the soundtrack. And it’s…Alright. And I feel bad for saying that because I personally don’t think it’s alright; I think it’s generic. But objectively I cant really find any flaw in it within the context of it being a low budget horror movie. It’s pan pipey string and acoustic midi fodder. Not the worst i’ve ever heard. Not enthralling or interesting but it DOES work to help punctuate the horror elements of this quite well. What I will say is the sound recording for the cast is atrocious, if anymore than 1 person is in the scene the audio goes WAY off balance. Wind is in most outdoor recordings and the diegetic sound has been dubbed on from stock effects that don’t match what’s happening on screen and havent been balanced against the soundtrack of the actors meaning frequently doors gently being shut are louder than actor dialogue and waters overwhelmingly loud. its a poor audio experience in all honesty.

Dawn of the living dead was released on DVD in 2005 by Lighthouse DVD distribution, the same Lighthouse DVD that released “Stranger – A soulmate of chucky ” only a year prior. My guess is, much like stranger Lighthouse took a look “Curse of the Maya” as a title and went “We’ll lose money if we put it out as that!” Then they noticed that Zack Snyder had a “Dawn of the Dead remake recently out and they thought “Hey! Lets just do that!” before slapping a new title over the film and kicking it out the door. At least this one DOES technically have zombies in…Anyway, no extra features, just a scene select and my assumption is it went out of print at the same time Lighthouse DVD was dissolved in 2016 because since then it hasn’t been reissued and there’s no bluray release. While there were a lot of mixed to bad things to say about this one. I dunno, I kind of would like to see it cleaned up for a bluray release, just purely for the MST3K factor of it clearly being PERFECT for a good riff!

I still havent fully decided whether I like Dawn of the living dead or not, and I think it’ll take a LOT of time and rewatches to finally let my feelings settle. The only thing I know for sure is that this is NOT a good movie by any stretch of the imagination in my opinion. But deciding whether its an enjoyably bad movie or just a bad film is, to me, very much up for debate. I cant say I hated it, though there is a lot to dislike. Nor can I say I loved it despite it having the weird quirky charms it does have. The scripts all over the place, the direction and cine are a mess, the cast are miscast and the soundtracks paper thin. But there just something oddy endearing about it… With it being cheap I’d say grab it; its definitely something different. I wont endorse it but I think by a hairs BREADTH. I’d recommend it…ugh. I feel so dirty Im going to go wash my mouth out…see you next week.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/curse-of-the-maya/

1975’s Footprints on the moon (Also known as “Le Orme”, also known as “Primal Impulse” also known simply as “Footprints”) is an experimental mystery Thriller with a hint of Giallo and a dash of sci-fi thrown in for good measure. I’ve been meaning to get around to this one for a while, having picked it up about 4 years ago thinking it was just going to be a sci-fi arthouse movie. I realise now on the back of the box it does make a passing reference to Giallo in the synopsis of this release, but I was sold on sci-fi crazy sexy times and as such what I ACTUALLY witnessed kind of caught me off guard.

Y’see; while the film is heavily grounded in a narrative, it is fairly open ended in terms of interpretation and doesnt give you answers to everything. Which can be a bit frustrating honestly because some of the plot points that are left unanswered are kind of important plot points. With this being a bit on the experimental side, scenes and sequences sometimes happen in such a way that leads the audience to question whats really important and whats a misdirect. So rather than go through a beat by beat plot summary, because doing that will honestly just lead to a lot of “And then she went here and did this, and then she went here and did that” repetition. Im just gonna hit you with a broad overview.

The film follows Alice…I think…It gets convoluted. A woman from Portugal working as a translator in Italy. As the film opens Alice is woken by a bad dream. In the dream an astronaut is abandoned on the moon and slowly dies, it’s later clarified that this is a dream that Alice has had for almost a decade, ever since she went to the cinema as a little girl to watch a scary sci-fi movie called “footprints on the moon”. Anyway; she gets up, wanders around her house for a bit, takes some medication and then finds a torn up postcard in her kitchen, she assembles it and it shows a picture of a Hotel with a caption at the bottom that reads “The Garma Hotel” She doesn’t know how the postcard got there, but she put it to the back of her mind and heads back to sleep.

The next day; she heads out to work only to find that when she arrives at the office, her boss’s supervisor has called her into a meeting because she hasnt turned up for work in a few days. The reason why is unclear but her boss is adamant Alice DEFINITELY hasn’t attended for 3 days, But Alice VERY clearly remembers having attended a function on one of the days she was absent. Alice explains that she was asked to attend a conference as a translator for global speakers, around half way through the conference though she suddenly began to feel very overwhelmed and ended up fleeing the conference via a side door, though exactly what happened after that…noone seems to know.

Her supervisor has a different story, saying that Alice never turned up at all and that her translation tools were all left at the office with no way to contact her to see what was going on. As a result of her not handing her translations over to her boss, shes had to head to a conference unprepared and as a result of this AND Alice’s unexplained absences, its VERY likely that Alice is soon to be an ex-employee. Things get stranger for Alice, as she realises one of her earrings has gone missing and a dress has turned up in her wardrobe that shes never seen before. After talking with a friend about her dreams and the missing three days, Alice is drawn again to the postcard and Garma, she keeps having unexplainable flashbacks of an asian inspired hotel room, a stained glass window portraying a peacock and a balcony overlooking the sea that for some reason, she’s sure is linked to the postcard.

Deciding that whatever is currently going on HAS to be tied to that postcard, Alice travels by plane and ferry to arrive on the island of Garma with the aim of getting to the bottom of what exactly is going on. When she arrives at the port harbour she meets a lovely gent who agrees to give her a lift to the hotel. They make small talk and the man suggests they may well meet again. Alice arrives at the hotel and requests the room with the peacock stained glass, but the hotel receptionist doesn’t really know what shes talking about, he is able to get her a room with a balcony overlooking the sea though, With that, Alice sets up and starts trying to piece things together. Eventually meeting a young girl called Paula who insists on calling Alice “Nicole”. It transpires that this “Nicole” person visited the island on the same day that Alice vanished from the conference, she looked EXACTLY like Alice, but with long red hair and she spent some time with paula… though; what she exactly did, Paula wont say.

As Alice explores the island more and starts trying to make sense of exactly whats gone on, it starts to become apparent that either Nicole has been doing something in Alice’s name, or that Alice and Nicole are one in the same and the key to exactly what happened during Alice’s 3 day memory wipe lies on Garma. With more and more of the puzzle slowly beginning to fall into place and Alice’s scary Astronaut nightmares slowly starting to creep more and more to the front of her mind. Will Alice manage to find Nicole? Does the man who gave her a lift to the hotel know more than he’s letting on? And…why is Klaus Kinsky in this? Guys got like 5 minutes of screen time total and adds almost NOTHING to the main plot…all this and more will be answered if you take a trek with Footprints on the moon.

The trouble with covering Giallo and mystery cinema is that the mystery in many ways IS the movie. A poor payoff can make what was otherwise a great movie, awful. And vice versa. The problem I have here is how much exactly to spoil because I cant really offer you proper analysis of this film without spoiling some of the twists and turns. So from here on in, im not going to spoil EVERYTHING. But i’d say watch at your peril. I will be talking a little bit about the ending and some of the elements the film plays with.

What I will say is I do recommend you check this film out if your into Giallo cinema and haven’t seen this one before. Its a fun watch, even if it isnt necessarily the most satisfying one in the world. It was considered “Lost” for years as all that existed was a ropey VHS copy, but as of 2009 the vast majority of the film turned up as a film print allowing for a *partial* restoration. It also has a bit of a wobbly copyright standing meaning that companies like Mill Creek have included it multiple times on their public domain sets under the title “Primal Impulse” so odds are you may have a copy of this movie (unremastered) and not even know it! So as a quick caption, i’d say go check it out.

From a script perspective I think it handles its source material rather well, this film is based on a novel by Mario Fanelli and while they do play up the artier side of things visually, from what I can gather (based on italians discussing this LONG out of print book online) it’s largely faithful. One of the things that’s almost annoyingly endearing about this movie is the fact that it uses its central plot point around the loss of time to really play around with what we’re perceiving as an audience. Events will happen, but we’re not sure if they’re in Alices head, or if they’re flashbacks, if they’re relevant to the main plot or totally negligible. I love it in the sense that the film is REALLY open to playing with the audience. But it’s also annoying in some regards because some important points they raise never ACTUALLY get resolved.
The two biggest points that end up mostly unanswered are HOW Alice ended up losing the 3 days; they explain a rough breakdown of what exactly happened DURING that time, Basically; she left the conference centre after having a breakdown, convinced the astronauts from her nightmares were coming to take her away. So she put on a disguise, adopted a pseudonym and fled to Garma looking for her childhood friend Harry for protection against her abduction. Then she began to believe Harry was in on the abduction attempts, attacked him and fled the house, ditching her disguise, burning any trace of her whereabouts and fleeing back home. (little of this is shown by the way).

But they don’t explain a single JOT of what triggered a bout of 3 day amnesia, nor do they explain how NOONE between Italy and Garma saw her in clear mental distress fleeing the country..Even basic things like her bank statements aren’t bought up…like; I don’t know how rich Alice is, but if I had a blank on my memory for 3 days and checked my bank balance to find that a return flight and multiple ferry trips + expenses had been charged on my account. I wouldn’t be booking another flight out there, I’d be calling my bank to see where ALL my money had gone. The fact we never exactly find out how she lost her memory in the first place bugs me, because it’s kind of the driving force of the film. Just saying “Funny things happen when you have a breakdown” isn’t really a justifiable way to resolve what is really a key plot point.

The other problem, lies with timings…the film doesn’t overtly state the date these events take place, it gives the day and month (the film takes place between the 7th of September and the 11th of September) but the year is left out. That wouldn’t generally matter. But the final shot of the film is a shot of the moon with a caption stating “Since 15th October 1971 Alice has been interned at the neuropsychiatric institute in switzerland” This is a problem for multiple reasons. The original novel was published in 1971. The film adaptation happened in 1975. The only dates shown in the movie are at the very end, and the very beginning of the film. In the beginning of the film Alice sets the date to tuesday the 7th of September before she goes to work and finds out that it’s actually a thursday. Looking online, that would mean the film took place in 1971.

But because it’s such a blink and you’ll miss it scene, and bearing in mind that unless you’re a bit of a weirdo who keeps an eye on calendars across multiple years. Audience members wouldnt be thinking that this film was taking place in ‘71. Audience members would naturally assume that this was happening in ’75. Which makes the caption at the end saying that she was sent to a hospital in ‘71 VERY confusing. Even more so for modern audiences watching it back now who would glance the release date and then hit play. I got SO confused by this end caption because I was thinking “Soooo…does the film take place in September 1971? Has she been in the hospital the entire time and we’re just seeing some kind of weird deluded internal visualisation? Is this a flashback? What is ACTUALLY going on?

Part of me kind of liked the end caption because I took that to mean that the entire film was just someone reliving bits of a past life from within a secure facility. But part of me was BEYOND annoyed that they effectively did the “It was all a dream” line. Now having looked into things a little more I know that the whole thing takes place in 1971. But I feel its a bit much to expect the audience to research the film, find that it’s based on a novel written in 1971 and that the filmmakers decided not to draw the dates in line with the film adaptations release.
There’s a man referenced throughout the film called “Matthew” that we never really meet or find out anything about despite him being referenced as being involved with Nicole. Towards the end of the film, Alice tries to flee the island when she becomes convinced that the astronauts from her nightmares are real. They then ACTUALLY appear and try to take her, but the film isnt clear as to whether they’re actual astronauts or if they’re even really there. They don’t clarify if Alice was actually AT the conference or not, they don’t clarify if Nicole is the dominant personality or Alice and they don’t really explain how the personality swap is triggered, I mean; I’m not precious, I don’t want to be spoon fed. But it would have been nice to not have such glaring key plot points left unanswered or left in a state where you need to spend half an hour on google looking at calendars, maps and reference guides from 1971 to figure out what’s ACTUALLY going on.

Grumbles aside though, I did enjoy this script, Im hesitant to call this Giallo because it kind of lacks the blood, guts and nastiness that Giallo tends to invoke, a stabbing scene with a pair of scissors with no blood at the very end of the film is about as nasty as it gets…But given that everyone else has already labelled it a Giallo movie, I realise im probably in the minority. As a mystery movie, it’s structured solidly enough. but because of the messing around with time and what is or isn’t real, it kind of free’s itself to tit about without invoking too much wrath. I think the characters all have a decent level of development and growth, Alice in particular really gets a broad range to work with in this script. I’d say that range lends itself to a well paced character development arc from wallflower-esq cubical girl to forward and border aggressive woman on the edge.

There’s a clean 3 act structure and the pacing (barring a little bit of 2nd act flab) is slowburner but satisfying. This isn’t something racing to get you to the end line. It’s happy to let its audience stew in Garma, its people and the world built into the island to really let you savour the clues in order to make the audience savour the reveal as to what exactly’s been going on. And barring my own hang ups around some aspects needing closure…Im kind of okay with this.

The film was directed and written by Mario Farelli and Luigi Bazzoni, as mentioned the film itself was based off a novel Mario wrote in 1971 called “Las Huellas” but he came on board here to help adapt the novel to screen and he also had some uncredited work on here in a directing capacity. He has 73 directing credits almost ENTIRELY for italian TV movies. Non of the titles jumped out at me honestly, BUT! If I had to pick another work he was probably famous for it would probably be “The Fifth Chord” which was also based on a novel he wrote. He has 12 writing credits and He sadly passed away in 1991. As for Luigi, he has 14 directing credits and 8 writing credits. His best known work is probably either this, “The Possessed” or his work with Mario on “Fifth chord”. He too sadly passed away in 2012.

On the direction front, we have a pretty decent looking movie! Its a stylized production that uses block colours, particularly dark blues, blacks and browns in a thoughtful and powerful way throughout to help create a moody piece that I think really gives the film it’s own sense of identity. The scenes involving the astronauts are shot in greyscale and stylised to look like old 50’s B movies which is a really nice touch that helps contrast against the sleeker more nuanced work 70s sequences. Visually i’m actually kind of disappointed that the film isnt *Entirely* immaculate, it looks like the grade is slightly off in places,it almost has an olive tinge to it. Which did rather take me out of what was otherwise a fairly immersive experience.
Luigi’s style of film making is seemingly to focus on BIG scenes, complex and gorgeous looking sets and locations are shot as wide as possible to get from floor to ceiling in the shot and that distinctive look used throughout the film when coupled with the colour choices really helped sell me on this. I think a less kind critic would say that this doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. Admittedly this isn’t really anything we haven’t seen before in “Blood and Black Lace” or “Cat O Nine Tails”. But I feel that for an early to mid 70’s mystery movie at a time where Giallo as a genre was just coming down from its first peak and heading into their gorier, nastier second wind in the 80’s. It does the job in keeping you on board right up to the big end reveal. It’s no “Bird with the Crystal Plumage”…but it’ll do.

Direction of the cast is solid enough. With this being a moodier piece, cast reaction is critical here and I feel that Mario and Luigi have both worked particularly well to get the absolute best they can out of the cast. The language barriers that are present in most of italian cinema are present here, but that makes it all the more impressive that the pair were able to pull the range out of the cast that they did. While they could have utilised set space just a tiny bit more, they aren’t afraid of those spaces either. Their guidance ultimately could have been better. But its far far from awful.

From a cine standpoint what we have here is a wonderful piece that seemingly isnt afraid to experiment. The camera is CONSTANTLY moving throughout with silk smooth pans and tracking shots that carry us through the film effortlessly. It’s SO nice to see camera work be so thoughtful and creative in terms of trying to hold audience interest, sequences blend seamlessly into one another using the sense of “timelessness” in its favour, we’ll smoothly glide from Alice in her bluelit bedroom pondering what exactly is going on in her life, to the nightmares that plagues her sleeping moments. This is a definite step above most of the fodder I cover on this channel with a curated and thoughtful shot list being used to really drive the emotion and thoughts within the scene to the forefront.
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When coupled with some decent editing that really takes its time to let the scenes breathe without overstaying their welcome. The end result is some wonderfully composed shots, excellently arranged into sequences that have been given the loving care they clearly needed in order to be presented as best they could. And here, i’d say they absolutely achieved that. Is it the most original work in the world? That might be a reach, though theres definitely a debate to be had here and and my GOD it’s pretty in places.

Performance wise. It’s pretty much the Florinda Bolkan show, the vast majority of the film is pretty much solely hers, and she REALLY gets to stretch out, giving a performance that manages, successfully I might add, to REALLY invest you in the character and her situation. You genuinely feel the wooziness she feels along the way as she tries desperately to make sense of the situation she’s found herself in and honestly; shes just a delight for most of the run time.

Given this movie has Klaus Kinski in it, I actually found his *VERY* brief appearance in this to be largely unremarkable. He does a good job of playing that kind of 50’s B-movie archetype…but honestly, there isn’t much more to say other than that. Equally; the rest of the cast all do fairly reasonably but ultimately feel unremarkable too. I wont say they’re bad because they’re not. But they do rather remind me of NPCs in video games. They don’t really go above and beyond saying their lines with conviction and then sort of…wandering off. Nicoletta Elmi is probably the only standout additional cast member as Paula, who REALLY gets put through the ringer by Alice and Nicole and gives a believable reaction to this weird situation of split personalities. Shes a natural performer that I feel for a child actor, was actually quite impressive.

And finally; The Soundtrack. Its decent! Its got a classical edge to it, but there are some electronic elements that do break through occasionally. It isn’t TOO intrusive on the film, it’s just a relatively solid piece that helps to keep the flow of the film going during key points and while, it is possibly a touch on the generic side for movies of this genre, i’ll take stable and a bit generic over no music or irritating scoring any day.

Footprints on the moon was largely considered a “Lost” film until a print resurfaced in the 2000’s. Before that it did the rounds on bootleg circuits as a ropey and incomplete VHS dub under the title “Primal Instinct”, I cant find any evidence of an official VHS release having ever happened for this film, but I can trace an “Unauthrosied” DVD bootleg back to as early as 2006. So its to be presumed that bootleg VHS copies were floating around for a few years before then. As mentioned, Mill creek has released this multiple times on their public domain 50 movie film packs. But it wasn’t until 2009 that the film would be “Restored” and OFFICIALLY released on DVD by shameless films under the name “Footprints on the moon”.

The film print located was missing some scenes which have been restored using a good quality VHS rip. And…well…the restoration work isn’t amazing. Shameless pride themselves on a more “rough and ready” aesthetic. That’s not to say they don’t bother restoring their releases. It’s just that they believe that films like this SHOULD have a bit of grit and grime thrown back in…for character. Given their remit is generally for gory and overly violent movies like Cannibal Holocaust and The New York Ripper. I do feel somewhat inclined to agree that these movies do feel “right” with a little bit of grit thrown back in. But at the same time with movies like this one, it maybe would have been nice to see it fully “ground up” restoration…really giving it a proper polish, and then offering this release with the option of either seeing the fully cleaned version or a cut with a rougher around the edges look. Extras on here are a bit thin on the ground, but there’s trailers, multiple subtitle tracks and a scene select soo….its something!

I don’t think ardent Giallo followers will rush out to catch “Footprints on the moon” while it is a quite well made production in my opinion, I don’t feel it offers anything unique enough that hasn’t been seen or done before better in other films. What this film IS good for though, is as an entry level picture for people new to the genre who’ve maybe seen a couple of staple entries and want to see something that’ll make them sound a bit more confident about their Giallo knowledge. It has a good, solid and unusual script, Gorgeous cine, decent direction and a good range of performances. To some; it may be retreading old ground. But if you’re new to the genre or maybe a casual viewer who isn’t 100% invested in every work of giallo ever released. I think you might get a kick out of it so I’d say, check it out.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/footprints-on-the-moon-1975/

1993’s The American Ninja 5 is NOT “The American Ninja 5”. It feels a bit weird saying that, but it is what it is. This action film with VERY light comedy elements was originally called “American Dragons” and on some TV broadcasts of this film it’s STILL called “American Dragons”. In fact it was only towards the very end of production that Cannon pictures decided to tweak the script slightly on some reshoot footage, inserting the words “American Ninja” a few times to try and tie it into the American Ninja franchise and changing the name from “American Dragons” to “American Ninja 5” on the promo materials to try and sucker in people who were invested in the “American Ninja” series.

And y’know what? Given the absolute YAWN a thon that “The American Ninja 4” was, given that this film currently sits at around a 2.5 to 3.0 rating on IMDB and given that it LITERALLY has nothing to do with the “American Ninja” movies barring David Bradely appearing in the lead role. I think this is probably one of my favourite “American Ninja” movies.

The film follows David Bradley playing a completely different ninja expert called Joe. Joe owns a gym in town and lives on a boat. He’s a master of Ninjitsu and has an ability to use a form of meditation to cause things to explode, teleport or die. So he’s basically a Scanner. Anyway! After a hard days training Joe finishes up at the gym and heads back to the marina to chill out at home. But when he gets back he finds someone varnishing his boat. This is Lisa, a woman who owns a boat a couple of slots down from him who offered to Varnish his boat for him, Unfortunately; Joe misheard, he didn’t want Lisa to VARNISH the boat. He wanted her to TARNISH the boat! *Laugh track* Because of this blunder, Joes boat is uninhabitable for at least 48 hours. So Lisa offers to let Joe sleep on her boat till its dry and even suggests cooking dinner for him. He’s not happy with the arrangement, but agrees.

Shortly after this; we’re introduced to the main thrust of the movie. As we meet Simon Glock, owner of Glock Chemicals. A bio company that works in pesticides and poisons. Their chief scientist Dr. Strobel has mastered a pesticide called ZB-12 that kills insects and leaves no residue on the plant itself. Making it essentially safe to eat without having to chemically wash the produce. Unfortunately; a side effect of ZB-12 is that, when used in a high enough concentration, it can more or less instantly kill any animal or human. When news hits the lab that Glock wants Strobel to start studying its effects on animals, He storms into a meeting Glock is holding to call the request barbaric. Glock tells Strobel that the reason for testing is with “Honourable Intentions” and when Strobel refuses to comply, Glock restricts the Dr’s movement to his lab.

It turns out that Glock is working with the Venuzualan military to develop a bomb full of ZB-12 that can be concealed in a suitcase. The plan being to sell these bombs on the black market to reap a massive profit. With Strobel not interested in supporting that, Glock makes the decision that he’s going to have to intimidate him into compliance. So! He tells one of his bodyguard,henchmen…people, who goes by the name “Viper”. To go and kidnap Strobel’s daughter to act as a hostage.

Meanwhile; back at the gym Joes really going at it when an old friend and mentor Master Tetsu drops by, Joe had completely forgotten he agreed to housesit for Tetsu while he was vacationing. while running through the list of things to keep an eye on, he casually drops that he also needs Joe to keep an eye on his Grandnephew Hiro. Hiro is an orphan, his mother died during childbirth and his father was killed under mysterious circumstances. Hes an introvert loner gamer weirdo but Tetsu trusts that Joe can take care of him and asks him to maybe even work with him a bit on learning the art of Ninjitsu.

Joe flat out refuses to babysit, but ultiamtely isnt left with much of a choice when Tetsu uses a smoke bomb to just…vanish. So! Joe takes Hiro to go and cancel plans with Lisa, and on the way over to the marina Hiro opens up a bit more…turns out, hes a bit annoying. We’re talking TOTAL Scrappy Doo energy. When the pair arrive at the boat they find that dinners already ready and that Lisa had kinda sorta planned the whole thing because she was REALLY interested in getting to know Joe better. Hiro, being a bit of a twerp helps initiate things further and what WAS supposed to be a cancelled dinner date, ends up being a late night dining and schmoozing session where they all get to know each other quite a bit better.

Lisa heads below deck to sort a few things out, and almost immediately she’s attacked by Viper who knocks her out, gets her off the boat and into the back of a van that speeds off to the airport. Joe goes to look for Lisa and Hiro spots her being taken off the ship. A crazy car chase ensues with Hiro driving and when the pair arrive at the airport they see Lisa get smuggled onto an aircraft and they immediately try to smuggle themselves on board too…well Joe does, he tells Hiro to head home, but Hiro just sneaks into a crate and gets loaded onto the plane anyway. It turns out the planes heading to south America and when the plane lands, it doesn’t take long for Lisa to get offloaded into another van and for Joe to end up being captured by the Venuzualan police and put in jail. Hiro manages to evade capture, at which point Joe gives him the job of trying to get to the US embassy to tell them about whats gone on.

Back at Glock Chemicals, Lisa and her father are reunited and Strobel tells Lisa that he’s built a prototype of the bomb. His plan is to get Glock and the general all together in the same room and detonate it. Killing himself in the process, but stopping the bomb from making its way to the black market. Lisa is strongly against the plan, but knows there isnt really a lot she can do to stop it. Shes then taken to a hotel where she’s kept in a guarded suite.

Hiro eventually manages to find/steal a bike and after a short while finds out Joe is being moved, after a lenghty chase sequence, he manages to get the transfer truck to crash and when the drivers get out to try and find Him, he steals the transfer truck. What they don’t realise though is that following the transfer truck was a jeep with two of Glocks henchmen in, a guy named “Flathead” and “Generic baddie A”. Anyway!; eventually the transfer van gets rammed off the road. Flathead pumps the truck full of bullets, but when they open the back of the truck to see the mess, Joe swings out (having clung to the roof) and promptly beats the crap out of both of them. But before he’s able to claim a win, Viper turns up and summons a load of ninjas. Some fight Joe, while others kidnap Hiro. Joe quickly dispatches his opponents and chases after the ninjas who took Hiro. a few fights here and there and a stint through, what looks like an obstical course and Hiro is free again and the pair quickly dust themselves off and start heading out to look for clues again.

But the baddies haven’t given up just yet! as another chase ensues that results in Joe jumping off a dock into the sea where Flathead machine guns him. When Joe doesn’t resurface, Flathead declares “I got him!” something Hiro overhears and assumes that Joe is dead. Things look pretty bleak, as Hiro heads back into the nearest town to beg people for directions to the US Embassy. BUT! It turns out Joe ISN’T dead! I have no idea how…the film doesn’t bother to explain. BUT! He’s alive! And using his Ninjitsu skills he’s able to bust his handcuffs off and starts to plan his next moves.

Meanwhile Hiro stumbles on a local street gang who, as soon as they see him basically hold him down and threaten to cut his fingers off. But by SHEER DUMB LUCK, Joe turns up, beats up the gang, rescues Hiro *again* and the pair manage to get away, they have a bit of a heart to heart, when Viper appears AGAIN and sets another army of ninjas on the pair, Joe manages to take the ninjas out, but while fighting Viper manages to hit Hiro in the head, knocking him unconscious. While out cold, he has a flashback where he sees Viper kill his father and take an amulet from him. When Hiro wakes up, Joe continues the heart to heart and, as if by magic, Master Tetsu appears as a force ghost and praises Joe for his work at protecting Hiro. He reveals that Hiro’s dad intensely trained him in the art of Ninjitsu and that, with some minor training and meditation, his abilities and powers will return. He tells Joe that the trauma in Joes past around failing to protect HIS little brother will be absolved if he helps Hiro unlock his full potential.

And so! Cue training montages, a foiled attempt at assassinating the head of a global chemicals company and rainbow ninja outfits galore! As Hiro and Joe head out to rescue Lisa and her father, put a stop to illegal arms dealings and teach Glock and Viper the lesson that, whether young or old, master or student NOONE messes. With the American Ninja…Dragons? American Dragon Ninjas? JUST DON’T MESS WITH DAVID BRADLEY!

My bar for this movie was pretty much on the floor, im not going to lie. While the American Ninja 4 had a sense of grandness, it frankly wasted SO much time doing the weird split plot line thing and the fights were SO poorly choreographed that frankly, I was done with the franchise by the time the credits rolled. I enjoyed the first two, the third was fine and the forth was a slog that had a couple of good moments sprinkled in throughout. The American Ninja 5 doesnt exactly bring the franchise back to fertile ground. But if we ARE going to treat this movie as an American Ninja sequel (official or otherwise) then what I will say is, it’s not as grand as the previous American Ninja movies. But it does a lot more with a lot less producing something thats arguably the most enjoyable American Ninja movie since part 2.

The script for this is fairly minimalist, gone are the large scale Ninja training compounds, gone are the baddies looking to create super ninjas or aiming to raise a dictatorship. Here it’s as simple as two not unreasonably written characters ending up pulled into rescuing a love interest and inadvertently stumbling on a nefarious arms deal which they try to stop. There were elements of this in “The American Ninja 4” but it was just that, Elements. Parts of a BIGGER picture that ultimately got watered down as a result.

Here, because the script only really has Lisa’s kidnapping and the bomb threat to work with, it’s able to build a greater sense of peril into those elements because thats ALL thats at stake. Its not trying to spin a lot of plates, so it can take its time in making sure that it gets the elements it IS working with just about right. There’s a LOT less characters to worry about when compared to the other films. Which again; only really helps to keep things focussed because, unlike Ninja 4, your spending the whole movie with only 2 or 3 of *roughly* 5 characters which makes it much more coherent when compared to Ninja 4 where you’d spend an UNGODLY amount of time with one character, then an UNGODLY amount of time with another.

Equally; with this entry, the series embraced a light dash of comedy which has really gone a long way to help freshen things up a little bit. It doesn’t HAVE to be all pouty serious moody action. Its ALLOWED to have a little bit of fun with it’s characters and I think this helps MASSIVELY as it takes the pressure OFF trying to deliver something as grand and serious as previous instalments, instead allowing the audience to just relax and be entertained for a spell. When the previous American Ninja movies did comedy it was VERY few and far between and played with a “Cooler than thou” mentality. Here. it feels like the cast are actually having fun, which in turn makes me, the audience member ALSO feel like i’m having fun. And really; that’s all you can ask of a sequel, quality and entertainment.

Now thats not to say this movies amazing, the fact its smaller scale does mean it somewhat fails to really define itself against the other movies in the series or even the genre really. There are MUCH better Ninja action movies out there than this, and just being “okay” can and will work against it with some people. It suffers from padding in places and at times, it feels like some scenes have had their order rearranged post shoot, which has created a bit of instability in the script structure. The best example I can think of is Joe agreeing to help train Hiro after Viper knocks Hiro out, only for Tetsu to turn up and tell Joe he needs to help train Hiro and for Joe to AGAIN agree to help train Hiro. there are a couple of examples of that in this film, where it feels like scenes have been split in half and spread out across the run time to help give the impression that the characters are in the movie more than they actually are, when in reality all it really does is make it look like the characters are a bit forgetful and keep repeating points they made 10-15 minutes prior.

In fact, if we’re talking about the script structure, While it does have a problem in terms of deciding what order to run things in, it does cover the basics pretty decently. It has it’s 3 act structure firmly in place, the pacings all relatively decent, it maybe slows down a little bit in the middle, but only a smidge and I’d put that largely down to padding (examples being Hiro spending a TON of time wandering around looking for the US embassy and scenes throughout where Joe fights some ninjas and kicks their arses, only to IMMEDIATELY walk into the next scene where a load of ninjas appear and Joe has to kick their arses) its by no means the worst i’ve seen for padding and repetition, but it cant go unnoticed.

Throw in some cheesy dialogue that really does sound like its coming from a kids tv show (this movie was PG-13 in the US so you know exactly the tone they’re going for) and depending on your preference for movies that don’t take themselves MASSIVELY seriously, your milage may vary. I could easily see someone who liked the tone and vibe of the American Ninja movies coming to this film and being VERY disappointed that it’s chosen to go down a lighter, less life or death route. But I for one really rather welcomed it, Its a change of pace after 2 movies that felt VERY samey and had similar issues that made them…well…a bit boring in all honesty. This isn’t bogged down with continuity, and, to me? It’s a fun, sturdy enough work that i’m not ashamed to say I got on with.

The script was written by Gregg Latter, George Saunders and John Bryant, Gregg has 25 writing credits to his name with credits including “Cold Harvest”, “Cyborg Cop” and “Delta Force 3: The Killing Game” His last credit was in 2017. George and John have 5 and 4 writing credits respectively, and both have pretty much worked together on everything they’ve written with the exception of 1 extra credit for George in 1995 and Johns last credit being in 1994. Highlights include: “Scanner Cop” and “Martial Outlaw”. On directing duties we have Bob Bralver, he has 17 directing credits, mainly for TV including “Knight Rider”, “The A-Team” and “Dragnet” he’s really more of a Stuntman in honesty, in that field he has 178 credits with highlights including “Roadhouse” and “Darkman”.

On the direction front…I mean, it tries. It’s hardly the most breathtaking watch i’ve ever sat through, I’ll be completely honest. I suppose the best way I could describe it is, it’s above acceptable, Not exactly showstopping, but it does have the odd flourish in their that makes me think the director was trying to turn out something good with whatever resources he had. While the general scene by scene direction is rather by the numbers, it does have the odd nice moment where it goes above and beyond. The various car chases that happen throughout the film are usually ones that standout in terms of doing things that made me go “Ooh. this is a bit more interesting!” shots set in the hotel near the end when Hiro and Joe go to rescue Lisa also impressed. It’s not groundbreaking stuff. But reasonable with the occasional moment of “great” is, for me at least, always going to trump good but underwhelming. There was nothing here that blew my socks off, but there was enough to keep me on board.

The fight Choreography iiiiis a little underwhelming, BUT! It IS a lot better than how it was handled in American Ninja 4. They go for masked contact and the occasional soft contact blow, and while the choreography itself is a little underwhelming…they’ve made the probably wise decision to go for fast martial artistry rather than anything more intricate which is safe, but ultimately a bit disappointing, they DO at least handle the technicals around masking those contact shots quite well. Ninja 4 was awful at that with shots of actors not even touching each other making it into the final cut. Here at least it looks like the punches and kicks are landing AT LEAST 90% of the time and it feels like theres weight behind the attacks as well. It may not be pushing boundaries. But I always admire solid attempts.

The cine is in a bit of a similar place to the direction, it lacks scale, but its ambitious and I respect that. Sequences are fairly basic, but the cine team behind this do have a nice eye for composition and there’s some decent shots making up these sequences. While there isnt really a lot of experimentation here, I’m more than happy with acceptable cine structured into competent sequences that do occasionally strive to go a bit above and beyond. The cine around the fight scenes is tight and focussed on the action. The chase scenes are edited swiftly with a variety of shots driving emphasis on the fast paced nature of the chase and theres even just the odd nice addition in play too, like establishing shots of the aeroplane Joe and Hiro hop aboard mid flight and shots of the villages surroundings to help really sell us on the locations. I don’t think it’ll exactly blow anyone away. But I cant knock it really all that much because it’s not doing what it does badly…its just trying it’s best to do what it can with what it has…

Performance wise, David Bradley as Joe is pretty solid, with this being an action/comedy he’s playing things with a slightly lighter edge here than when compared to Sean in the other American ninja movies. It’s not his greatest performance, but for this genre of film, I think he does the job just about. I think he comes across as warm when he needs to be and serious when its time to throw hands. So I wont fault him here! I also have to REALLY give some credit to Lee Reyes on this one. I don’t like to comment particularly on child actors. I make it a bit of a rule, but I will say here that Reyes takes a character that COULD have been, in the wrong hands quite insufferable and by the end of the movie has really made him into something I actually thought was pretty decent. Given this was his first full feature credit I find that all the more impressive. I thought he did a good job on this one, and im glad to see he’s still fairly active, with a credit as recent as 2012.

I think where this film falls down really is with it’s handling of the villains. With James Lew and Clement von Frankenstein (seriously…thats his ACTUAL name.) as Viper and Glock respectively just being…a little too generic for my taste. I dunno. I just…didnt really get anything distinct off them, they didnt really set themselves up as unique or interesting characters…they were pretty much just generic martial arts and business men style “baddies”. It would have maybe been nice to have a bit more depth, complexity or points of interest with our antagonists beyond, one killed Hiros dad and the other wants to sell bioweapons to south american arms dealers…they work with what they have well enough. I just wanted a bit more from them honestly…

The rest of the cast are alright. They do a decent turn in this, but, as has been the story throughout this thing I feel like they do good enough to give them some praise, but not good enough to really take things to the next level where i’m enthusiastically endorsing what they’ve done here. They all work with the dialogue as best they can, they all use the set space as best they can and I think, with the director working as a stuntman, he’s had enough experience working with directors to be able to help steer the cast towards giving a decent turn. I cant say fairer than “They did the job and just about hit the spot.”

And finally; the soundtrack and it’s Pan pipe fever! Seriously this whole thing is rocky and poppy numbers just DRENCHED in pan pipes. Its wall to wall pan pipes, SO MANY PAN PIPES. It’s fine. I’d have liked a little bit more range personally as after a while it all does start to sound a bit samey…but it’s just about fine. It does have that early 90s cheap and cheerful edge to it, which does help set the mood. But doesnt really help to kick this thing into high gear. Especially when it really needed something distinct and actioney to help tie the cine, direction and performances all together. It’s passable.

American Ninja 5 was released in the UK on VHS in 1993 by Cannons own distribution and…In a move thats STILL got my jaw on the floor *sigh* I have to bring the BBFC into this. Y’see; this movie came out at a point in time where the BBFC were still all in on banning anything to do with ninjas or ninja weaponry because they were scared that kids would see it and immediately all go out and become ninjas. Seriously. Stop laughing. ANYWAY. American Ninja 5 was initially refused certification in the UK uncut and the BBFC requested 1 MINUTE and 11 SECONDS of cuts IN ORDER TO SECURE AN 18 RATING IN THE UK. Bearing in mind ladies and gents that this got released in the US UNCUT as a PG-13.

Do you know whats even more wild? A year earlier in 1992 Zombie flesh eaters was resubmitted for classification after being banned for 8 years from being shown in the UK and they passed it with an 18 certificate with 1 minute and 46 seconds of cuts. Meaning that; in one of the most bizarre turns i’ve seen. The BBFC thought a PG-13 action comedy about 2 people beating up ninjas with no blood or gore. Was only SLIGHTLY better than a full on GRAPHIC ZOMBIE MOVIE THAT WAS BANNED FOR 8 YEARS AND REGISTERED AS A VIDEO NASTY WITH BLOOD, GORE, MUTILATION, EYE GOUGING AND FULL FRONTAL NUDITY. Jesus christ… As far as I can see it didn’t receive a DVD release in the UK, but it did get multiple releases across Europe between 2002 and 2004 (some cut, some uncut) but…outside of that, that’s it. No bluray release that I can find and It’s not on any streaming services I can see either…so if you live in the UK it’s a cut VHS or bust im afraid…

Had the American Ninja 5 been an *official* entry in the series. I’d have actually been pretty comfortable with things ending here. While previous entries were grand, bombastic and full on. This entry kind of pulls things back to what I want from a series like this, a decent amount of fighting, a basic but engaging and somewhat charismatic plot and a lively cast who bring the script alive. While I absolutely HAVE to say it could have done MILES better in almost every regard, with it at times really bordering on becoming a generic action movie with a hint of comedy gaffa taped to it. Given where we’ve come from. I was happy to just have a stable end product that didn’t put me to sleep, made me smile a couple of times and gave the cast a decent opportunity to work on some good character development. American Ninja 5 probably wont win many peoples hearts. But i’d say, if you’ve enjoyed previous American Ninja movies, but felt 4 kind of left things a bit flat. This might just be the do over you needed.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/american-ninja-5/

1989’s ‘Dr. Caligari’ has me *almost* lost for words. Its a fascinating film from the minds of Stephen Sayadian and Jerry Stahl. And…if you’ve never heard of Stephen or Jerry. Well…they’re responsible for some of the strangest and most fascinating pieces of cinema that i’ve ever personally come across, ‘Nightdreams’ and ‘Cafe Flesh’. Both of which are considered ‘Hardcore’ erotic films, but both of which are also distinctly experimental in style and VERY new wave in execution. I can sincerely say i’ve NEVER seen anything quite like ‘Nightdreams’ before or since and im almost certain if you check it out, you’ll say much the same.

Their style is very fragmented, purposefully erratic and supremely campy with an emphasis on *high key* not taking themselves too seriously, while *low key* kind of taking themselves a bit seriously.‘Dr. Caligari’ initially started life as a sequel to ‘Nightdreams’ until the pair realised that the 1920 german expressionist film ‘The Cabinate of Dr. Caligari’ had, at this point, fallen into the public domain. As such, they changed tact. Adapting their ‘Nightdreams 2’ script into a direct sequel to ‘Cabinate’ instead. They softened the hardcore elements right down into something a little more commercially acceptable (theres still a lot of nudity, but no actual visual on screen penetration or anything like that) and after a bit of a refit, they arrived at ‘Dr. Caligari’

Jerry Stahl puts it best, when interviewed about ‘Caligari’ he quipped that the critics absolutely loved the film and thought it was something truely next level in the medium of cinema. He managed to get a date and thought the ultimate street cred would be taking her to go and see his own critically acclaimed movie. Only to get to the theatre to find it COMPLETELY empty barring those two…The date didnt really go anywhere after that.

Explaining the plot of ‘Caligari’ is hard…well…actually thats a bit misleading because its surprisingly easy. But this is a film which has a LOT of symbolism and on screen double meanings, so to explain the plot does the film a disservice because it wont really give you the full understanding of quite WHY this magnificent work of art IS in fact a magnificent work of art. Its a bit like ‘Eraserhead’ or ‘Liquid Sky’ or ‘Split’ in the sense that, a LOT is being inferred, a lot more than a basic synopsis would really allow. So what i’ll say up front is, if you’ve seen the promotional materials for this film, or you’ve liked what you’ve heard so far. Go and watch the movie. It’s one of those films that works 100 times better as a blind watch anyway and I wholeheartedly recommend it, what you see here is pretty much what you get, so I think it’ll be a pretty clean cut case as to whether you get on with this one or not.

The film is set in what can only be described a surrealist nightmare void. In which not even sets really exist…everything is kind of just presented as is and the sets just seem to roll on forever into the void. So for example our cast will be happily lounging in an armchair watching TV on a lino floored space that just suddenly disintigrates into marshland, which in and of itself rolls on well out of shot of the cameras. Its a trip to be sure.

Anyway; in the film we follow the case of the Van Houtens. Eleanor Van Houten is the wife to an important businessman Les, and she’s currently struggling with a mental disorder which makes her excessively rampantly insatiably horny. In the opening of the film we see Elenor in some king of nightmare sequence in which she’s watching TV and a scene comes on in which a woman has a puss ridden sore on her ankle, on touching the screen Eleanor develops a similar sore and she flees to her bathroom to grab some medication. She sits by the bath and a strange gentleman wearing a cherub mask erupts from under the water and slashes her wrists. She manages to escape but finds herself slow motion crawling through a warped asylum before suddenly realising that the masked man is having sex with a version of herself. Horrified, shes suddenly jolted back into her armchair. Where a mysterious woman breaks in on the static of the TV thats broadcasting and begins pleasuring Eleanor via ‘static licks’

Its here that her husband finally enters the scene and decides to intervene. In a panic, he contacts ‘Dr.Caligari’ to explain that Eleanor has had a relapse and needs to be sedated and taken into her care again. Caligari is reluctant as Eleanor by all accounts has been ‘cured’ by her. But Les is insistent and after some backing and forthing in which Les mentions the sheer scandal and embarrassment he had to endure the last time Eleanors illness caused her to act out in public, Caligari agrees to take her back and asks Les to swing by the asylum the next day to sign some release papers.

He arrives at Caligaris asylum, but before signing anything, he asks if he can see Eleanors file to get a better idea about what *exactly* Caligari did to her last time. Caligari refuses saying she destroyed her files shortly after declaring her ‘cured’. Before going on to state that Eleanor suffers from ‘Erotic Trauma’ a difficult to cure ‘disease of the labido’. As such, she suggests 2 weeks in the asylum under her care to try and get to the bottom of the trauma and resolve it. Les Reluctantly agrees to sign the documents, at which point we then cut to what appears to be some kind of Barroom setting.

In here we’re introduced to Dr. Avol. Who…seemingly doesnt really have a function in this film other than being a colleague to Dr. Caligari who may or may not work in the same asylum. He has a daughter called Ramona who also works in the Asylum alongside her partner Dr. Lodger. Ramona and her partner are currently doing a spot of espionage on Caligari, as they’re convinced that she’s repurposed her asylum into basically a huge guinea pig farm for her devious and sadistic mental experiments referring to her as a ‘Sex Nazi’.

Dr. Avol doesnt quite believe it, but the pair have seen and heard enough anecdotal evidence to feel convinced that Caligari is up to something. They just don’t know what. Avol tells them to drop it because theres nothing to worry about, but the pair decide to keep it up for now at least. As they head out, it’s revealed that Caligari was hidden as a statue in the room they were in and heard the entire exchange first hand.

Its here that it’s revealed that Caligari IS in fact experimenting on patients, as we’re introduced to a ‘Mr. Pratt’ a cannibalistic mass murderer with needles in his ass who’s OBSESSED with being electrocuted,hinting that it’s something of an orgasmic expeirence for him. Caligari gives him a brief jolt, before showing him some severed heads and Pratt recounts one of the first murders he ever did, killing a woman who worked at a ‘Home for wayward tots’ by bashing her head in with a family sized bottle of ketchup and disposing of the body in a giant stew. He said he understood because ‘he was a wayward tot too’.

Les visits Caligari again to explain that the situations now worse than ever, and Caligari tells Les that, now Eleanors in her care, she’d like to take her in for observation. Eleanor meanwhile is having ‘sexy wall visions’ *shudder* She’s immediately committed and what follows is a VERY cold exchange between the two in which Eleanor expresses her horniness while Caligari mildly chastises her, but also asks her if she’s interested in having sex with a scarecrow thats in the room. She agrees. But after rustling around in the scarecrows trousers trying to find his corncob, she turns up empty handed and instead somehow seriously burns her hand and arm.

Another meeting is set up between Caligari and Les to update him on Eleanors condition and, I cant really go much further into this film at this point without seriously spoiling the ending (I honestly feel i’ve said too much with whats here) what I will say is Les ends up getting WAY more than he bargained for here, Caligaris plans are revealed and things quickly take a tumble into the nightmarish and absurd as her self styled and titled work in the field of ‘Hyperthalmic Interfacing’ causes our main characters to slowly lose their minds and give into their base urges. In an ASTOUNDINGLY fun 78 minutes, Will Eleanor be cured? Will Caligari’s research get accalaim? and…Just why IS Les in the asylum!? Non of this will be answered…or it might be…I don’t even know anymore, if you check out ‘Dr. Caligari’.

This reviews pretty much gonna be a love in by the way, I wish I had more to complain about honestly, but so far at least, this is easily the best, the most entertaining, the most interesting film that i’ve seen this year. I have a LOT of love for this thing because it pretty much ticks every box as both a film viewer AND maker that I want ticking in my film going experiences.

For a starters, the script is erratic, incoherent in places and TOTALLY unpredictable. Which I absolutley love. And when I say ‘unpredictable’, I don’t mean that in the neurotypical sense. I mean that this film has well and truely gone off the rails and is wiping its shit on the walls and wailing about the trouser goblins. I had NO idea what was going to happen on a minute by minute basis, letalone an act by act one. I actually spoke to a friend shortly after the credits rolled on this, and I referred to it affectionately as ‘Concussion cinema’ because it feels like you’ve received a concussion and then been made to watch it.

Scenes seemingly don’t always have a beginning OR an end. Theres no clear distinction between whats a fantasy, whats reality and whats a dream. The dialogue will be sensical for a time before veering off into lines that, for lack of a better descriptive, feel like we’ve suddenly just changed the channel. The pacing is absolutely breakneck as we lunge from scene to scene with NO foreshadowing as to exactly what we’re getting ourselves into. I can honestly say that I havent been this enthralled by a work in a VERY long time. And the total unhinged randomness of it all, I personally found very engaging and endearing.

And I need to make it clear here. This isnt ‘Lolrandum’ style humour. This isnt some film maker shitting out a feature with their mates on next to no budget, with no plan, little to no script and no outset vision. This is a VERY carefully crafted and orchestrated vision of chaos. This is meticulously planned, it had to be because of just how heavily stylized this thing is. They couldnt afford to pillock about on set. So the script had to be razor.

It’s tone is acidic, it’s wonderfully devious mix of jet black dark comedy, gratuitous ‘Yuzna’ esq squishy flesh horror and border cartoonish inhibition absolutely won me over. This film is what happens when you take ‘Society’, ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’, ‘Female Trouble’ and ‘Forbidden zone’ shove them in a blender and pour it over the rocks. And the fact it does ALL that mania, creative flowing and intrigue AND delivers it in under 80 minutes…well, dear viewer. I honestly thought I was in love.

It’s by no means a PERFECT script. The thematic choices throughout are a little vague. Jerry Stahl says the films a comment on the pharmaceutical industry at the time and how, in the late 80’s and early 90’s all these companies were transitioning into a more advertiser heavy, business friendly model, the idea was that mental illnesses were now just something you took pills for and got on with your life, without anyone questioning if that was the right thing to do. It was overprescribing but with a glossy coating to it.

History has learned from those mistakes, but other than the first act, I honestly didnt really see much of Stahls comments present in the film. I instead interpreted it as having more to say around mental health as a subject, its detriments on its victims and the conditions with which we hold our mentally unwell than anything else. With several references to things like leprosy throughout. To me, the film was quite literally saying that these people may have excesses and flaws, but treating them like plague victims to be either hidden away or drugged to the point that they arnt even themselves anymore very much ISNT the answer.

But on the whole? This is a razor sharp, wickedly dark, ultra campy and lively work that gets in, wrecks up the place, and gets the hell out. And I love, love LOVED it for that.

As mentioned, the script was written by Jerry Stahl and cowritten and directed by Stephen Sayadian. Jerry has 21 writing credits for film and television with a large number of credits for shows like ‘ALF’, ‘Moonlighting’ and the various ‘CSI’ shows. He also of course has previous for writing ‘Nightdreams’ and ‘Cafe Flesh’ and he’s currently in preproduction on a new film called ‘Happy Mutant Baby Pills’ which I VERY much wish him luck on!

Stephen meanwhile has 6 writing credits Including ‘Nightdreams’ and ‘Cafe Flesh’ alongside a two part video series called ‘Party Doll A Go-Go!’ which sounds…fascinating. He also has 9 directing credits, including the official Nightdreams sequels, with his last credits being in 1993 for another 2 part video series called ‘Untamed Cowgirls of the wild west’…make of that what you will.

And on the direction front, again. I have VERY little to complain about. The stylistic choice to realise this script as some kind of bizarre combination of 1920’s german expressionist cinema by way of the pop art/new wave movement is an honestly inspired choice, some would say garish, I say unique, distinct and quite wonderful. For the most part all facets of the crew are working in near perfect harmony. Theres a couple of wobbles here and there (which I put more down to the time the film was made in than anything else) just moments where the occasional effect shot doesnt *quite* land as intended, the odd lighting choice that seems a little flat profile, the very rare moment or two where the choice to shoot things in a black void makes things feel a bit cheap rather than mysterious.

But quite honestly, these incidents are VERY few and far between and, for the most part, this is a hyperstylish, distinct vision that Sayandian has brought to the table. In many ways I wish i’d seen this film sooner, as when I used to make films way back in the mists of time. While totally unaware, this film was perfectly capturing the style I aspired to achieve myself (I was a weird filmmaker). I feel like I have to make up for lost time at this point quite honestly.

Direction of the cast, in my opinion at least, is absolutely spot on as well. The performances here are all playing to Massively over the top and melodramatic styles. Its done intentionally and it’s clear that Stephen had a very distinct vision of what he wanted and, according to the cast at least, he communicated that very effectively and spent a lot of time with the cast putting in rehearsal time to make sure they knew the EXACT tone of what he wanted and how he could get them to play that way. They’re lively, animate and utilise the fabulously designed set spaces with absolute relish. You can almost always tell when a cast had fun on a shoot, and thats DEFINITELY the vibe present here.

Same goes for the cine, with a hyper distinctive set design and very little in the way of background sets to worry about, this thing hyperfocusses on it’s use of colour and composition delivering a mighty punch that absolutely floored me honestly. pastel Yellows, Pinks, greens and blues seem to be the main flavours of the day here and they’re incorporated into everything from door frames to clothing to floor tiles. It’s what gives the film that ‘New wave’ edge that really helps push it above and beyond a more muted colour profile.

Composition is outrageous and explorative, this film absolutely isnt afraid to experiment and across the runtime we have TONS of interesting uses of composition, coloured chiascuro lighting and other strange and interesting attempts. When combined with the set spaces the results are absolutely a cut above the rest for the era in my opinion. With modernised twists on older cinematography from the expressionist era. This things frankly gorgeous and could quite easily play in a gallery with no qualms or questioning. I sincerely enjoyed the visual tone and vibe and I really think it’s probably one of the nicest looking ‘art’ movies i’ve seen in at least 4 or 5 years.

Performance wise, this is astounding. We have a hyper manic energy from our cast, who are FULLY committed to the various deranged acts they get up to across the runtime. Theres in some ways a very feint ‘John Waters’ quality to the performances here and I had SO much time for this hammy, overly dramatic and at times border aggressive setup. Madeleine Reynal ASTOUNDS as Caligari, giving a very cold and calculated performance with an almost pantomime edge. Considering this was her breakthrough role after a chance audition she wasnt even 100% set on attending, AND that initially the team didnt think she’d be a good fit. I think she absolutely blew the competition out of the water here, she’s brilliant.

Equal praise has to go to Laura Albert as Eleanor. Who gets to play SO many different styles within her character, from traumatised to hypersexual to a vicious killer. Her dedication to the performance is absolutely top notch, her delivery is astounding, her physicality excellent and shes easily one of the most memorable performances i’ve seen in as long time. As is John Durbin as Gus Pratt the cannibal serial killer. He really has that ‘John Waters’ edge with his performance and brings a fantastic extra layer of campy goodness to the show that only further cemented this films excellence to me.

The rest of the cast do a fine enough job of setting tone and atmosphere, they’re animate enough, if I was being constructive, it maybe would have been nice to see more of Caligaris other inmates. As beyond Eleanour and Gus, the only other inmates we see are given really basic issues. Like one woman who’s been conditioned to only say the word ‘Chinchilla’ or, theres a scene where Ramona talks to another inmate who’s conditioning seems to be that she wears a straight jacket and talks about beans and thats about it. A little more diversity and thought into the inmates conditions probably could have produced more lively results, as it stands they came across as a little bit fillery.

And finally, the soundtrack! And good golly miss molly this things awesome, its a jazzy, synthy, bluesy type arrangement. It sounds awesome. Suits the tone of the film perfectly and I really want it on vinyl. They don’t overuse the scoring, it comes in whenever it needs to and the sound design on this thing is equal measures disgusting as it is brilliant. I had a LOT of time for this thing on the sound front quite honestly.

Dr. Caligari to this day hasnt had a UK release in any format from what I can see (happy to be corrected if you VHS collectors out there know of a UK release!) But in the US it was released on Video in 1990 by Shapiro Glickenhause Entertainment Corporation. It also apparently had a laserdisc release in December of that same year on the same label. But I cant find much in the way of information on that release. It seemingly skipped DVD (though many a bootleg release is floating around on Ebay) until finally in 2022 Mondo Macarbro announced that it was releasing Caligari uncut and in both its original and cropped aspect ratio for 4k and Bluray.

And I’ve got to say this package is BRILLIANT. It comes with a slip cover, with the case itself containing the original theatrical poster art, the 4k presentation looks really solid, colourful and sharp. But then, equally so does the bluray release, though i’d say this was more, a testimony to fantastic Bluray restoration compression advancement than a lower quality 4k mastering. The DVD menus are stylised in line with the films poster and opening titles, which was a nice touch and extras (while a little bit thin on the ground) were VERY informative. You have a half hour interview with Stephen Sayadian alongside interviews with Jerry Stahl, Madeline reynal, Laura albert and John Durbin alongside a remastered version of the films original theatrical trailer. Theres commentaries too and a nice chunky booklet to boot including essays on the film. The only thing missing from this release that really would have made it faultless for me is a solid making of. But otherwise? This is a damn fine release in all honesty.

I think i’ve driven my point home hard enough by this point, I REALLY loved this film. It’s not *quite* an all time favourite at this point. But give it time and I could certainly see it heading that way. With a ridiculous and manic script, bizarre direction and hyper styalized, ultra creative cine. Performances that could give you a contact high and a DAMN fine soundtrack. I can only wholeheartedly recommend ‘Dr. Caligari’ to ANYONE with a passing interest in new wave art house cinema. Its an absolute two man cinematic revolution and I really hope it’s recent 4k re-release helps inspire people to take more creative risks with their own film making endeavours.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dr-caligari/1/

1989’s “The Phantom of the Mall: Erics Revenge” is a bit of a tepid oddity of the late 80s slasher genre. It’s what i’d affectionately refer to as a “Grayzone” film due to the fact that it’s kind of stuck in the middle of the slasher genre quality wise, too good to really be considered a bad or poor offering, not good ENOUGH to really be memorable or to have cut through to the social consciousness. It’s one of those movies that, up until recently had fallen through the cracks in terms of memorability. But; with it’s recent resurfacing by Arrow Video in 2022 I figured now would be a decent enough time to take a look at this thing to see exactly WHY it kind of ‘failed to launch’.

The film follows Melody, a young bright and hopeful woman looking to enter the working world for the first time. And in the opening moments of the film we get the good news that she’s been offered a job as a waitress in the food court of a brand new mall thats been built in the town of Midwood. A short time after being introduced to Melody, we see the owner of the mall and the towns mayor holding a ‘grand opening’ event for the press in which a local photographer called Peter spots Melody in the crowd and almost immediately becomes smitten by her.

Peter catches up to Melody shortly after the opening ceremony has been completed and it’s revealed the pair actually kind of know each other, as Melody is the survivor of a brutal and mysterious house fire in which her partner Eric and Eric’s parents were supposedly burnt to death. The plot twist? Erics house used to stand on the foundations that the mall now stands on and Erics family refused to sell up to the mall owner in order to allow the malls construction…so their mysterious case of arson was a little TOO convenient to go unnoticed…But! The case was hushed up, wasnt investigated properly and instead the house was torn down and the mall was put up in it’s place.

But theres one more thing I forgot to mention, Y’see Eric isnt dead. Eric is alive and well and living in the walls and basement of the mall, hideously burnt and seeking revenge on assholes and anyone who may have wronged him. At first it starts with a repair guy who Eric feeds into a fan he’s repairing. But this quickly expands, as a security guard is sent down to the basement to try and identify a disturbance, only to be taken out by a forklift truck and a large amount of electricity.

Around this time we’re also introduced to minor characters Buzz and Suzie, Buzz runs the ice cream parlour in the mall and is friends with both Melody and Peter and Suzie is Melodies friend and basically seems to only be present here to have someone Melody can do the whole “Boys are CUTE!” schtick with intercut with occasionally she throws narrative points at Peter and Melody in order to progress the narrative.

Anyway, after her first day on the job Melody starts to head home, but a series of bizarre circumstances occur, Firstly; in her work locker someones left a bouquet of orchids…which were flowers that only Eric would ever buy for her, and later that night when she heads out to her car, she finds a gift wrapped package on the passenger seat which turns out to be a blue dress that Melody had REALLY liked and wanted to buy in the mall that day, but it was too expensive. While confused, she tries to shrug it off and leave, but her car wont start. She steps out to see if she can find out what the problem is, and almost immediately gets attacked by a mugger. This is short lived however as, off in the distance a mysterious masked man shoots our mugger with a crossbow before disappearing.

The Mayor, who was just passing by, offers to take Melody home after hearing her story and after a erotically charged nightmare, its the next day and Melody heads back in for her next shift. Its here that it’s revealed that a large amount of stock from the mall has mysteriously gone missing, AND that the mall owner has a son whos a little shit who keeps harassing the female employees, doing skateboards and robbing the place. Despite his Dad banning him, he cares not one fuck and continues acting the dickhead.

And really, its here that we end up getting the main thrust of the movie underway, as the owner of the mall hires in a guy he knows called “Christopher” to fill in for the security guard who got fork’d. And within minutes of his hiring, Peter spots him, realises somethings off about him, takes his picture to show Melody and inadvertently ends up in a mad pursuit across the mall trying to get away from the guard who wants his camera. Non of this particularly matters mind, because it’s pretty much made perfectly clear from the off that Christopher is the guy who burned down Erics house, a fact that Melody and Peter almost immediately figure out and Eric (who’s now using the malls CCTV to spy on Melody) is also slowly figuring out.

And what follows is a…well a fairly middle of the road slasher thriller. As Melody, Peter and Christopher butt heads on multiple occasions and Eric continues to pick off the assholish inhabitants of the mall, Will Melody realise who the “Phantom of the mall” really is!? Will Christopher take Peter and Melody out of the picture! And How did Eric get a full couch and punching bag down to his evil sewer layer, but he didnt find the time to at least get a few decent lights and some nice wallpaper down there? Hell even a touch up with some paint probably wouldnt have hurt…Oh well, all this and more will be answered if you take a chance on “Phantom of the Mall: Erics Revenge”

And the problems with this movie pretty much start at the top and work all the way down through this thing, and I need to make it clear from the off that I didnt hate this thing, I thought it had a few decent moments and more than held up as a watchable picture. It just didnt do anything more than that and as such its really a bit underwhelming as a standalone feature.

Almost immediatley theres confusion in this thing because of the title of the film. “Phantom of the Mall: Erics Revenge” sounds like a sequel. And I wouldnt begrudge an audience for thinking this was a sequel because subtitles within movie titles generally denote that this isnt the first entry in a series, with only a handful of exceptions. So audiences looking to check this out in 1989 may have well been within their rights to pass this thing by because, to someone who HASNT seen it, the first thought they may well have had is “Well…I havent seen ‘Phantom of the Mall’ so, why would I check out a sequel where eric (whoever he is) gets his revenge?”

This is before we even GET to the movie itself. Of which, the script is SO slow going. The biggest problem that it has is simply that there isnt enough plot beats or complications to sustain the movie across its full runtime. We have 2 VERY simple plots (Melody, Peter and Chris as one and the mystery of Eric as the other) and thats all there is for 90 minutes…sometimes LONGER depending on what cut you choose to watch. Everything happens very bluntly with no scope for overlapping subplots, more complex narratives or character progression. The film has the ILLUSION of a lot of stuff going on, but in reality almost everything outside of the two plots going on that I mentioned earlier, is filler. The Mall owner and his son are filler, suzie and Buzz are filler, the mayor is filler, the security guards are VERY briefly important to the plot (for literally 5 minutes) and then they become filler for the rest of the runtime.

And that wouldnt be such a bad thing if it wasnt all so one note for the entire runtime! Honestly while there is 3 acts in this thing, theres no sense of growth, ramping up or ramping down. It’s like a low drone that runs the whole films length, never changing pitch or volume, just humming away at the exact same level, and thats beyond frustrating given theres SO much scope to work with.

They could have introduced Eric a bit slower rather than just dumping him in right at the beginning as a way to help build tension as to whether it really WAS him hiding out in the mall, they could have made Melody and the mall owners relationship a bit more fractured to create a sense of tension at the fact Melody is almost certain the mall owner was involved in Erics house burning down, they could have more heavily played up the will they/wont they relationship of Melody and Peter, they could have given Buzz something more to do than just be a prat for most of the runtime. Security could have had more dealings with Eric rather than one getting bumped off and another one briefly highlighting a large number of thefts from the store and thats it.

They could have made Eric and Peter have a bit more of a ding dong over Melody to help drive that love triangle angle. They could have involved the mayor a little bit more, rather than just making her this weird sub character who only seems to turn up to rescue the characters from immediate death inadvertently, then refuse to acknowledge that there was ever a problem to begin with.

I mean, those are just examples off the top of my head without really even that much thought put into it. But the fact that SO LITTLE of the script actually ties together in a meaningful way, is a beyond dissapointing situation and that lack of detail gives way to SO much padding and over explanation of really basic plot points, that honestly? I found it astonishing that I could go on my phone and look up information about the film, WHILE WATCHING THE FILM and then jump back in to find that NOTHING had happened. It feels like they mustered up 30 minutes of story and stretched that out with overly long dialogue and Paulie Shore by an additional 60 minutes. Which made for a sluggish watch and very little else.

Topping it all off, the dialogue was fairly uninteresting too, we have an unintentional, almost woozy/dreamlike quality to the writing which feels quite unusual. Our characters basically warble through ultra basic and overly wordy dialogue thats absolutely NOT written with the audience in mind. Its elongated, frustrating and most importantly…dull. It tells the story, it gets the job done. But you have here the perfect opportunity to modernise the phantom of the opera plotline and maybe even have some fun with it, and the film makers just…dont really,barring a few black comedy moments…though I think I may know the reason as to exactly why this wound up the way it did.

The script was written by Scott Schneid, Frederick R. Ulrich, Robert King and Tony Michaelman. Two pitched out the story and 2 wrote the screenplay, and to say it was a bit of a mixed ability writers room on this one would be a bit of an understatement. Robert probably has the most experience in scriptwriting here with 23 writing credits to his name including “Bloodfist”, “The Nest” and “Dragonfire” but after this things quickly go downhill, with Tony and Scott having 7 and 4 writing credits between them, with there best known works probably being some contributions to the TV series version of “Friday the 13th” and “The Rugrats”. And this is Fredericks only writing credit…so, to me? Its no surprise that 4 mixed ability writers produced a script thats slow, uneven and inconsistent tonally.

The film was directed by Richard Friedman, who has 31 directing credits spanning a 40 year career and some pretty decent hitters within the 80s horror genre including “Scared Stiff”, “Doom Asylum” and TV credits including “Tales from the Darkside” and “Lois & Clarke the new adventures of superman”

Which means it should come as no surprise to find out that the direction for this movie is probably it’s strongest overall asset, given this was a lower budgeted feature, it more than cuts the mustard as a studio grade production, I should stress that for 1989, it isnt pushing any envelopes. But its doing what it needs to competently, and in places it does go above and beyond. Friedman has been able to successfully coral the crew into working fairly harmoniously on this and honestly, there isnt much more to say on that front, other than “they did a good job, and it looks fine”.

It’s stylish and largely competent due in no small part to the fact that the mall they used for filming is honestly just a really unique and interesting location AND it has had previous exposure in the horror genre being the same location they shot “Chopping Mall” at. I gues what im getting at ultimately is, while I don’t think i’d necessarily be able to IMMEDIATELY identify this as Friedmans work, I’ll settle for competent to good over incompetent anyday.

As for the cine? Well thats a bit more of a mixed bag in my opinion. About 50% of it is fairly passable, Studio grade standard once again, nothing that’ll set my socks on fire, but not bad by any stretch. 25% of it is poor by my reckoning with badly blocked shots, weird framing or attempts at experimentation that just didnt quite land properly, which is a shame. But as always; I’ll admire a film that tries, than one thats purely mediocre. And I’d say the remaining 25% was actually a pretty above board job, with the fiery reenactment of Erics parents house catching fire, Melodys nightmare sequences and the grand finale with Eric in the mall being definite highlights that more than created a spectacle and looked great doing so!

Theres a good range of colour use throughout whether its going for a warmer tone in the nightmare/fire sequences to really drive home the heat of the scene, or even small things like underlighting in the arcade sequence to give everything a greenish tint, its small touches like that that can really take a production to the next level and I appreciated that. They even do a decent job with the chiascuro throughout, giving Eric a wonderfully mysterious and malevolent presence that this kind of film absolutely needed!

Unfortunately; there is ONE thing that lets this film down and thats the editing. It doesnt feel finished. Or rather, it feels like an editor got the film so far and then that editor got fired and they got an amateur in to finish the film. Cuts sometimes are razor and really help to keep this thing chuntering along, even when it’s desperately trying to work against a fast paced edit. But then, there are sequences where the cuts are either WAY too slow or WAY to early which really effects the pacing, with probably the most egregious instance being a moment at the very beginning of the film where for a good couple of seconds you can see an instance where the film originally had an alternative opening shot which hasnt been completely removed from the theatrical cut.

Now in fairness there are multiple edits of this film floating around, a shorter version that had alternate sequences, new scenes and more formed the “TV edit”, theres the theatrical cut, and in recent times a version that merged the TV and theatrical edits together to create and extended cut have also done the rounds. But thats no excuse for why, when they were cutting the MAIN THEATRICAL RELEASE. That they’d use a print with technical issues like that inherent on it. It’s…weird to say the least.

Performance wise, its mixed to poor, up front I now know why the world hates Paulie Shore. Buzz is largely pointless here, he’s bad comic relief and Shore absolutely does not help matters by somehow making an irritating character so much worse. Kari Whitman as Melody is fine enough for a leading lady, I think she has a decent range here and even though she does come across as a bit spaced from time to time. I think overall she nails the character with enough sincerity that I was more than happy to spend the runtime with her, Rob Estes as Peter is innoffensive, he has a bit of a flicker behind the eyes to his character which just puts him above “Balloon with a smiley face drawn on it” in terms of performance, I liked him. I thought he did a good turn in this and he seems to have been enjoying himself throughout.

My most enjoyed character in this has got to be Gregory Scott Cummins as the psycho mall cop goon “Chirstopher” it genuinely caught me off guard when I first saw him on screen because he’s INSTANTLY recognisable as Macs Dad from “Its always sunny in Philadelphia” which made his character here TEN TIMES BETTER. I think he plays slightly unhinged really well, i’ve seen him do this type of role a few times, but I think here, he’s clearly having fun and it reflects in a genuinely decent performance that really won me over.

Ironically; the performance I was least impressed with was Derek Rydall as Eric. Very mild spoilers here, but given how much build up there was to Eric as a character, his backstory, and how he seems to be a bit nuanced. I was genuinely expecting his big reunion with Melody at the end to be something a bit more complicated than what ultimately happened. I was expecting Melody to maybe have to battle with her feelings for the man she loved or the man she is in love with. I was expecting a complex and deep performance from Derek as he himself deals with the reality that he’s been left behind, that Melody has moved on and how he finds his place in things.

But no. Instead we get a flat, dead behind the eyes (literally due to the prosthetics) performance thats 2d and amounts to little more than a dullened monotone delivery for half of his screen time, and Incel fodder for the second half. It was a disappointing reveal that in many ways would have been a lot better had they just kept him mute and had done with it.

The supporting cast are also underwhelming, best described as set dressing, they don’t really do much, theres the inkling of a character for some of them, but most of them are either TOO two dimensional and are just playing to stereotypes (the asshole punk kid, the evil mall owner, the untrusting mayor) OR they’re bland…SO bland like Suzies character, who gets one chance and one chance only to stand up for herself, but otherwise is just a sounding board for Melody. It was underwhelming to say the least.

Oh…and Ken Foree is in this…he doesnt do much…err…something something “Dawn of the dead” somethign something “Back to the mall”

AND FINALLY THE SOUNDTRACK! And this is probably the 2nd best thing to come from this movie outside of the direction. Its a fast paced, new wave punky score that absolutely packs a punch and doesnt disappoint, it reminded me a little bit of the “Return of the living dead” score. Not for how it sounds, but just for it being a movie that has almost its entire vibe established purely through the tone of the music they’ve chosen to play with. It’s a magnificent piece and I hope it gets a re-release sometime as i’d love to get my hands on it.

“Phantom of the Mall: Erics Revenge” was released on VHS as a rental tape in 1990 by Prism Distribution (later Prism Leisure). In the UK they chose the, probably wise decision to just release it as “Phantom of the Mall” though no doubt that has probably created temporary confusion with british film aficionados who SWEAR that “Phantom of the Mall” and “Phantom of the Mall: Erics Revenge” are TOTALLY different movies. Not helping matters at all the DVD release put out by Quantum Leap studios in 2001 flipped the titling on their release making the “Phantom of the mall” part REALLY small on the box and making “Erics Revenge” HUGE…ugh…still! Im delighted to say that everything pretty much got resolved in the end when, in 2022 Arrow Video released “Phantom of the Mall: Erics Revenge” as both a deluxe hard box and standard edition bluray.

I personally picked up the limited edition release, and with it, you get a lovely hard box display, a booklet with essays about the films history, a mini poster, some lobby cards and a 2 disc set with the first disc containing the theatrical cut and raft of extra features, and the second disc containing the TV and extended cuts of the film. I’ve seen all three cuts now and I think I like the theatrical and TV edits equally.

I paid something in the region of £25-£35 when this was available on preorder for the deluxe edition. And while it does look really nice, If I could go back, cancel the order, wait 6 months and grab the standard edition for a tenner. I absolutely would have preferred to do that. Its a gorgeous set with a keen eye to attention to detail…but I didnt enjoy the film enough to really benefit from the luxury version.

Ultimately; I came away from Phantom of the mall just a bit non plussed. While it had moments that I absolutely loved, there was a LOT of stuffing here and because the pacing wasnt great alongside other issues i’ve mentioned. I genuinely came away from the thing feeling like I was glad that I had seen it, but that it absolutely wasn’t essential viewing. If your big on your slasher movies with a slight comedic tinge, i’d absolutely recommend this one, I think you’ll really get into it.

Equally if you’ve seen pretty much every slasher the 80s has to offer 10 times each and want a change of pace, again. This could be for you its dropped in price quite significantly at this point, and for what it currently goes for, i’d say it was worth the punt. But if your just getting into the slasher genre, or your picky with your horrors. I’d maybe give this one a wide birth. It’s not bad…but theres a LOT better out there.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/phantom-of-the-mall-erics-revenge/1/

With a title like “The Amazing Mr. No Legs” (Sometimes known as just “Mr. No Legs” and SOMETIMES known by the much MUCH less interesting title of “Gun Fighter”) You’d think this 1978 grimey cop thriller would be something of a standout feature. Hell, one look at the poster was all it really took to sell me on the concept, which was why when “Massacre Video” had a sale in the middle of last year, I jumped at the chance to nab a copy. I was envisioning a kind of “Wheelchair bound Death Wish” for lack of a better explanation with our titular “Mr No Legs” blowing people out of 7th story windows now, and asking questions later! Unfortunately; this was not to be the case. And what we have here is instead an, at times impressive, but ultimately slow going watch that didnt quite light my fire.

The film opens in the basement of an abandoned factory thats currently being occupied by a criminal organisation who primarily deal in drug trafficking led by a man named Lou. In the opening of the film we see members of this gang hiding pills and powder inside vegetables as a way to get them to their intended market, and a short time after that we cut to the docklands to see the gang engaging with some dock workers about taking on some new ‘product’ Unfortunatley for the gang, the police are already in on the case and are running surveilance on them. As soon as the deal is complete the cops rush the place and take several people into custody.

Later that night, another deal is taking place and it’s here where we’re introduced to the titular “Mr. No Legs”, who doesnt much care for the dealers attitudes and blows them away with his customised wheelchair with arm mounted shotguns. With the dealers gone, No Legs and his assistant clear out of the place before the cops turn up, heading to a house party wherein Lou and No Legs discuss the days busts and murders and Lou warns him that things are starting to get a little sloppy, and that, if No Legs wants to keep his position within the business, he’ll try and stay as sharp as possible.

The busts prompt Lou to move some of his product, as he believes the cops may know about their affairs. So he gets two of his men to pack a van up and move the gear to a new location. After this is done we pick up with one of the movers, who goes by the name of Ken. Kens been taking a small amount of the drugs himself to sell to friends and family in order to pay his way through college, and at this point he’s renting a place with his *fairly* new girlfriend Tina. On returning home after the move however, Ken is confronted by Tina who had asked Ken to stop using and dealing as shes found ‘paraphernalia’.

Ken tries to play it down, but this is really the final straw for Tina who tells him shes leaving before going to grab her things. A small scuffle ensues and Ken accidentally pushes Tina, who falls over, hits her head on a counter top and knocks a TV onto her head, killing her. Ken freaks out a bit and puts a call in to Mr. No Legs, and him and an assistant turn up to Kens apartment and calmly help to frame up Tinas body to make it look like she took a drug overdose. Once they get that sorted however, No Legs tells Ken that he’s now a problem as a witness, so they murder him too and hide his body.

This effectively kickstarts the films main thrust, as it turns out that Tinas brother is a cop who works in surveillance. When the bodies reach the morgue, the chief calls in a fellow cop who knew Tina called Chuck, who gives a positive ID on the body. He tells Chuck to head to the local college to get all of Tina’s belongings while the chief will contact her brother Andy to get him down to the morgue to identify her as a family member. Andy is…well I wont say distraught…thats what he’s aiming for…but hes not THAT good of an actor…so border comic whimpering is about as good as we get, before it hard cuts to later that night with Andy in a bar getting wasted and mourning. He heads home and his girlfriend/partner looks after him for a bit.

The next day, the chief pulls Chuck into his office and tells him that he’s being moved into a surveilence role alongside Andy, they’re to monitor Lou’s drug buisness with the aim of finding a link between them and the murder of Tina, and almost immediately Chuck finds a letter in Tinas college stuff with a forwarded address from the east side of town, so he heads out to see where that leads. On arriving at the address, he meets the landlady for the property who lets chuck check the place out. Almost immediately, they discover foul play in the form of blood on the floor and the broken TV. This is also backed up by the coroner’s report that suggests that Tina DID have drugs in her system, but that they’d been put there over an hour after all her organs had stopped functioning.

While this is going on, No Legs receives a phone call from Lou asking about the whereabouts of Ken, No Legs tells him that Ken’s dead and Lou doesnt take it well, once again accusing No Legs of getting sloppy. He tells No Legs that theres a leak on his patch and to find out who’s spreading info. No Legs hangs up and heads to a local dive bar to do some dealing and blow off some steam, but while in there some blue collar racist trailer trash starts a fight with a black girl and the whole bar erupts into a blood bath. By chance, at this exact moment, the cops have JUST started trailing No Legs and one of them rushes into the bar to see what the commotion is, only to immediately end up having to take part in the free for all. No Legs spots the cops, stabs a guy and races out of the building to get away, while Andy more or less takes out half of the bar single handedly and is eventually helped out of the place by Chuck.

Some time later Chuck calls Andy to tell him they need to get down to the morgue ASAP as they’ve found Kens body, and they need someone to identify him. But at almost the exact same time, No Legs gets a call to tell him that Kens bodies been found, so he sends two guys dressed as paramedics down to the morgue to try and steal the body back before it can be ID’d. Naturally the second they arrive at the hospital, the coronor refuses to allow them to take the body without family or police ID. So they lock the coroner in the freezer and try to take it anyway. Unfortunately for them, the second they DO try, then Andy and Chuck turn up, a fight breaks out and our goons flee in the ambulance failing to take the body. Andy and Chuck check the stiff out and Andy confirms that he’s seen the guy before as he’s been dating Tina, and because the goons were Lou’s guys, they now have a positive link between Lous organisation and the murders of Ken and Tina.

Later that night AGAIN by sheer coincidence, Andy goes for a drink at a quieter bar, and non other than No Legs and one of his assistants are there drinking, the guys almost immediately recognise one another and a brawl breaks out in which No legs uses ninja stars and his shotguns, while his assistant weilds something approaching a claymore! Andy flees the bar, and hops in his car while the assistant slashes at the bodywork. Andy manages to flee and is, again (IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT) met by Chuck, who basically tries to get him back on the level, this incident basically puts No Legs on day and night surveillance as a result..

News reaches Lou about what happened and he decides finally that No Legs is a liability who needs to be taken out of the picture. And with that, we enter our final act, as the cops ramp up monitoring and the walls start to close in on No Legs, will the cops catch Lou!? Will No Legs survive a whacking order!? And, Will this film have a car chase!? It shows a car crashing into something on the poster…so I hope theres a car chase! All this and more WILL be answered, if you check out “The Amazing Mr. No Legs.”

And I really cant hide my exasperation about this film really, theres some stuff that I feel works really well here and is notable for the world of exploitation cinema. But for every good point theres something mixed to poor neutralising it.

From the off, probably my biggest gripe with the whole thing is the total misuse of Mr. No Legs. Lets make no mistake here, the guys being marketed as the star of the film, as the main USP, he’s whats putting bums on seats, So much so that they spin the promotional material to make it sound like it’s “The Cops Vs No Legs” AND to the point that they don’t even bother marketing, arguably THE main cop in the film. Andy is totally missing from the promotional material and instead Chuck (who’s like…either joint 3rd or 4th main character in terms of pecking order) gets a poster spot. By marketing this film as being pretty much the Mr. No Legs show, they’ve almost guarenteed to set themselves up to dissapoint the audience because, thats not really tonally how this film works.

No Legs here, is to this film what Jaws or Oddjob was to their respective bond films. They’re secondary characters who are distinct and absolutely memorable. But if they’d called “The Spy Who Loved Me”, “Mr Jaws Bites Back” you’d be a bit dissapointed when he only turns up like…4 or 5 times across the entire runtime and WASNT the actual drive of the film.

Because of this it automatically threw me off the movie because, had No Legs been a nice reveal for the film. I’d have probably been much more charitable towards it, but slapping him with the “main character” moniker almost immediately felt like a betrayal on the part of the film makers which instantly made me less receptive to wanting to be kind to this thing. A lesson there to you aspiring film maker that lies will make you a quick buck, but Honesty WILL get you further.

In terms of the script, this is fine…like, it didnt fully win me over plot wise, but i’ve seen worse exploitation fodder in terms of story, style and tone. To be completely honest, the film it reminded me most of while watching was “Death Force” just in terms of what it was trying to do and how it was going about things narrative wise. Given how heavily it leans on it’s exploitation elements to try and sell the movie, Mr No Legs isnt in the film nearly as much as he could be, and doesnt really get anything fun or interesting to do, barring the bar fight scene which, even then, isnt integral to the plot, it seemingly just exists because the writers looked at what they’d done so far and went “Oh Shit…the films called “Mr No Legs” and not only does he only turn up to talk mundane bollocks for the first 40ish minutes…but NOTHING outside of a couple of kills in the first 10 minutes ACTUALLY happens in this film at all…we need something to wake the audience up from the coma they’re probably in by this point.

And thats a pretty good summary for how this film plays out honestly, what we have is 3 lumpy acts, that are badly paced, where, because most of the budget seemingly went on the effects shots and the 3rd act, we only have the scope and budget left to pay for our characters to stand in locations and spew exposition at us with very little else to actually show for itself. Tonally, the thing IS out and out exploitation, theres a little racism and ablism thrown into the mix here and there, but that sleazy attitude that can only come from this genre between ‘65 and ‘85 is alive and well here and is probably the scripts saving grace honestly, as…if it wasnt for the bleakness of the picture and the questionably grimey dialogue, this would be a very VERY dull movie.

However, even that comes with a caveat because, with the film ONLY trading in bleakness, or at best mild apathy. It means theres almost no nuance here, no contrast, nothing that really helps give the film that extra dimension that would help push it above and beyond just another film trying to grift a buck. ‘I Drink Your Blood’ is probably a decent example of exploitation tone done right, because you have a Rabies based horror film thats marketed as a ‘Health Picture’ to try and skirt the MPAA and while it IS absolutely bleak in its subject matter and regularly gets into grim and unpleasant terratory. It also has campy, over the top segments and even a moment or two of dark comedy and psychedelia to help offset that bleakness to create a bold and well rounded vision.

No Legs doesnt have that, it doesnt have the charisma or the attitude about it to have that added shading. It’s just one tone all the way through, and while that does still produce some nice moments, it means the film falls well short of what it potentially *could* have been and instead just kind of ends up a bit middle of the road.

Oh! And also, mild spoilers here, so…please skip to the next chapter if you don’t want the ending mildly ruined. But they DO indeed go all out in the 3rd act…but in the least engaging way possible. The film ends with a mild shootout (literally a 3-5 minute scene) which then leads INTO a 10 minute long car chase, that may not sound like a long time to you. But if you’ve ever sat through a rather uninspired car chase scene, you’ll know that, unless they can keep it fresh? It can be an arse numb-er make no mistake. And here? Its LOOOOOOOOOOONG. Im not a big fan of extended car chase scenes, in the same way im not a big fan of extended martial arts fight sequences when they’re not constantly growing in scale or energy. Just watching two people mildly slap each other back and forth for 10-15 minutes (occasionally bringing in and removing weapons from the equation) is terminally dull to me. And the same can be said for car chases.

You’ve seen one police car flip over and catch fire, you’ve seen them all. If they can keep the chase interesting, add some suspense, shake up the cine, keep ramping up the stakes with more stunts and explosions, then sure…I’ll keep watching to see how crazy it gets. But here? Theres about 8 minutes of just…cars driving at speed down long stretches of highway, often in locked off mid wide and wide shots, interspersed every 3 minutes or so with a cop car blowing up. The scene ends with a rather impressive crash involving a large block of ice. But it’s just not enough to keep me engaged, and by about the 5 minute mark into this chase, I ended up on my phone bcause I knew this thing wasnt ending anytime soon and I knew it wasnt going to improve much beyond what i’d already seen by this point. It was a nice idea, just executed in arguably one of the dullest ways imaginable.

The end result? Was a script that to me was a slow and at times hard going picture, that did have a few interesting moments dotted throughout, but wasnt nearly interesting or entertaining enough to completely hold me for the full runtime. It had good intentions in the 3rd act that it couldnt deliver on and a cast of characters that were a bit too “One note” to ever really truely be memorable. No Legs is the best part of this film and he does surprisingly little all things considered.

The script was written by Jack Cowden, he has 8 writing credits and almost all of them are for movies involving “Flipper” the dolphin or are flipper adjacent (my guess is the man cant write for movies involving legs). The film was directed by Ricou Browning. Who many here will probably recognise as the guy who did all the underwater work while dressed as the Gillman for all 3 of the “Creature from the black lagoon” movies. He has 7 directing credits, mainly for animal based movies such as “Flipper” and “Gentle Ben”. “Mr. No Legs” was his final directing credit and Unfortunately he passed away in 2023 at the age of 93

On the direction front, its all a bit hectic. I’ve mentioned earlier that this film looks and feels like a very generic example of the grindhouse exploitation genre, and the notable thing about grindhouse exploitation cinema is that its often incredibly cheap looking (with notable exception) grimey, messy and often not really grounded in the standard rules of film production. And thats probably the best way to describe this film. While some of the locations used are impressive and there are moments in the 3rd act where its clear a budget was present. This doesnt feel like a particularly coherent production. THe lighting teams arnt really working with cine to get the best out of both of their fields. The cine and the cast don’t seem to be communicating much beyond basic framing and the director doesnt really seem to be pooling these crowds together in a way that could help take this film to the next level.

I cant even really say it’s inexperience because the guy had 6 directing credits prior to this across a 10-15 year window. Whether budget or apathy was the cause, I cant say, but we have a film that quite often doesnt really seem to know what its trying to say through its direction, and frequently fumbles what are actually quite easy lands, had it just had a bit more time, money and thought put in. It’s not ALL terrible, but theres just a whole lot of “That’ll do” being thrown around through this production, And if this channels showcased anything across the time i’ve been doing this, it’s that “That’ll Do” seldom actually does.

Direction of the cast isnt great either, again. Im not sure if it was because of budgetary concerns around having to do reshoots or just an unconfident director at the helm. But we’re in that awful territory of cast members largely staying bolted in place when on screen, rarely if ever working with their set space, using props minimally and only as instructed, and failing to really set things alight. It doesnt help either that I think most of the performers in this just arnt very good…but the lack of a careful and considered hand in terms of trying to utilise their space a bit better has only compounded the issue even further. Its a quite dry viewing experience all things considered.

As for the cine? It’s drab. Its grimey late 70s seediness shot on heavy grain film stock using basic shot types with maybe a few cutaways and AT BEST a handful of instances of “Super slow motion” during some of the action scenes for added emphasis. Composition is considered, but sometimes forgotten, theres not really any attempts at blocking shots, it’s usually just a case of the planets aligning correctly by chance that anything good happens rather than the directors intervention. Everything kind of has a blueish/greenish tint to it and I cant decide if thats just print damage or an attempt at colour usage. But, in either case its distracting more than it is engaging and the sequences aren’t exactly ‘well’ cut together. Its by no means the WORST i’ve ever seen on the editing front…at least they *largely* cut when they’re supposed to, but this could have absolutely been a much tighter production than we ended up with, instead, it just comes across as a terribly basic production…which again, is very much the nature of ‘Grindhouse Exploitation’ cinema…it’s just not an example of GOOD grindhouse exploitation cinema.

Performance wise, its a wash out, theres one…maybe two decent performances here in the form of Ted Vollrath as Mr No Legs a double amputee who fought in the korean war who ended up opening his own martial arts studio and advocating for the rights, health and wellbeing of other disabled actors. Who here, despite not really getting to show us too much of his martial artistry IS decent enough to carry the film through some of its duller times and does give the film some of it’s better moments. The other would be Rance Howard (father of Clint and Ron Howard) as Lou, who decides to play his role as the king pin of an international drugs cartel as muted. Which I think was probably the best angle to approach this from and does lead to some of the more decent sequences as he can be menacing without having to be overly dramatic. I think he does a fine job and again, helps just about keep the film afloat in places where it would have otherwise sunk.

The rest of the cast though…arrre not so great. With Richard Jaeckel and Ron Slinker as Chuck and Andy giving VERY dry performances that are a bit stilted and awkward honestly, they can just about do ‘cool action cop’ (which they don’t get to do very much here unfortunately) but anything outside of that is beyond there range it seems. Andy mourning Tinas death has GOT to be one of the least believable performances i’ve seen this season and is really kind of ‘the bar’ with which almost all the other performances chalk up to. Noone here really has a strong screen presence, the ability to read their lines with any aspect of beliveability and, for the most part, It borders on the comedic. Which is a shame, because i’d have enjoyed an infamous performance almost as much as a good one. As it stands I just kind of shrugged my way through this one.

And finally; the soundtrack! Library funk! And LOTS of it! They actually got a band in to do most of the score here, they’re called “Mercy” they play live in the film…and they sound like a band that makes library tracks. It’s not particularly memorable, but it more than defines the film as a 70s flick and it’s a clean score thats used as much as its needed to be. I cant really fault it, but I cant say its standout…it’s just kind of…there. What IS an issue on the audio front however is the ADR, which is atrocious. NO attempt has been made here to blend the redubbed audio in with the onset stuff, meaning it will randomly cut from an airey and open sounding on location recording to an air tight studio dub and back again frequently across the runtime. I can also assume they didnt get decent quality atmos tracks while recording the on location audio because a lot of the sequences are incredibly hissy and annoying. I appreciate they didnt really have a lot to work with for the remaster on this one (more on that shortly) but yehhh…this thing sounds very wobbly all things considered.

“The Amazing Mr. No Legs” was released to cinemas in 1978 and a VHS release followed in either 1979 or 1980 (I’ve received conflicting reports) by Temple Video. And from there the film fell into relative obscurity a few unofficial bootleg DVDs of the old VHS tape “Dumped on disc” being touted about through the 2000s in europe and the US, but it wasnt until 2020 when the film would finally receive a bluray release with some limited extras courtesy of Massacre Video. And it’s here really that a major problem was identified. While ‘Massacre’ were looking for the apropriate elements in order to restore the film, they discovered quite quickly that there wasnt really a tremendous amount of the fim left to restore. All of the original elements existed right up until the early 2010’s until they were destroyed by Hurracaine Sandy. They were able to source multiple 16mm US prints of the film, but they were all either damaged beyond use, decomposed due to vinegar syndrome or in various stages of mould/water damage making them unsuitable for use.

After much searching, they eventually stumbled on a 35mm french film print, it wasnt in immaculate condition, but it was (and at the time of recording, still IS) the best film source this movie has. A lot of footage was removed for the french release, So; where instances of that have occurred they’ve gone back to the old VHS release and basically pulled those scenes, upscaled them and reinserted them back into the movie…with mixed results. They’re very clear to state that this was a mixed quality patchwork effort aimed mainly at restoring the film to as ‘complete’ as possible in the highest possible quality. and…While I personally would say I feel it looks a little overly compressed to my eye and that would also explain some of the audio issues I experienced when watching this. I think they’ve done a tremendous job of restoring this thing.

Extras are a bit thin on the ground which is a shame, theres the option to watch the film both in it’s uncut VHS/Film print version, or just the 35mm french print as it was recovered. Theres a still gallery, a couple of trailers and a crap ton of ads for other ‘Massacre Videos’ releases, and thats about it. Which is a bit of a shame as I think a short documentary on the story behind how they located and restored the film would have been decent, and this is one of the few instances where I think a solid ‘Making of’ the movie might have really helped bring this one to life a bit more for me.

Ultimately, ‘The Amazing Mr. No Legs’ is a bit ‘all mouth and no trousers’ it has a few good elements of action and suspense dotted across it’s 90(ish) minute runtime. But ultimately; theres too little to really out and out make this stand out against any of the other exploitation flicks that tried and failed to launch around this time. At it’s current retail price of near $25 dollars, I cant recommend this one as I don’t feel theres enough here to justify it. But if you can score it for $10 dollars or less, your big into the exploitation genre or you have some buddies who enjoy a good cheesy movie and your looking for something to break in your evening. I’d say this was probably what your looking for. Its a shame really that a film that had the potential to be so much more interesting and crazy, has wound up being actually kind of generic and dull. Its absolutely an example of a bad movie, with good ideas that could be done better today if someone were to transplant it’s core ideas out and make an entirely new movie with them.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/mr-no-legs/1/

1990’s Syngenor presents us with, something of an oddity within the film world. Y’see, usually if a film is popular, makes a lot of money or a studio has SO much faith in the idea up front. It’ll be granted a sequel. Or maybe even some kind of extended life as a TV show (See: Ash Vs The Evil Dead or the recent “Chucky” Tv series) But when “Scared to Death” was released in 1980, it made money, but it didnt make ENOUGH money to get studios interested, it garnered SOMETHING in the way of public interest, but only about enough to render it a bit of a cult classic, and while studios DID have some interest in the idea of a “Scared to Death” sequel, non of them were willing to put the money up for it, or in the one instance where it actually COULD have happened in 1985. Creator of the first film William Malone was unfortunately tied to another project.

As such, because distribution for the film was handled by a relatively small company, they wernt able to really penetrate the home video market (itself awash with similar low budget features) and as such, the film kind of fell into relative obscurity. That is until the late 80’s when producer Jack F. Murphy managed to catch “Scared to Death” and pretty much instantly fell in love with the idea of the “Syngenor” (Synthetic Genetic Organism to you and me.) He really felt like the creatures could be used in so many more different and interesting ways and so he set up a meeting with William Malone to explore the possibility of producing a sequel and getting William on board to direct. Unfortunately William once again had his hands tied and couldnt free himself up to take the project on, but he gave Jack his full blessing to produce his own movie with the Syngenor and even offered to help reconstruct several costumes (And variants) as part of the process.

As time went on, Jack slowly began to get a little nervous about the project. He was concerned that the original movie was so low budget (compared to more modern features) and so obscure given its limited release, that they’d be shooting themselves in the foot in making a direct sequel to “Scared to death” because audiences probably wouldnt have seen the first one, probably COULDNT see the first one, and would be put off at the thought of jumping in on a 2nd entry in a potential franchise. SO! Jack decided to instead completely distance his film from the original, cutting ALL references to “Scared to Death” and making a completely NEW movie that just so happened to feature the Syngenor, more or less EXACTLY as they were in “Scared to Death”. How did it work out? Well…

The film follows Suzie. The Niece of an acclaimed scientific genius named Ethan who, up until recently was working for a big tech and weapons manufacturer called Norton Dynamics, Norton have a bit of a dirty secret. On there books is a project called “Operation Dark Skies” Which was an experiment to create the ultimate super soldier who was indestructible, needed minimal food and water, was super strong and agile, can reproduce Asexually every 24 hours, and could survive in extreme weather conditions. This creature, was the Syngenor. And as the film opens we see two swaggering blokey dickhead sorts leading some ladies of the night down into the basement of Norton Dynamics to show off all the cool weaponry and weird shit thats out of the public view in the hope of getting the ladies excited and possibly score themselves some *bouncy bouncy* in the process.

Unfortunately; while down in the basement one of the women spots a giant tankard and on looking inside she spots a Syngenor in Stasis, she’s terrified, but the guys try to settle her down…that is until the Syngenor breaks free of stasis and kills both the women AND one of the blokey cocks, before heading out of the building to presumably go on a bit of a ‘spree’. The only survivor being a business exec called “Dan” who promptly flees the scene.

We’re then formally introduced to Suzie, who’s caught a lift back to her uncles house with a guy who’s quite keen to be invited into the house for a coffee and a chance at something more than coffee. Suzies not keen however and politely declines before heading inside.
Out back in the garage, Ethan is working on a new chemical that…seemingly makes oranges explode…anyway; thats not important really because within moments of us being introduced to him, a Syngenor appears murders Ethan and lays an egg in the corner. Meanwhile, back in the house, Suzie gets in, realises that the powers been cut, wanders outside, finds her dying uncle who says something about “Watering the pod” before carking it. She then gets jumped by the Syngenor. Theres an extended chase scene through the house, but suzie manages to get away and heads over to the nearest police station.

Suzie stays at the station overnight, and in the morning she’s greeted by Leo, one of the lead officers, and a good friend of the family. Suzie explains that her uncle was seemingly murdered by something inhuman and Leo tries to dissuade her, before attempting to get her back to her house.

Meanwhile, back at Norton Dynamics a plucky upcoming journalist by the name of Nick has just wandered in, hoping to grab an interview with the companies CEO as part of a wider piece he’s doing on the company. The secretary there is a sucker for brown nosing and lets slip that a murder has happened on site in the last 24 hours, but just before Nick can get his scoop, Dan appears and escorts Nick off the property. Before leaving though, he manages to get one piece of information, that the day before the murder, our top scientist ‘Ethan’ handed in his notice and left the company under slightly mysterious circumstances.

Nick leaves, and it’s here that we’re introduced to our core baddies for the film, as a stakeholder meeting takes place at Norton Dynamics to discuss what had happened the night before. Obviously we’ve already met Dan, but joining him is a lady Dan has been in constant communication with up to this point called Paula, the pair are trying desperately to climb the corporate ladder and they think they’re about to sweet talk their way into a cushy ‘top of the tree’ role working under the CEO Carter. Carters a bit odd. Not in any way thats specific, just in an unsettling eccentric way…he also self injects himself chronically with what looks like “Reanimator fluid” so…theres that.

Anyway, Carter leads the meeting explaining the circumstances of whats gone on, establishing the Syngenor and explaining how Ethan was a key part of their creation, they talk about last nights murders, AND Carter explains that he’s been in touch with the authorities and told them to downplay or dismiss anyone coming forward claiming they’ve seen a Syngenor as they’re classified for the time being, a specialised security team have checked through the facility, located any eggs that may have been created and stored them away in stasis. Once the meetings complete, Dan and Paula head outside and Paula suggests that, since ones gotten out and still hasnt been recovered, it might not hurt to release ALL the Syngenor and either create a scandal or have them inadvertently murder all the top stakeholders.
Meanwhile back in the suburbs, Leo manages to get Suzie back to her house, and tells her to head in and get some rest. She does but, shes curious about seeing the garage for herself one more time, so she heads out back and immediately spots someone, or something hiding under a blanket. She grabs a knife, approaches with caution and reveals Nick!? Who for SOME reason, thats…only barely explained. Found out Ethans home address, headed over, broke into his garage and started reading his private journals. Then when he heard Suzie coming, he hid under a blanket in plain site like a literal 3 year old.

Suzies not playing around and pretty much threatens to gut Nick, but after some brief backing and forthing tensions cool down a bit. The pair bring each other up to speed with their separate stories, and after Nick explains about his article, Suzie decides to grant Nick FULL access to ALL of Ethans work, on one condition. That he include in his article a section at the end telling the world EXACTLY how Ethan died and about the Syngenor. Nick agrees and is subsiquently informed that hes been granted an interview with the CEO the next day,

While this is going on, back at Norton Dynamics, Dan asks the Secretary on the main desk to head down to the basement to run some checks, inevitably while down there, shes attacked and murdered By Syngenors. Dan heads down a short time after and almost immediately finds her dead body (which apparently surprised him for some reason) followed by him narrowly escaping being attacked by Syngenor himself.

11am, the next day, Nick and Suzie arrive at Norton for their interview, they’re greeted by Dan who offers an initial pre-interview with Nick during witch, Dan explains what “Project Dark Skies” is, while Suzie sneaks off to go and explore the facility while trying to find any clues about the Syngenor. As luck would have it, she manages to find a room set up for, presumably potential buyers into the Syngenor project. Which gives her a full breakdown of everything Including a lifesize one, in stasis, right next to her.

While this is going on Paula reveals to Carter that Dan has caused the death of the secretary, Carter’s niece. He doesnt seem massively bothered though, he seems almost totally out of it. While this is going on Suzie gets spotted by security who pick her up with the intention of taking her to the CEO. But not before stopping infront of a display for the “Death Rattle” a sonic cannon weapon that packs a seriously powerful blast.

The meeting with Carter is incredibly brief. In fact, he literally HANDS Nick a prewritten article that puts the murders and weird goings on down to a disgruntled employee and tells him he has little to no choice but to publish that, and that he wont get anymore information out of himself or any of the other employees here. AND that if he DOES push on with trying to ‘expose’ anyone or anything about the company, the cops will be paying him a visit. Suzie is then brought into the meeting and both of them are escorted out of the office while Carter calls an emergency stakeholder meeting.

And this really leads us into our final act, as Nick and Suzie swap stories and decide to sneak back into the promotional room to get some photographs and Carter decides to announce an end to project “Dark Skies” and the eradication of the Syngenors, it’s a race against time for Nick and Suzie to solve her uncles murder, safely destroy the Syngenor AND take down Carter and the demented members of Norton Dynamics…In a game of thrills and spills, WILL Nick and Suzie beat Carter!? Will the Syngenor escape the facility and take over the world! And…why make it a point that the Syngenor survives off drinking spinal fluid if you arnt actually going to SHOW or even vaguely demonstrate that? What a waste of a cool gimmick…I dunno, all this and more will be answered if you check out. Syngenor.

And honestly? Though it pains me to say it, I just didnt really get on with this one. It was initially requested to me by a viewer, but I just found too many problems with it to really truely ever get into it.

For a starters, the script is a kind of mash up of 23% references and ideas lifted from “Scared to Death”, 66% references and ideas lifted from “Robocop” and 11% actual original ideas. Norton Dynamics as a company IS basically the OCP complete with tense and sometimes gory boardroom meetings, pissing contests amongst the employees and even ‘feel’ alike characters with Carter largely mirroring the old man from Robocops 1 and 2, Dan and Paula essentially sharing the duty of being a mashup of Dick Jones and Bob Morton and Suzie and Nick kind of filling in for the roles of Murphy and Lewis.

The Syngenor are basically ED209 or the rebel robocops from robocop 2. And given that robocop 2 came out in the same year this film did, the fact it ties itself SO closely to those movies isnt exactly surprising…but it did MASSIVELY disappoint me, as I was hoping to actually have something resembling an original story here…not just something that felt knocked out over a long weekend, a 6 pack of beers and a trip to blockbuster. Given the intention of the film was to give the Syngenor a decent platform to possibly launch a franchise from, it was beyond disheartening to see that they’d basically just retooled elements of the plot of an existing film and slapped a Syngenor sticker on it.

The pacing is a bit all over the place with a hearty amount of padding helping to just about push this film into feature runtime territory. Theres a hell of a lot of repetition or just, moments where our characters will sneak into somewhere, get caught, get removed from the place, only to sneak back in a few minutes later. Theres a LOT of pretty pointless conversations between Dan, Paula and Carter that don’t really add anything to the plot.

The padding doesnt ruin the film perse, though, the 3rd act does end up at a bit of a crawl for a while until the gang finally figure out what needs to be done to resolve things. And because it’s basically stole its story from Robocop and Scared to Death, it means that tonally it’s kind of left without a voice. There are moments where it’s incredibly melodramatic, times when it’s very overly serious and times where even IT seems a bit lost as to where it wants our characters to go. And because its constantly swapping in and out of these styles it creates a very lumpy and tonally uneven presentation.

I was never quite sure exactly what the film wanted me to think or feel about it. If it had leant even a smidge more into the self aware, dark humour ‘Robocop’ style shenanigans, it’d have had a significantly cleaner cut voice. I’d have basically considered it a full blown knock off, rather than a film HEAVILY lifting from another movie. But at least it would have been clear. Had they toned down the humour and decided to go for a more horror driven edge. Again, I’d have probably had an easier time breaking this thing down. But, as it stands, BECAUSE it’s kind of just…doing whatever it thinks will keep the audience watching. It never really defines itself beyond it’s ties to other movies.

This issue was only compounded by the fact that the producers, writers and director have gone ALL IN on the Syngenor, like they’re supposed to be the next ‘Cabbage Patch Kids’ or ‘Pogz’ or something. Don’t get me wrong the Syngenor are a pretty cool and fun little idea of a wee beastie. A creature thats almost entirely indestructible, that lives on spinal fluid and can reproduce asexually every 24 hours that looks like a sleeker more agile version of the creature from the black lagoon is a pretty neat concept. But theres a way to play these things, and here. They are TOTALLY not cool about it, EVERY character who can talk about or refer to the Syngenor does so AT LEAST half a dozen times each.

There’s barely a scene that goes by without someone mentioning how powerful, or unstoppable, or scary the Syngenor are. Its almost like they wanted to establish some kind of brand identity for the Syngenor, without actually having any kind of branding or merch opportunities FOR the Syngenor. I cant imagine a world of Syngenor plushies, baseball caps, trainers, lunchboxes…but this was clearly a world the producers thought was viable. It’s incredibly annoying from a writing standpoint and it did make me lower my expectations for the picture quite a bit because of it.

On that subject, the dialogue isnt too great either, its all very stilted, awkward, it doenst flow naturally or feel particularly realistic. It’s very melodramatic, and im struggling to figure out if thats just because the writing itself is crap (in my opinion) or whether they were TRYING to do that melodramatic dark humour style of dialogue thats present in Robocop, but because they arnt Edward Neumeier or Michael Miner, that quick witted, sarcastic and charismatic lampooning of 80s culture tone and intelligence just isnt there with this. In either case the end results feel like a script thats almost a parody. and exactly half as endearing as one.

The script was written by Brent V. Friedman he has 33 writing credits covering a pretty decent range of genres, including video game credits for “Halo 4” and “Tales from the borderlands” and work on some full moon properties such as “Petshop” or probably most infamousley, he wrote ‘Foodfight’ …I hope that helps establish a tone with this one. On directing duties we have George Elanjian Jr. he has 15 directing credits largely for Tv series and ‘Adult’ features, including the Playboy Video Magazine specials, Candid Camera and How’d they do that!?

And on the direction front, well…it just about does the job, I would say George seems to have worked with the teams to produce an end product thats good enough to cut the mustard in the low budget film arena, but thats about the highest praise I can give it. There’s a certain cheapness to some of the designs, looks and feels in this production that just kind of took me out of the experience, moments where it felt like they’d done ‘enough’ but hadnt quite gone above and beyond. Stylistically, this thing looks and feels pretty flat, dark and drab. I appreciate that 1990 was hardly the most colourful year on record. But a lot of this film lacks anything in the way of vibrance, or a directors zeal. Its all pretty much shot for function, with heavy emphasis on coverage with a muted colour pallet pretty much strangling the film before it even had a chance to walk. When the fact the Syngenor eggs glow a reddy orangy colour is the ONLY thing I can comment on in terms of your stylistic vision for the picture. You KNOW somethings gone a bit amiss.

Same goes for the cast too, I dunno, for the most part they seem to have understood the brief (it wouldnt have surprised me if they just made the cast watch Robocop in prep for this thing) everyone seems relaxed in their spaces and they work with the dialogue as best they can. But theres a lot of moments where the cast seem a bit unsure of what to do in their set space, or are maybe in a place where they’re unsure of how much experimentation they can or cant get away with.

Like…there are some moments where they really go to town with props, and full movement, where it feels like maybe the director had had the time to really work out a plan with the cast in order to get the best out of them. But then, in that same breath there are moments where a cast of 3-5 people will be bolted onto the spot with a “Deer in the headlights” look about them, with the implication being that, if they don’t get the scene nailed here and now, it’ll be the last scene they ever shoot…I dunno, it just feels like a bit of a mixed bag, that was likely caused by a tight schedule, low budget and high tensions.

The cine doesnt fair much better, on the one hand, for the most part it looks filmic. Shots *largely* utilise appropriate blocking and compositional choices, I didnt spot any instances of the line being crossed and it looks like they’ve really aimed to make this production look as studio grade as possible, on the other hand, a lot of the shots here look incredibly flat profile, theres almost no depth of field present and, because of the aforementioned muted colour range, it means that scenes that were already struggling with lackluster scripting and spotty direction, had to also deal with a near total lack of an eye for compositional flare. While it does have a few moments that genuinely surprised me in terms of nice shots. And I ABSOLUTELY wont go as far as to say this films ‘Dead behind the eyes’ from a cine standpoint? It does rather feel a bit like a film running on auto pilot.

I dunno, had the lighting and editing maybe been a bit more solid, this might have turned out differently, but as it stands the lighting, much like the cine is pretty flat profile, theres little to no use of coloured lighting gels, and when they are used I personally don’t feel they’re used all that effectively, instead largely being used to create a sense of artificial atmosphere (which it fails to do) or to just try and make the shot look cool (which it also fails to do) the editings a bit choppy as well, I mean, i’d go as far as to say it’s passable, but because they didnt really bother to experiment with the cine, its left the edit a bit high and dry in terms of what it can cut to and from. As such its a bit basic, and in some cases there just isnt really enough there to play around with to create an engaging narrative, which does rather kill both the pacing and the engagement for me as a viewer.

Performance wise; On the whole?, it’s a fairly muted range, Starr Andreeff and Mitchell Laurance as Suzie and Nick are basically trying to play a hybrid of Lewis and Murphy (pre transformation) from Robocop and Ted and Jenniffer from ‘Scared to Death’ charismatic but with a slightly harder edge. And thats fine…but because I don’t feel like they were given much of a decent well to draw from on the script front, and given their characters arnt really all that well defined. It feels like they essentially just had to crack on with what they were given. Which means I don’t really feel these guys got the chance to grow into their characters. I don’t really see it as a good sign when im watching someone play a role and I think to myself “Realistically, I could envision almost ANYONE being able to play these roles and it not being dreadful”. Thats a problem, because if your characters are ‘One size fits all’ it means they’re not going to stand out against any of the other cast members.

Which unfortunately is the case, as the vast majority of the supporting cast here are basically all in the same boat, all playing hybrids of characters in the style of either “Robocop” or “Scared to Death” with no variation, no development and poorer dialogue than either of the movies they’re sourcing from. Which really doesnt do this film any favours.

Honestly? The one SHINING reason to check this film out, the thing that pretty much made the 98(ish) minutes somewhat worthwhile, was David Gales performance as the CEO Carter. At first, he DOES play this thing a bit like the old man from Robocop, but as the film goes on, the characters mental health slowly starts to deteriorate, until, by the 3rd act, he’s full on loony toons, jumping around like a mad man, rambling inanely and cutting through scenes like scissors through wrapping paper. I don’t know how much Gale was paid for his appearance in this film, but it DEFINITELY needed a couple of extra zeros added to the end of it for just how MUCH energy he put into playing this absolute maverick. He’s the clear standout in this for me by a country mile.

And finally; The Soundtrack. Its honestly pretty unremarkable. A generic mishmash of late 80’s synth stings for tense moments and very early 90s muzak style lighter pieces for the more mundane parts of the picture. Its lacking any real kind of solid impact and basically is only here because playing the whole film out in total silence would be somehow worse. But little to no thought was put into how this thing sounds and it really shows.

Syngenor seemingly didnt get a VHS release in the UK when it first came out in 1990. In fact, the first release I can find on UK shores is a DVD release from 2002 by Prism Leisure, By this point the picture quality for this release isnt too great, I noticed a TON of artifacting and, for some reason, on my setup the picture looked overly sharpened. If I had to hazard a guess, it looks like they basically jsut went back to the master they used to dub the original US VHS release, pulled that, cropped out any picture issues and shoved a sharpen filter on it before kicking it out the door. To add insult to injury, there are no special features either. Just the film and a “scene select” which is a bit of a bummer…

Syngenor was an interesting idea in principle, take a monster from one movie and transfer it wholesale into a completely different movie, but with non of the original continuity to back it up. Outside of the monsters from novels (Frankenstein, Dracula, etc) its something that just, isnt really done in the contemporary film ecosystem. Unfortunately, because of the fact the script is so hamstrung, combined with fairly ‘by the numbers’ direction and cine the only thing I can take away from this thing is a feeling that they kind of WANTED to do a sequel all along, couldnt logistically make it work, and then lost interest but still had to make A movie regardless of the circumstances (in my opinion anyway…)

As a result this thing feels rushed, lifeless and largely cribbed. Of the two? I’d personally say stick with ‘Scared to Death’. But if you watched that one and really liked it, you may get a kick out of this film. The only reason to check this otherwise would be if your curious about David Gales performance…but…honestly if your not that bothered about that, i’d say give this one a swerve.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/syngenor/1/

Had it not been for viewer intervention, I likely wouldn’t have seen 1988’s ‘Paperhouse’. It’s one of those movies that falls off my radar in terms of content and style when I’m looking for stuff to cover on the show. The DVD box and poster are fairly well polished and unassuming. It looks like another generic studio release that maybe didn’t quite embed itself into the cultural psyche and fell through the cracks. If I’d seen this in a shop, I wouldn’t have given it a second look. But I found myself with a gap in the schedules when planning for the season this year, just as a helpful viewer recommended this saying they’d be fascinated to see what I made of it.

I try to do rec’s where I can, but I’ve always caveated it by adding that I work on my reviews well in advance and that it may take quite a while before I get round to covering requests. So it’s been a HELL of a long time since this one came in, and if that helpful viewer, whoever they were, is still around. I just wanna say thanks. It was very much appreciated.

So! Paperhouse, a 1988 fantasy drama movie. And I’m SO glad I had at least a cursory glance at this film before I watched it, because this is one of those movies that’s been repeatedly mismarketed over the years. It’s often sold as a horror film, and had I gone into this with the expectation that it was going to BE a horror movie, I’d have likely been woefully underwhelmed. While there are a *couple* of horror elements in the 2nd and 3rd acts it absolutely isn’t a horror film in that sense.

The film follows Anna, a daydreamy ‘Tracy Beaker’ sort who’s stuck at that awkward age where they’re not quite a kid, not quite a teenager and misunderstood by almost everyone around her. She’s bullied in school and her Dad is currently out of the picture working abroad. In the opening of the film we see Anna at school crudely drawing what appears to be a house in her notebook. After a bully tries to get a rise out of her, Anna retaliates and her teacher sends her out of the class, but Anna refuses to comply so her teacher adds a detention to the punishment before sending Anna out.

She continues to disrupt the class from outside and the teacher comes out to scold Anna who tries to explain that it’s her birthday and that she’s feeling unwell to get some sympathy, the teachers having none of it though and heads back inside. It then turns out that Anna was telling the truth about feeling unwell as she passes out and wakes up in a field. Off in the distance is a strange looking house which she starts heading towards, but before she can get there, she wakes up back at the school surrounded by her classmates and the teacher who sends her to the nurses office.

Anna’s mum arrives at the school and the pair head home, while driving back Anna’s mum is clearly quite stressed and tells Anna they’re going to the doctors office and that her birthday present of a riding lesson may have to be cancelled. Anna STRONGLY protests, but her mum says it’ll all depend on what the doctors say, so Anna tells her mum that she faked being sick because she didn’t want to have detention on her birthday, so her mum takes her back to school, causing even more protest.
Anna’s having none of this though, and as soon as she’s dropped back at the school, she sneaks off, grabs her friend Karen and the pair head to an abandoned train station to bob off school. They *attempt* to put makeup on and chat about snogging boys and other things. Anna asks Karen if she wants to play hide and seek but Karen says she’s too old for it. After making a friendly wager though, Karen accepts and Anna runs into an abandoned train tunnel and almost immediately passes out again, waking up back in the field near her dream house. She manages to get to it this time, but there’s no way in. She’s found by the police several hours later and taken back to her house where her mum has been worried sick.

Anna winds up needing a doctor, who advises that Anna stay in bed for a couple of days to recover. She’s upset that she’s basically bedbound, but uses the opportunity to continue working on her house drawing. She adds a lot more detail, including a little man in the window, but she accidentally gives him a frown. She tries to erase it but for some reason he won’t rub away. That night when Anna goes to sleep, she wakes up in the field by the house again and tries shouting to see if anyones there. A boy opens the window and shouts down to her to tell her that he can’t let her into the house because the house has no stairs. He’s basically stuck on the second floor.

Anna wakes up in the middle of the night with a fever. But also comes to the realisation that the house and fields in her dream are almost exactly the same as the house in her drawings. As such, to test the theory, she stays up all night adding even more detail to the paper house including a staircase. She finishes by daybreak and heads back to bed and this time in her dream, she can get into the house and lo and behold there IS a staircase now. She heads upstairs where she finds the boy sat alone in an empty room, his name’s Mark. She tries to explain to him that this is a dream and that he isn’t real but he doesn’t seem too happy about that. So in an attempt to change the subject, Anna asks Mark if he wants to go and explore, but he bluntly tells her he can’t, because he can’t walk.

Later that night, Anna wakes up and chats to her mum about her Dad (who apparently had a problem with drink for a time) she also asks her mum about her dreams. Her mum tries to reassure her that while dreams can scare her, they can never hurt her. Later that day, the doctor returns and confirms that Anna has Glandular fever, and that she’ll be out of action for a few weeks at least. Anna has a moan to the doctor, who mentions in passing that she should be lucky as one of her patients is a boy who’s been in bed for almost a year. Anna seems intrigued, but the doctor’s not particularly keen to discuss it.

As time goes by Anna begins to add more and more detail to the paperhouse, which is then reflected in the dream version of the house. Everything from mountains of burgers, to oversized oranges and giant radios. Anna and Mark begin to get to know each other better and the pair start to open up to each other. Anna even goes as far as adding her dad to the drawing, she doesn’t quite get him right though and crosses him out. Her mum gets to see the drawings after a time, but she mildly critiques it, causing Anna to basically scribble over the whole thing and throw it next to the bin before heading to take a bath.

While gone though, her mum cleans Anna’s room, including putting the drawing in the bin. Anna ends up falling asleep in the bath where she has a nightmare about her dad and that night, when Anna goes to sleep, she doesn’t dream. The doctor comes back the next day with medication for her, but she seems really out of sorts. As she’s leaving, Anna’s mum corners her by the door and asks if everythings alright. Anna sneaks in and overhears that the boy the doctor spoke about is very ill with muscular dystrophy and has recently had a relapse due to a chest infection.

Things aren’t looking good for him and this terrifies Anna who believes that her destroying the paper house last night has directly led to the boy’s deterioration. She starts believing that the boy is in fact, Mark. After tearing her room apart, Anna realises that the drawing must be in the rubbish, and it’s GARBAGE DAY. so she races out of the house closely followed by her mum and begs the bin men to let her go through the entire block of flats rubbish to try and find her drawing. Her mums very reluctant, but when she sees how much it means to Anna, she joins in.

They eventually manage to find the drawing. It’s stained and a bit tatty, but all in one piece. She heads back inside and it turns out the medication she’s been given are sleeping tablets. As such, she almost immediately passes out and wakes up back in the dream world. Only, this time the inside of the paperhouse is grotty, stained and damaged. All the nice things Anna drew are smashed and mangled and Mark is looking quite tired. Anna explains that he’s currently in the hospital and not doing so good, and it’s revealed that the sleeping tablets are preventing Anna from waking up. She appears to be briefly trapped in her dream. She looks out a nearby window…and she sees her dad stood in the field draped in shadows.

And…I can’t really tell you much more from here on in as we’d start getting into hard spoiler territory, needless to say the story is FAR from over, with Anna having to traverse both her increasing illness and the strange and scary world of her own creation. In a rip roaring 80(ish) minutes of adventure, mystery and melancholy. Will Anna be able to save Mark? Is Anna’s dad all that he seems!? And Will Anna’s mum stay true to her promise and take Anna to the seaside when she’s better? All this and more will be answered if you check out, ‘Paperhouse’.

And honestly, colour me impressed. The scripts nothing short of exemplary. With an ultra tight 3 act structure that transitions seamlessly from act to act, it’s mindful on pacing, slowing down just enough when it needs the audience to take stock and absorb what’s happening, but also not being afraid to open the flood gates and go full tilt when it wants to feel a bit more chaotic. It allows the narrative to really get to breathe easy across the runtime and I think it manages to balance the drama of the real world elements with the more fantastical elements of the dream world decently as a result.

Both worlds cross between each other fairly seamlessly as well, it never feels like we’re in a dream portion that feels forced. Or a real world section that’s there just for padding’s sake. I would argue it was probably one of the better examples of the “Real world influencing a fantasy world” type movie that i’ve seen and it reminded me very heavily of ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ for its ability to duel wield these two different drama driven aspects with equal care and attention to such an extent that I didn’t feel either side of the drama had been neglected in creating a wonderfully crafted narrative.

Even the character structuring appears to have had thought and attention put to it, I like the fact that this script makes all of its characters flawed in one way or another, and that those flaws don’t necessarily drive the characters in a positive way. There are no ‘goodies’ or ‘baddies’ in this picture. There’s just complex characters who have their hang ups just like anyone else. In particular the fact that they make Anna problematic, to me is a nice touch. She’s not this innocent little girl being put into more mature situations like ‘Celia’. Anna lies, she can be irritating, manipulative to a point, she can be aggressive, even a little vulgar at times. And the script uses that in tandem with its dream world scape to help create a script that’s almost as driven by our characters motivations alone as it is driven by the need to necessitate plot progression. Which is quite rare to see.

I also like the fact that this film doesn’t infantilize its characters or situations too much. The scenes early on in the film where Anna and her friend put makeup on and talk about snogging boys almost instantly helps to crystalise exactly who these characters are, where they are developmentally and what this films main drive is going to be about. It establishes that these are preteens who are in that awkward period of life where they’re learning about relationships, adult themes and the real world. But they’re not yet mature enough to have had the worldly wisdom of that. They’re viewing maturity through kids eyes still. Which I feel throughout this film is again handled with great craft and care, but more importantly REALLY helps to drive the symbolic nature of this production.

The paperhouse, from my understanding here is a representation of Anna’s sense of isolation and feeling of being misunderstood. Anna is alone in the world of this film. She has her mum who’s probably the closest to someone who understands her, but no one really ‘gets’ her, or if they think they do, it’s only on a surface level interpretation. The paperhouse is a manifestation of that loneliness and uncertainty around life and coming of age. In the beginning, it’s this big ominous building that’s impenetrable. Its effectively walled off by her because she doesn’t know how to deal with it, but slowly with the introduction of Mark (symbolism here not only of her growing sense of hope for a brighter future, but possibly a symbolic representation of her own growing interest in the opposite sex) the paperhouse begins to prosper, she adds more things to it, representation of her opening up and unmasking from her previous detachment and embracing who she is, with food, music and the interesting contraptions that she creates.

When her mum dismisses her drawings, it’s a step further than just her saying her pictures are bad. She’s basically critiquing Anna’s only output of growth for her as a person, which is why she reacts so negatively and attempts to throw away the paperhouse. She’d developed herself through the house and with her mum’s dismissal, she felt the need to reject the person she’d built into and put the walls back up.

Even her issues with her dad are represented in the paperhouse world, and through this fantasy play she’s able to get her head into a space where she’s ultimately able to resolve her issues and begin to reset the damaged foundations she had with her father. The paperhouse is basically Anna’s way of both trying to cope with her feelings of isolation and her way of attempting to grow past the issues that have held her back as a kid, it shapes her view on friendship, love, compassion and caring. And I think it’s handled phenomenally well here.

And that’s not even mentioning the dialogue, which again is just perfect here. We have incredibly fluid and naturalistic lines that feel very real for the time this film was set. There’s a lot of key plot points mentioned in passing, but also a decent amount of idle chatter mixed in as well. Everything reads almost like actual real world conversations. And I really love that in this film because it makes everything feel about ten times more emotive than it would have had they gone for standard cinematic scripting or improvisation. It’s honestly delightful.

In fact; I only have ONE issue with this script. ONE thing that prevents it from being pretty much perfect. And spoilers are gonna be dropped for a bit here, so if you’d rather avoid them, please skip to the next chapter on this video. But…the ending of this film bothered me. So, for some quick context. At the end of the film Anna and her family are reunited and they all decide to head out to the seaside to try and put things behind them. Prior to this happening, Anna and Mark pretty much declared their feelings for each other and had their first kiss. While sitting on the edge of a cliff face, the pair decide it would be lovely to go down to the sand on the beach and get close to the sea. Mark says he’s going to go and draw the pair a helicopter so they can fly down to the sand. And he runs off to a nearby lighthouse, promising to return with a helicopter shortly.

When Anna wakes up, she finds out that Mark sadly died as a result of his illness. The family arrive at the seaside and check into a hotel, Anna’s dad comes in for a heart to heart and opens the curtains in her bedroom, which leaves Anna speechless as directly outside her window, is the EXACT lighthouse from her dream. She immediately runs outside and heads up to the lighthouse, furiously banging on the door and screaming for Mark to let her in. but there’s no answer.

Realising that he’s actually properly gone. She slumps to the steps of the lighthouse, thoroughly depressed. But, on instinct lifts a rock next to the lighthouse door, revealing a piece of paper. It’s a note and drawing from Mark. He explains that he hovered around the lighthouse for hours, but when Anna didn’t turn up, he had to go. He reassures her though not to worry, because he’ll be back for her soon.

Anna wanders over to a sheer cliff face, and looks down at the crashing waves deeply upset. When, out of nowhere, a helicopter silently flies overhead, its mark. He opens the door of the helicopter and drops a ladder down for Anna to grab onto. She tries to reach out over the cliff face for it, but he isn’t getting close enough. Mark starts shouting for her to get back from the edge of the cliff and slowly Mark’s voice starts mixing with Anna’s mums. Just as Annas about to grab the ladder, her mum snatches her away from the cliff face. Mark speeds off and Anna is left embracing her family by the cliffside saying that everythings probably going to be alright from now on, crossfading to crashing waves and the clifff tops. End credits.

Now. Where I have issue with this is the last 2 minutes or so. To me? They had the PERFECT bleak ending RIGHT THERE. They have Anna go to the cliff face, they do the ladder sequence. They have the mixing of Mark and Annas mums voices. THEN they crossfade to the crashing ocean waves and end credits. With the implication being, symbolically, that Anna really DID ‘Get on the helicopter’. She gets to be with Mark forever in the dream world. FUCKING BLEAK, but at the same time a VERY fitting and poignant ending to a film thats heavily been steeped in symbolism.

Instead, we have a ‘nick of time’ rescue and a happy ending stapled on to this thing, and I feel it kind of undercuts the poignancy of the piece and ultimately, felt a bit like it went against its own coded messaging. Whether that was studio intervention or just how the book ends I don’t know. But it reminded me a bit of the way the universal version of ‘Frankenstein’ ends with a weird upbeat ‘Everything is great!’ wedding sequence mere moments after a hoard of angry villagers burn a windmill and the creature to the ground. It just felt very tonally out of place to me. It’s a shame honestly, as had they stuck the landing. This probably would have been the finest script I’ve seen in 15 years. Easy. As it stands it’s still pretty bloody spectacular, but it JUST falls short in my opinion.

The script was based on a novel by Catherine Storr and was adapted here by Matthew Jacobs, Who has 27 writing credits with his last in 2014. Of note, he wrote a number of episodes of “The Adventure of young Indiana Jones”, the original story for “The Emperor’s New Groove” and most importantly of all, the guy wrote the script for the 90’s “Doctor Who TV Movie! Yeh, the Paul Mcgann one. Wild isn’t it?

On directing duties, we have Bernard Rose. He has 33 credits spanning a 45+ year career with highlights including “Candyman” and some of the most iconic music videos of the 1980’s including the “Relax” music video “Small town boy” and “Red Red Wine”.

And on the direction front, again. This thing really can’t be flawed. We have an incredibly stylish production here that manages to tie all of the elements of production together into a gorgeous package that feels distinct, stylish and vivid in it’s creation. Rose has managed to work closely with the cinematographers and lighting teams to create some really striking set pieces that are only enhanced by his work with the set designers.

Here the sets are rich in detail, they feel lived in, you get the sense that you know Anna fairly well from just how her room is, you get a sense of her mum’s world from their family home setup. The paperhouse is able to leave a clear tonal “tell” simply by the way its built, looks and feels. And with Bernard’s hand on the direction we have a practically faultless play here that gives the audience exactly what they need, nothing more, nothing less.

Direction of the cast too is also pretty rock solid. You’ve got to imagine, we spend most of the film with child actors, most of whom were first time performers. And Bernard has clearly worked VERY closely and considerately with them to get their absolute best. As cited by the actress who played Anna saying that the filming of this production was some of the happiest in her life. The cast work with their set spaces well, utilising the full run of set space and incorporating props into their scenes effortlessly. They’re clearly very at ease during the shoot, and appear to have had enough clear guidance to make it through the scene proficiently, but enough free leash to experiment with how things could work beyond that. As such, it’s clear to me that Bernard is a very thoughtful and considered director here and has been able to master getting exactly what was required from these scenes.

On a similar note the cine here is just extraordinary. With some inspired compositions that utilise depth of field, rich colours contrasting against grey and maudlin backdrops, decent blocking and most critically of all a hearty attempt at experimentation. With several shots throughout being nicely punctuated with sweeping pan shots,long tracking sequences and my particular favourite being a sequence where Anna is taking a lift down to the ground floor while trying to rescue the paperhouse, while her mum runs down the stairs after her. They do parallel tracking shots from the perspective of Anna in the lift watching her mum run down the stairs, and of Anna’s mum running down the stairs watching the lift slowly descend. It’s beautiful, and these kind of choices are littered throughout the entire production. Which is honestly, just such a nice thing to see.

Throw in some phenomenal lighting to boot, in which we not only dabble with just, really well lit general shots, but some decent stabs at chiaroscuro and coloured lighting gels which add a whole new dimension to proceedings and some experimental lighting setups that harken back to the german expressionist movement, and you have a film that frankly, is just phenomenal to look at, almost every shot is a painting. And, as if that wasn’t already a gift enough, only tying together and amplifying the script, direction and cines better qualities EVEN FURTHER. Is some top class editing which lets sequences breath, only cuts when necessary, uses cross fades and transitions effectively and helps to manage the pacing of the film in a way that honestly would have just fallen over in lesser hands. It’s a superb job.

Performance wise, everyone here is incredible, but for my money our core cast of Charlotte Burke, Gemma Jones and Glenne Headly are the real winners here. This was Charlotte’s one and only acting role. I know I have my rule about not discussing child actors. But given that she *technically* isn’t a child actor, as she had no intention of acting beyond this. I feel I can rather bend my own rules a bit here when I say that I think she’s probably one of the greatest child actors I’ve ever seen. She’s professional, animated and incredibly naturalistic, which, given this was her first acting role is just…incredible. I mean, good for her that she knew that this wasn’t something she could see being a lifelong thing. But I REALLY wish she’d done more because. This is the high water mark here, it really is.

Gemma and Glenne too both play things incredibly naturalistically, with both equally working a wide range of emotions throughout the course of the film and their performances here are exemplary. They really put their all into playing their roles with such precision, you’d honestly think it was a documentary in places for how lifelike their responses are. They’re simply excellent.

And finally; the soundtrack. And…I need this thing on Vinyl as soon as possible really. It’s a mix of synthy moody pieces and orchestral arrangements and it sounds, AMAZING. Easily one of my favourite scores i’ve heard in a DAMN long time. It’s a rich and sumptuous feast for the ears that, if you haven’t heard it before. I can recommend in and of its own right. It’s REALLY solid.

Paperhouse was released on VHS in 1990 by Vestron Pictures as a big box ex-rental, later receiving a retail release. It hit DVD in 2007 under Lionsgate in a…fairly disappointing release with a somewhat compressed (but watchable) picture quality, a cropped image and limited extras (basically a trailer and a couple of text only actor profiles are your lot) …And that’s it really, it has had a couple of releases on bluray in european territories. But I’m struggling to find out if these releases are remastered, or whether they’ve just upscaled an old master. In either case. This films SCREAMING for a bluray/4k release with some decent extras. It’s almost certainly a candidate for Criterion or at the very least a bit of boutique love.

I loved Paperhouse, and barring my thoughts on the ending, I feel there is SO much good present here. A damn near perfect script, crafted and considered cine and editing. Killer performances and an out of sight score. I am BEYOND grateful to the person who recommended this to me. I really hope you check out Paperhouse, Its a real trip and a high bar in my eyes for the fantasy drama genre as a whole.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/paperhouse/1/

Dedication to the cause has led me to 2005’s “Camp Blood 3: Within the woods” I figure if i’m going to cover all the ‘Camp Blood’ movies then i’m going to make damn sure I do a proper job of it, because the last thing I want to happen is I miss one and have to go back. This is very much a one way trip and I’m not stopping to use the restrooms thank you very much.

Camp Blood 3: Within the Woods, sometimes just known as “Within the woods” is the closing part of Brad Sykes ‘Camp Blood Trilogy’. And there seems to be a bit of confusion online as to the relevance of this film within the Camp blood universe as…well, there’s two “Camp Blood 3’s” and bizarrely the more “Official” release (I.E the one that actually has the creator tied to it) is widely considered to be an “Unofficial” release, while the technically more “Unofficial” release (the one set years after the first two films with only the producer/distribution company associated with it) is in fact treated as legitimate. There isn’t that much information online as to exactly why, but I have my own speculations. Please do bear in mind however that this is just my own thoughts on what I *Think* is the situation and DEFINITELY not 100% confirmed to be the actual case. I’m just going on what I think makes sense from where I’m sitting.

So “Within the woods” is absolutely a ‘Camp Blood’ sequel. The film is set at ‘Camp Blood’ there’s a killer clown, and the first 2 films get referenced in detail with this film going one step further than just name dropping. Introducing a bridging narrative that directly connects these films all together. Frankly it couldn’t BE a ‘Camp Blood’ movie any harder if it tried short of them getting what was left of the original cast together for one final outing.

What I *THINK* happened is that David Sterling of Sterling entertainment produced the first two Camp Blood movies and helped distribute them. Brad decided in 2005 that he wanted to make another instalment in the Camp Blood series as he previously wrote and produced the first two, and it was on finishing production that problems arose…either Brad had planned for David to distribute this movie and David wasn’t interested or Brad doesnt own the IP to the ‘Camp Blood’ franchise anymore, David does. I personally believe one of these two to be the case because, long story short Brad couldn’t call this film “Camp Blood 3: Within the Woods” it had to just be “Within the woods” and as far as I can see it’s only seen the light of day as part of a trilogy pack of the ‘Camp Blood’ movies sold through Brads own website for a VERY short period of time.

Since then the movies been missed off every single “Sterling” release, with the “official” lineage jumping straight from 2005 to 2014 for THEIR “Camp Blood 3”…is any of the above true? I have no idea, but that’s what my guts telling me is the case and if anyone in the comments knows what REALLY went down please do let me know and I’ll add a note into the description setting the record straight.

In either case, its resulted in a Camp Blood movie thats written and directed by Brad, set in the Camp Blood universe that directly references the events of the first 2 films and even bridges the gap in terms of what’s happened at Camp blood between 2001 and 2005…and almost no ones seen it and it’s widely considered the bastard child of the franchise. Which to me is just…nuts. That would be like if Wes Craven had directed and written a “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie that, because it wasn’t put out by New Line, everyone just pretended it didn’t exist…

Not that “Within the woods” is particularly earth shattering in the grand scheme of things, but in the world of Brad Sykes movies, it’s a revelation! The film picks up 5 years after the events of “Camp Blood 2” and over the past 5 years various mysterious disappearances and murders have continued to plague the woodland/desert area of Camp Blackwood. In fact it’s status as a “spOoOoOoOoOoky” hotspot has attracted the attention of television exec Tony Mercer, who’s got a ratings winning idea on his hands assuming he can pull in the right volunteers.

Y’see What Tony has in mind is “The Camp Blood Challenge”, he’s auditioned 5 volunteers to spend 24 hours on the grounds of Camp Blackwood, if they can make it through the 24 hours then a jackpot prize of 1 million dollars will be split amongst the “Survivors”. If they leave the grounds, they get nothing. Of course, Tony fully intends for no one to get the money and has rigged the setup thoroughly. He’s left his P.A ingrid in charge of greeting the new contestants and making them feel a bit “spooked” about the situation, Cameras are placed in strategic positions around the perimeter of the woods as well as in “camp” areas within the woods and he’s hired a performer by the name of Griff to dress up as a killer clown and using a rubber knife and some fake blood, scare the contestants out of the woods as effectively as possible.

It all seems pretty faultless…except for one problem, there’s a REAL killer clown at Camp Blackwood. And no sooner that Tony has gotten into his car and left Ingrid and Griff to greet the contestants, then the REAL killer clown appears, murders Ingrid AND Griff, leaving the contestants to arrive and be effectively abandoned at random points across the trail. The first contestant we’re introduced to (and our main character for this feature) is Jessica, she’s an elementary school teacher and as luck would have it, she’s medicated (That plot point is brought up repeatedly, but you better BELIEVE it LITERALLY doesn’t feed into the actual plot at any point) Anyway, Jess is abandoned by the roadside, and heads into the woods to try and find the other contestants or at least find a rendezvous spot.

It doesn’t take long for her to get jumpscared by Fellow contestant and gym bro Russ, who introduces himself and tells Jess that she’s contestant number 4 and that he’s already helped establish a base camp with 2 other contestants. The pair head over and Jess is introduced to literal slab of nothingness Nolan. And I’m not kidding with that, at first as he seemed to be really into smoking I thought he might be our “comedy stoner” for the movie. But he isn’t, then they reveal he knows a lot about the history of Camp Blackwood, so I assumed he’d be our “tin foil hat” conspiracy theorist or our knock off “randy” from scream of the movie…but again…nope! He just seems to basically be a character purely designed to say lines that no other character could get away with saying and to act as a mechanism for some of the later parts of the movie.

So there’s him…and then there’s Cat, who’s a singer attempting to break into the industry and a fame chaser who’ll do anything to try and climb the social ladder. She’s a bit ditzy but mostly harmless. Its at this point that Tony, using a two way speaker system, speaks to the contestants and explains the rules of “The Camp Blood Challenge” bizarrely the group are confused and startled when they spot cameras hidden in the trees…like…what did they think this was going to be a radio play or something? I have no idea…either way, with the rules explained the countdown begins! And our team begin to wonder about the 5th contestant who has yet to materialise.

The gang decide to split into pairs with Jess and Nolan breaking off and having a bit of a heart to heart to get to know each other better where they get jumpscared by a mysterious woman who turns out to be the 5th contestant Mel, while Russ and Cat wander into the woods to scout out the area where they find a small sack filled with file photos of the 5 contestants, the photos however are covered in blood…they assume it’s fake blood but they’re still somewhat concerned, so they head back to the main camp and things start getting a little flirtatious between Russ and Cat, especially when Russ mentions he’s a personal trainer to the stars, the pair are about to kiss when Jess, Mel and Nolan return and mercifully break up the display.

After establishing everything AGAIN it’s then revealed that the show has only provided 2 tents. Russ and Cat claim one and Mel claims a tent for her and Jess…leaving Nolan to sleep out by the fire. Anyway, time moves on, it’s nighttime and in a scene that i’m sure at this point will trigger the PTSD of anyone who’s been following these films with me up to this point, while everyones sat around the campfire, Nolan IN DEPTH recounts the FULL plots of “Camp Blood”, “Camp Blood 2” AND adds on an extra part to the tale where he explains what happened to Tricia after the events of “Camp Blood 2” AND talks about a couple of the murders/disappearances that have happened in between that film and this one. Including a belgian photographer and his model going missing and a homophobic arsehole and his girlfriend getting stabbed. It’s not exactly twin peaks…but hey…this is the 3rd time we’ve done the “Let’s explain the entire franchise around the campfire” sequence…at least they BOTHERED to add a bit extra on.

Anyway; after all of this is rattled out, Russ tells Nolan to wind it down as he thinks he’s just trying to spook everyone into leaving so he can claim the million for himself. With that, everyone goes to bed. well…I say that. Jess and Mel have an elongated conversation about Mels hunting knife, and Russ and Cat get down to a little “Bouncy Bouncy”. Tony throughout all of this has been monitoring them through the cameras, but he’s begun to notice that sometimes, some of the cameras randomly stop working for a spell…in either case he catches Russ and Cat and sees this as a definite ratings boost. Once the rutting is done and dusted, some time passes and Nolan is awoken by strange noises in the woods. He goes to investigate and IMMEDIATELY gets “Clowned”…

The next day, Jess wakes up and walks straight into a large puddle of Nolans blood. She goes to wake up Russ and Cat and at first they’re super dismissive, but Russ decides to go and investigate…he doesn’t find anything though and while briefly stopping for a piss, he notices something dripping on him..it’s blood, Nolans blood…coming from Nolans actual corpse that’s been left in a tree. Russ freaks out and almost immediately bumps into Mel who’s brandishing a knife. He immediately accuses Mel of murdering Nolan and tries to Attack Mel, she retaliates and Russ gets his arm cut. He runs off convinced now that Mel is DEFINITELY the killer.

While all this is going on Jess and Cat hear Russ’s screams and Cat randomly runs off to try and find him…Jess chases after her and finds her dead at the bottom of a cliff, she then almost immediately bumps into the the clown killer. And basically…what follows is…well…lets just say if you’ve seen Camp Blood or Camp Blood 2…you’ll know EXACTLY how this thing ends…In an hour and 17 minute long movie that’s basically just the best bits of the first two movies slammed together but shot nicer, Will Jess survive the clown killer? Will Tony get his emmy!? and…Is there anyone out there who actually believes Mel is the killer? Ahh well…if you’ve not seen any of the other Camp Blood movies and you LITERALLY have nothing else to do, then you may actually enjoy “Camp Blood 3: Within the Woods”

They say that Madness is repeating the same experiment in the same conditions over and over again expecting different results. Well Brads tried to make “Camp Blood” 3 times now…and while this newest version is a HELL of a lot better in terms of technical quality and ability, it’s still SUPER problematic in a lot of places as well. So…the script for this thing is essentially all the best bits of “Camp Blood” 1 and 2 basically mashed up and stuck together to form this meat patty of a movie. The only “new” element at play with this entry is the “reality tv” angle. And my first thought when I revved this up for its initial watch when I saw that reality TV was going to be the main thrust of the feature was “Ahh! Brad Watched ‘Halloween Resurrection’ at some point in the last couple of years!” because that’s basically what this is.

It’s a camp blood movie but with the monitoring scenes from Halloween Resurrection stapled onto it. That’s not strictly terrible I should add, if anything I was grateful that in this entry he was actually TRYING to do something a bit different. But it also isn’t anything groundbreaking and did leave me just kind of apathetic to the whole thing. What I will say is the 5 years between movies has been a sharp learning curve, Brad had involvement with 14 mainstream features between Camp Blood 2 and this entry and it absolutely shows in the script, which is tighter, has a cleaner 3 act structure than previous entries and is (for the most part) pretty coherent…barring a couple of moments where you have to mildly suspend your disbelief on the characters intelligence levels and the ending which I will get to in a minute.

The characters in this are all largely archetypal horror tropes, you’ve got the jock, the prep, the quiet nerdy kid whos a bit *too* clued up on what’s going on and the final girl. It’s all there, but at least these characters HAVE character, at least they’re defined enough that I could identify what they’re trying to be! Well…except Nolan who doesn’t really seem to get much of anything resembling a character…but hey ho…barring the occasional moment where the script knocks a digit off the cast’s IQ in order to preserve the narrative I enjoyed these characters I thought they were decent enough for what this thing is.

Beyond this however the cracks do begin to show a bit, the quality of the dialogue is improved over the first two entries, but only marginally, we’ve graduated from “low budget Porn dialogue” to something resembling “Not terrible”…that doesnt mean its by any stretch GOOD. It just means that I didn’t want to wail in pain every 20 minutes at how awful the lines were. They’re still SUPER awkward and dry though, and while the cast are improved, they’re still not great on delivery (but again, more on that later)

The BIGGEST gripe I have with the film (and spoilers from here on in, so skip ahead to the next chapter if you don’t want to know who the killer is) but the ending of this thing is…well there’s no other word for it. It’s bollocks. Its absolute aneurysm inducing bollocks. And that’s not hyperbole either. So, at the end of the film Jess is the lone survivor, Tony leaves the broadcast room and goes to rescue her from the clown killer and the pair head back to the broadcast room because Tony wants to wipe the tapes and wants Jess to promise to not say a word in exchange for the prize money.

They get to the broadcast room and Tony begins wiping the tapes, but after only a few minutes of being there, the clown killer turns up and butchers Tony. They then go to attack Jess but accidentally catch a power cable and end up getting fried alive. Jess removes the clown killer’s mask and reveals that the killer is none other, than CAT!? Cat says she decided to kill because she figured she could never become famous by just being a singer…she needed to be a singer + extra and if killing some people made her infamous and got her music career to launch. So be it. With the final moments of the film revealing Cat died from the electrocution, but shock jock stations are now playing her music to be edgy, and that Jess collected her winnings, globally released Cats music and began a career in law.

Now. now now now…this is bollocks. ABSOLUTE BOLLOCKS. There’s not one element of this 3rd act finale that I enjoyed or got on with. So…in no particular order…let’s break this down shall we? First up, Tony had a hell of a drive to get from the broadcasting room to pick up Jess, and I know he gives her vague directions on where to head, but A: how did Jess know which way to go when she’s never been there before and she has NO navigation tools to KNOW which direction she’s even heading in, and B: How did Tony know EXACTLY where Jess would be in time to perfectly scoop her up to avoid the killer clown. Second, HOW did the killer clown almost match the speed of a speeding car. I’m not kidding Tony and Jess get back to the broadcast station and chill for collectively no more than 5-10 minutes. Let’s be generous and say their car was doing 40mph. At this point our clown killer has been beaten up and stabbed in the head with a knife. They have NO way of knowing where the broadcast room is, they have NO idea of what direction to head in, and unless they can run consistently at 30+ miles an hour it would have taken them WAY longer than 5-10 minutes to catch back up to the vehicle. Letalone get to into the broadcast room. And even assuming our killer had buns of steel and COULD somehow run at top speed consistently. They’d be totally shagged out by the time they got IN to the building, let alone have enough energy to keep on butchering.

This is of course glossing over all the minor continuity issues like, what does Tony think is going to happen when he goes back to the network after this weekends played out only to explain that all the contestants just “didn’t turn up”, that the tapes wernt used and that his PA and the technician he took with him have vanished too. At best he’d be on the line for wasting company money (and probably on the line for some kind of fraud charge) at worst, they’re going to find out about the murders and because he wiped the tapes, he won’t have a leg to stand on. He’ll be going to jail.

But the worst…THE WORST. Crime this film commits is making Cat the killer. Apart from the fact that doing that makes literally no sense from a character perspective. WE ACTUALLY SAW Cat die. She’s dead! And before anyone says “Oh she might have faked her death” HOW!? There’s literally a scene in which Jess looks down at Cat’s broken and dead body, before turning around and LITERALLY bumping into the clown killer. HOW was she able to get seven shades kicked out of her by Griff and stabbed in the head by Mel and STILL be perfectly intact and, if anything, stronger and better equipped to deal with these situations than when she WASN’T wearing the clown mask? This was the moment the film absolutely nuked itself for me. Like. I was on board with it up to this point, I didn’t think it was anything spectacular, but had it stuck the landing The tone of this review would have been out and out surprise and a VERY loose recommendation to maybe check it out. But the BOLLOCKS this film pulls in the ending…I have no words…the total loss of any kind of actual resolution too only went to dampen things further for me. It’s established Jess made enough money to go to college to study law, and that Cats music ended up on the radio…but that doesn’t really answer anything about what happened to the reality show elements, were there two killer clowns in the woods? Did cat spend 5 years murdering people and just HAPPENED across this reality show on her down time? How did the shock jocks get her music?

It’s just such a messy, incoherent and downright stupid ending that my estimations plummeted HARD on this thing. By the time the credits rolled I’d pretty much decided that despite its improvements, this was no better than the other two movies for that BOLLOCKS ending.

Once again we see Brad Sykes returning to write and direct. And not a lots changed in Brad’s world since we covered ‘Camp Blood 2’ his last feature credit appears to have been in 2022 for a movie called Hi-Fear I believe he directed it and wrote a segment for it. But…outside of that all’s been quiet on the sykes front. What I will say is, having seen this later entry now, it has got me curious to explore some of the films he made between 2001 and 2004…I want to see how he developed as a filmmaker because honestly, the direction here has come along in leaps and bounds!

It’s clear that the films that he’s written and worked on between “Camp Blood 2” and this have enabled him to really learn and hone the craft as we’ve gone from shakey and washed out elongated sequences that felt frankly unprofessional to something that’s pretty sharp looking, follows traditional film rules and guidance for the most part and actually feels like someones behind the scenes who understands how to corral and manage all the aspects of a production.

Now; like I say, it’s not perfect. While it’s absolutely a step up from the previous instalment, it’s still rather flat and generic visually for a movie of this genre. There are some nice attempts to work with the cam ops on some experimentation, but it misses more than it hits unfortunately and most attempts at stylisation just come across as a bit half hearted. If you knew this was a Brad Sykes film and had seen the other camp blood movies, I don’t think you’d have much trouble recognising Brad’s tone and style, but I feel it’s much more muted here than in previous attempts. The distinction is lost in exchange for a much more robust and solid production that, while MORE than welcome did leave me feeling like I’d just watched a fairly generic slasher.

Direction of the cast doesn’t fare much better. Again, in terms of comparison to previous entries there is a definite improvement in terms of the cast actually utilising location space a bit better. There’s better use of props and better understanding of cast placement within the frame to maximise the effect of the picture. But, there’s still a lot of just standing around and spewing dialogue, there’s still a bit of a lack in physical presence within the cast and there were times where I felt like they all just needed a bit more of a push to physically get their presence out onto the screen. Like I say, on the whole, there’s definite improvement, but there’s still a way to go.

On the cine front? Much like the direction, there’s an absolute improvement here in terms of the quality and output. Composition within the frame is a lot tighter, the swap from an analogue to a digital video format has rendered this film a LOT more colourful, vibrant and less green than previous entries. and sequences are constructed to be focussed, to the point and engaging. Again though, it’s not without it’s faults. While the composition is MUCH more in line with industry standards, the trade off is, once again everything just kind of feels a bit flat and generic, there’s experimentation attempted in shots such as tracks, swooshes and pans, but they never quite land as well as I feel they could have and we even get the occasional return of the “3D conversion kit creeping into the shot” style issues that plagued the first 2 films, only here it’s “lens” creep or boom mics dropping into the shot. Which is a real shame.

They do have a couple of attempts at moody lighting and it kind of works, but it feels like stylisation for stylisations sake rather than it being there with meaningful purpose, and the lack of any kind of lighting stylisation outside of the broadcast room sequences again, just leaves the film feeling a bit like a patchwork of half hashed out ideas and plans.

Performance wise, again; it’s improved! Not by much! But we’re no longer dealing with low budget porn style acting. Now it’s just “not particularly great” acting. It’s still a bit of a poor show honestly with Stephanie Mathis probably bringing the best out of the film as Jessica. She’s not exactly excellent, but she leads the film pretty effectively and is probably the joint best performance this franchise has seen to date, she’s fairly animated, gives a performance that doesn’t feel like it’s the first time she’s ever been on camera…she’s fine. I wouldn’t go as far as great. But it’s a step in the right direction.

Credit also has to go to David Sobel as Tony, he plays the part of an uppity arse entirely believably and *Would* have been the best performance this franchise had seen, had it not been for the fact that he’s just not really actively in the film all that much! They cut back to him periodically chilling in the broadcast room eating jelly beans, but he really lacks those decent moments to really well and truly take the role to the next level. It really wouldn’t have taken much to get him there and had he had active involvement in this movie even just 10% more than he currently does, he’d have hands down been the out and out best performer in this thing. Because his role is distinctly curbed however, it almost feels like he’s been hindered by the script. Which is a real shame.

The rest of the cast are fairly middling. Phil Lander as Russ is okay as a jock who punches first and thinks later…but I don’t feel conviction in his delivery to be honest and he just comes across as a bit bland. Erin Holt as Kat is fine enough, she’s supposed to be playing an annoying “Influencer” type trying to break into the industry and I think she does a fine enough job…I just wish they’d given her a better ending than the one we ended up with honestly, and Adam Van Conant as Nolan, as mentioned draws the short straw, not exactly delivering a BAD performance, but just..really being let down by a script that simply has NO idea what to do with him…had they picked a lane, it could have been a different story…but. Adam can only work with what he’s got unfortunately.

And finally; the soundtrack! And we’ve evolved from low budget, low quality sounding synth pieces. To generic as balls sounding horror and suspense stock music. It’s higher quality, it’s used to actually punctuate key points in the film rather than just being slapped on whenever the editor remembered music needed to be playing. But err…yeh…it’s not the greatest scoring i’ve heard in the world…I mean…it’ll do…but I just feel it could have been so much more.

What DID wind me up was the quality of the cast audio recordings…so for most of the hour and 17 minute runtime…it’s fine. There’s maybe a couple of bits here and there that are problematic. Any time the cast gets louder than normal speaking volume the audio peaks massively and runs WAY too hot. And there’s maybe the odd sequence where the winds a little heavy or the mic just isn’t placed quite right resulting in a patchy recording…but hey, this is low budget filmmaking…I can accept that.

What I can’t accept is the audio quality in the closing 5-10 minutes of the film. I don’t know WHAT’S happened. But the dialogue audio basically has ended up being mixed SO much quieter than the background music to the point that I had to deafen myself to hear what the cast were mumbling about, and even THEN I couldn’t make out every word. It’s…awful, and given this is the big ending to the picture. And you’re ALREADY bullshitting us with who the killer is, screwing around with the sound until it can’t be heard anymore just makes an awful situation SO much worse.

Camp Blood 3: Within the woods didn’t make it to UK shores, instead it had a DVD release in September 2005 by Razor studios. It would later also be put out as a trilogy boxset in July 2006 again by Razor as the “Camp Blood Trilogy”…and since then, it hasn’t been seen since. I can’t actually get my hands on a copy of this film as it’s long out of print, but from what I can gather, extras are pretty thin on the ground and the picture quality, while more than watchable, could probably be cleaned up for a more than half decent HD release with some TLC.

I really want to like “Within the woods” I really do, because this film shows SO much promise. It shows how far Brad has come as a creator and a filmmaker and I really don’t want people to come away from this review thinking he’s a bad one by any stretch, because this is a perfectly serviceable work on a technical level and I’m so happy to see him grow. But I have to be honest when I say, I absolutely hated the ending with a passion and while there has been growth there’s absolutely room for improvement from here. “Within the woods” with a reworked ending and a bit more focus on the direction of the cast could have been a pretty decent middle of the road horror slasher, respectable. But because of the absolutely piss poor ending, the mixed ability audio quality and a combination of lacklustre cine and poor cast direction. I can’t recommend this one. It’s a fine enough watch. But there’s just, so much better out there. Brads on his way and I hope I get to see some of his more recent work in future as I’d love to see where the last 15 years or so have taken him…but for me? “Within the woods” is the best of a bad bunch…and that’s a shame.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/within-the-woods-2005/1/