TYTD Reviews

The only fingers that should be massaging this murderer belong to the long arm of the law! And by ‘massage’ I mean ‘Firm grip with no sign of parole!’

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/tim-and-tonis-guide-to-couples-massage/

What happens when you mash together ‘The Village of the Damned’, ‘The Ambassadors of Death’ and ‘The Toxic Avenger’?! well! You get ‘The Children’ a regional cult horror classic that mixes campy surrealism with a genuinely unsettling premise.

The plot? Well, due to deregulation, two slackers at the small backwater town of Ravensback’s local nuclear facility completely forgot to secure one of the radioactive pipelines, which in turn causes a rupture, leading to thousands of liters of radioactive mist to seep deep into the surrounding woodlands. By the time the leaks at ‘Critical mass’ its chucking out time at the local elementary school, and while taking the kids of Ravensback home to their parents, the school bus drives head on into a cloud of the mysterious deadly fog. Transforming the children into mindless pale zombie like beings with jet black fingernails who’s touch causes any living recipient to burst into a radioactive smoke and fry alive.

A short time after the incident, the ever clement ‘Sheriff Billy’ passes by the now abandoned bus. He decides to investigate, but only finds the school kids possessions and the hat of the bus driver. Concerned; He decides to visit some of the parents in the area to see if the kids have made it home, only to find that a majority of them are in fact missing…Leading to the beginnings of a suspected manhunt to find the kidnappers who’ve taken the children.

Little do the townspeople know, the children have only one thing on their minds, and it involves rendering the majority of the town a burnt up radioactive slag heap. Thus kicking off 2 remaining acts of cat and mouse drama where the Sheriff and townsfolk try to piece together why their fellow citizens are suddenly and abruptly winding up dead in random places looking like they’ve fallen into a nuclear reactor, and how this could possibly tie to the dissapearence of the children!

On the bluray release for this, theres an introduction from Lloyd Kaufman who (tongue in cheek) suggests that the same radioactive chemicals that create ‘The Children’ are the exact same ones that made Toxie from ‘The Toxic Avenger’…and the more I think about that, the more I actually kind of do want that to be the case. The idea that the barrels of toxic waste Melvin falls into in ‘Toxie 1’ are from the cleanup operation from ‘The Children’ not only feels kind of satisfying, but given they both use identical effects for the radiation burning. It feels like this film slots in quite nicely, and that Toxie is some kind of spiritual sideways sequel/spin off to this. I mean, these kids just got a lungful, Melvin got swirlied in it…

Given this was a first time watch, I cant say hand on heart that I absolutely LOVED ‘The Children’…Its quite slow burn and the kills in it are spaced out a little far from each other. But what this film does have going for it is a very unusual and unsettling vibe that really helps carry the thing for the majority of its runtime.

The scripts plot itself is fun, killer kids movies can kind of go either way, but ‘The Children’ seems to know what side of the fence it wants to sit on in terms of tone, and that really helps keep things quite light and able to shift between some more humerous comedic moments and very dark sequences.

I really enjoyed just taking in the ambience of this film honestly, strange choices like having characters like the identical, balding, horny twins ‘Frank & Hank’ were just, oddities you didnt really see that often in films like this at this time…Not unless it was a fully fledged comedy horror.

The characters themselves get a pretty nice range to work with, they almost go for a ‘dream-like’ quality to the characters, everything feels a bit…off for lack of a better word. the characters behave in the same way characters would in a dream, saying things in strange tones, doing things that dont feel like they make sense , but they KNOW it doesnt make sense adn they’re going to take you along for the ride anyway.

In fact, other than the aforementioned pacing issues (long drawn out sequences of folks just chatting about random stuff that doesnt really help progress the film), and the fact the film seems to spend a bit too long in the second act trying (and fumbling) to set up all the chess pieces for the finale. I actually really quite enjoyed this. Its a film that knows what it is, knows what to aim for and, for the most part achieves it.

The directions pretty nice, the directors seeming ‘go to’ for suspense is quick cuts married up to slowed down footage. ‘Friday the 13th’ did this quite a bit and came out about a month before this film did, I get the feeling there was inspiration from that on this to a degree. But honestly? Who can say. ‘Gentle’ is probably the way i’d describe the direction on this one. It only really goes manic during the actual kill sequences, and outside of that, it kind of feels like Sheriff Billy is giving us a tour of Ravensback. Which means lots of very nice and idillic sequences of the surrounding woodlands and the mountain ranges…Does this creative style suit a horror? I dont 100% think it does. But! that IS what gives this film a bit of distinction, because its the contrasting ‘tour guide’ vibes to the direction married up to shots of childred irradiating their parents to death that makes it feel so dream like and strange.

To that end, the cine is solid. as mentioned it all feels a bit ‘Tour guidey’ but the location work is largely rich, deep and well composed. Its nice to see a film barely out of the 70s not afraid to embrace colour and the coding therein. But rather upsettingly, it looks like only the first 2 reels have survived in a condition that allows the remastering process to get the best out of them. With the later reels becoming increasingly more damaged and ‘red’ to the point that all that lovely colour and depth is lost, and we end up in a reddy brown murk up to the end credits.

As for the edit? its rock solid pretty much, a couple of pacing issues on cuts is about as bad as it gets, the film (for the most part) breaths easy on sequence structuring, and it seems like a good amount of B-roll was captured for this one. Which I think was essential, especially for the kill scenes to help really bring them to life.

As for the performances? Gil Rogers and Martin Shakar as Sheriff Billy and one of the childrens father John Freemont play a fantastic double pairing. Billy is a warm and professional character type, we spend most of the movie with him and because he’s given a good range to work with. we as the audience warm and want to invest in him. and Gil plays that with JUST the right kind of charisma to really help sell you on the portrayal. He’s delightful. Martin by contrast is approaching things from a much more fraxious position (as his kids missing) but equally gets a decent range to work with, and essentially pairs up with Billy well, getting to effectively play deputy the Sheriff, allowing him to do things that the Sheriff cant legally do, but will look the other way in this case. He’s fab.

I dont generally comment on child actor performances, so I’ll keep my opinion on the children in ‘The Children’ brief. But I liked what they did, and I think they did it well for the most part. As for the supporting cast? Excellent. just, excellent. This feels like a pretty nicely fleshed out town. I could believe all these characters actually existed. they’re all given just enough complexity to make them interesting, but they leave enough unsaid that makes you really want to know more. Its the perfect position to leave your audience in, because I really DO want to know more about ‘Frank & Hank’ or the diner waitress, or the general store lady. they all have a charm to them that really makes me wish we’d spent a bit more time with them. which is just the right place to leave it.

And as for the soundtrack? It sounds like a rip off of the ‘Friday the 13th’ score…again, the two films came out with about a month gap on each other. But ‘Friday’ would have likely started advertising WELL before this thing got a release, so I could FULLY believe they scored this with ‘Friday’ in mind to try and get ahead of what they believed would inevitably be a ‘good thing’.

And, for the most part it works! it feels a bit cheaper than the ‘Friday’ score, but its largely orchestral and synth pieces that drop in exactly when they’re needed, are perfectly punctuated across the runtime…and while I dont personally gel with this score, I cant deny that it does absolutely work for this film, and that its been handled well.

I really quite enjoyed ‘The Children’ I feel with a couple more watches it could easily gain another half star on the overall rating. I think it would pair up quite well with something like ‘Village of the damned’ or maybe even something a bit harsher like ‘The Beast Within’

Definitely worth checking out if you like creepy children in your horror, and an absolute must see if you like cult horror with a slight surreal edge.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-children-1980/

A movie so ahead of its time that the ‘Found Footage’ genre at this point basically consisted of ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ and ‘The McPherson Tape’. ‘America’s Deadliest Home Video’ would predate even the GENRE titling of ‘Found footage’ by *at LEAST* 5 years. And the fact that it comes out as such a fully formed idea right off the bat is honestly quite impressive.

The film came about when the director was working in an edit studio and stumbled on a VHS tape consisting of 2 hours of unedited vacation footage of a young couple heading to Vegas to see a concert. He got so wrapped up in the story of this raw footage, that he started to wonder if there was something to the concept of making a movie that felt just like the tape he’d found…and thus, this film came to be.

The film is presented in its entirity as a ‘found footage’ piece and follows ‘Doug’ a young ‘CRAZY’ guy who’s just picked up his first video camera, and is just messing around with it. Unfortunately while messing around, he accidentally finds out his wife is cheating on him, so in a spur of the moment act of impulse, he steals their van and decides to go on a cross country journey of self discovery.

And its all very twee and by the numbers for a while until, while stopping off at a quarry to recount memories of his father. Doug accidentally sees something that he shouldnt. and winds up hostage to three armed and VERY dangerous criminals who are in the midst of a spree.

When the gang realise that Doug isnt an immediate threat, AND that he has one of those new fangled video cameras with him, the group decide to take him along on their crime spree as a bit of fun. And slowly they begin to warm to him a bit, and Doug begins to open up to them…Its a bit of an unconventional realationship as the gang still continue to murder him regularly, but they also rely on Doug to help film their sprees for prosperity and eventually even try to involve him in some of their fun.

But actions have consiquences, and soon tension begins to mount within the group, things get taken too far and we hurtle into a 3rd act where emotions get the better of our group, and things turn bloody.

I tried to go into this one as blind as possible, and came away somewhat pleasently surprised as a result. The whole film is essentially presented as if someone was just stop/starting a camera while doing a travelogue, and barring one moment right at the very end of the film where they kind of spoil the illusion by having the camera cut into footage being shot by a professional camera team. I think they recreate that feeling of ‘vacation’ footage really well, with only minor flaws really.

The scripting is rock solid, really nice fluid plotting, the act structuring is messy, but here it works in the films favour, presenting the carnage with unknown gaps of time in between meaning we never really know how long this is going on for.

In fact, for the most part i’d argue that if I HAD just found this on a blank tape in the wild and I had NO idea what this was, at least initially I’D have thought it was real…which is pretty impressive honestly.

There are however some tells, the dialogue is probably the biggest issue, some of the lines are a little *too* polished in places to feel like they were spur of the moment. there are conversations that read like a Tarantino script, which…if this was aiming to be theatrical, would have been fine. But here mark clear tells that this is staged. The total like of flubs or fumbles too dont help the films case as noone speaks clearly and perfectly 100% of the time…

The characterisations are solid, but a little *too* convenient. everyone stays in their character lanes a little *too* closely, we have a group of people in a very stressful situation, but they all maintain the archtypes we’re introduced to in the beginning and they dont really move out of those typings for the full runtime, which is a bit of a shame as, its well known that stress can cause people to be unpredictable and act off character, which would have almost certainly enhanced this film. I mean, whats here still works fine. And there are enough twists and turns throughout to genuinely keep folks interested. But I just wish there’d been a bit more range.

To that end, another thing that works in this films favour, but may not ultimately lead to the best viewer experience is that the pacing is a bit scattershot and by the end of the 2nd act it all starts to feel a little bit repetative. for the most part the film moves at a real clip and keeps a good pace, but there are moments where they slow down, I assume to give the audience some time to sit with the characters when they arnt being goofy or psychopaths actively. And I feel like those moments could have done with another pass through to really get them optimised…They’re nice moments, but they dragged quite a bit at times and it left me slowly gliding over to my phone while they just…did their thing.

Beyond that? the directions immaculate. In fact, i’d go as far as to say this is probably one of the most convincing and best looking ‘Found footage’ movies of the genre. shots are clearly carefully planned and structured to look as close to a novice messing around with a camera as possible. That may be taken as derogatory given this was a professional film maker behind the lens. But I cannot stress enough how hard it is to make something look INTENTIONALLY like a novice is working a camera when your a trained professional. It takes real skill, because, if you actually GOT a novice to try and make this, they’d overcomplicate it. Its one of those moments where you need to be an expert of the craft to be able to understand the mechanisms that ‘keep it simple’.

With that being said however, the cine is a bit of a mixed bag. I love the intentional fumbles, the wobbliness of the camera, the fact that non of the shots are straight and that the majority of the film is either handheld or balanced awkwardly on whatever is at hand, because…in real life, it would be pretty much. But there are handful of shots here that, much like the dialogue, are just a little too polished and well structured, and again, those moments really did pull me out of the film, because I noticed when the rule of thirds on composition was being set up (mainly because the film DOESNT do that very often) because inevitably it meant that something big was about to go down, and they needed to frame it appropriately, because NOT doing it may mean the shot was missed, leading to audience confusion…Like, I know WHY they did it. But it could have maybe been a bit more conspicuous.

Performance wise? for SOV? this is actually pretty solid! I was really impressed by all our players and thought they did a really good job! they have a great physical energy and (for the most part) delivered their lines in a believable way. The issue here came from the dialogue itself, which, as mentioned was at times a little too polished…meaning the deliveries felt a bit unnatural or theatrical for this kind of a production. Cant fault the cast really for that mind. But it did stop things from really getting up to the next level.

No soundtrack either for this (for obvious reasons) but the soundscape presented again is super naturalistic, feels solid and the dialogue is clean, clear and nicely captured. I didnt miss a word!

‘Americas Deadliest Home Video’ is frankly a must see of ANY fans of the SOV subgenre. and is especially important to see for any ‘found footage’ fans. While it IS imperfect, I think this is probably the strongest entry in the genre (at least up to the mid 2000’s) that i’ve seen. An immersive experience and genuinely entertaining. You can find this via ‘Terror Vision’ who’ve put it out on a jam packed bluray filled with goodies. And I highly suggest you nab a copy while you can.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/americas-deadliest-home-video/

Barely a movie. This thing is BARELY a movie, and almost certainly not worth the cost of the celluloid it was printed on. ‘Road of Death’ was one of the first films directed by Rene Martinez Jr. and quite honestly, its a training exercise more than it is an ACTUAL movie.

The plot? HA!. well, the plot is split into 2 halves with the final 10 minutes or so uniting the film together. Bearing in mind this film is 73 minutes long.

So the first half an hour or so introduces us to a biker gang, the leaders got a new girlfriend and in order to formally induct her into the gang, they have to do the initiation ceremony…Which here means the entire gang have to run train on her, but once thats done, non of the gang will ever try anything with her again AND she’ll have the full protection of the gang from then until the end…that plotline, in and of itself, is half the movie…

Now you may be asking yourself, well surely theres some drama? some complex plotting that makes that situation have tension, and intreague and suspense?!…To which I say to you, This is ‘Road of Death’ a first time film attempt by the guy who’d go on to give us ‘Guy from Harlem’ and ‘Supersoul Brother’…So no. what i’ve written above IS all that happens for that duration, the guys ride their bikes around, and sit in the grass flipping quarters…thats it.

The second half of the film is a *little* bit more interesting and follows a group of hippies? (I assume they’re hippies) the guys are all in a swinging band and the girls are all about free love and being one with nature. They spend most of their portion of the film talking about love, the future and what plans they’re going to get up to over the next few days. A good chunk of this is set in a nightclub while the guys reherse their act (and believe me, you’ll SEE them reherse…A LOT.)

Theres a ‘love in’ scene in what looks like some kind of motel room, and then they head out to the woods to go skinny dipping…and that leads us to the last 10-15 minutes of the movie, in which the biker gang spot the hippies and decide to ‘rough them up’ and ‘raise hell’. The hippies all end up injured and traumatised by the event leading one of the guys to go get a gun and do some martial arts on the biker gang, leading to a 5 minute finale which is literally the only part of this film worth watching, ending both predictably and with a thudding dullness.

This felt like someone testing their camera equipment out, who just so happened as a byproduct to discover if he cut all this together, it could be something approximating a movie.

The script is almost non existent, theres barely any dialogue, and what dialogue there is is basica and feels heavily adlibbed. It really wouldnt surprise me if it turned out that Rene on set just gave them a scenario and told them to wing it.

The pacings glacial, with only the final 5 minutes picking up pace to a ‘pedestrian’ level. Non of the characters are particularly interesting or complex, the film completely forgets half the characters even exist in the second half of the film, its going for a largely serious tone, but because its SO bland and uninteresting it somehow manages the feat of having a clear tone, thats so feint its barely decipherable.

The direction is poor, theres a handful of interesting creative decisions but 90% of the film is just locked off mid wide and wide shots that dont really offer anything new. Direction of the cast is painfully safe barring the bike riding sequences, cast members are bolted firmly to the ground or a chair while talking and very little movement happens on camera, with most scenes opening with the cast already in place.

The cine isnt much better, generic compositions with minimal B-roll, badly edited together, colour usage is largely accidental without any kind of coherent themes. the edit itself is rough, with cuts happening seemingly at random and the film really REALLY struggles to stay in focus. Not helped by an incredibly rough around the edges film print sourced for its recent HD remaster.

The performances are borderline ghostly, I dont mean that they’re eerie. I mean that they’re so feint and generic that Most of the time it felt like the cast were reading their lines for the first time the second ‘Action!’ was called. NOONE here looks or sounds good its cinematic sludge.

And the soundtrack was SO good, I dont even remember if there was one…given everythign above, im assuming there wasnt.

A painful movie to sit through, its a 73 minute flick that feels like 100. with an aimless and boring, dragged out plot. Poor direction, even poorer cine, performances that are dire in a way that cant even be enjoyed FOR their awfulness and a totally unmemorable soundscape. This would have been a half star had it not been for the final 5 minutes or so, and 2-3 moments that struck me as ludicrous across the runtime. That was *just* enough to stop me fully hating this movie. But by GOD it’ll be a cold day in hell before I click play on this thing again.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/road-of-death/

‘The Guy From Harlem’ has a bit of a legendary status amongst lovers of bad movies and in particular, listeners to ‘Rifftrax’ who covered the film as their first ever ‘Blaxsploitation’ entry back in 2012. There seem to be a lot of folk who have a real soft spot for this film. So when AGFA announced that it was going to be releasing a mini boxset of films directed by Rene Martinez Jr. and that one of those films would be a HD scan of ‘Harlem’ I took the plunge thinking watching it for the first time in HD would probably be the best way to catch it…and I was…underwhelmed.

The plot of the film follows the titular ‘Guy from Harlem’ a detective for hire as we follow him on two connected cases. The first sees our man acting as bodyguard to the wife of an African national meeting with diplomats in the States to try and broker stronger relations. He’s given the mission of keeping the wife safe and happy during the discussions, with only one rule. Do NOT try to bang the African nationals wife…

You can imagine what happens next…

Once thats over and done with our ‘Guy’ is introduced to his next case, the daughter of a fairly wealthy gentlman has been kidnapped by a mob group led by the nefarious ‘Big Daddy’. The aim? to rescue the daughter and exchange her for drugs and cash. and…well…thats kind of what happens.

This is one of those movies that trades on the awkwardness of the cast being miscast and the budget so low they cant even afford to properly dress the sets. The idea being that we laugh at our lead because hes a guy who clearly isnt comfortable playing the suave cool detective type, but he’s been cast as just that, and its funny to see him (and the other miscast actors) desperately try to fill the roles. They fumble the ‘cool guy’ lines, can bearly do the physical segments without nearly injuring themselves and from thence the humour arose.

But the problem I have with this one is that its just SO so dry…WAY too dry for me…Not helped at all either by the fact this is essentially two 45 minute films slammed together rather than one long coherent plot.

Its not witty enough to be charming, its not awkward enough to make your jaw drop, its not got the budget to be interesting enough to hold my attention. What this is is a first half thats 45 minutes of two people rambling awkwardly in a hotel room set, with the highlight being a scene where our detective punches a maid who is CLEARLY a woman in one shot, only for it to cut to reveal its CLEARLY a man in a dress as part of an assassination attempt (that bad cut did make me laugh).

While the second half actually has some action and fight scenes (really…REALLY badly shot fight scenes and fight choreography that feels like watching pool noodles fight.) but again, its essentially just folks talking either in the detectives office or in Big Daddys hideout…for 45 minutes…awkwardly…

And dont get me wrong, a bit of awkward acting, the odd weird line delivery, can be really funny, especially if its paced out and timed well…But this is non stop across the whole thing, and its exhausting.

The characters are all super flexible in terms of their character profile, they just kind of, mould into whatever the film needs them to be, whether they naturally fit or not. The tones aiming for straight cut seriouis. But the cringey weirdness ends up leaving it feeling like the answer to the question ‘What if Napolion Dynamite was real life?’

The directions flat, lifeless and bland, theres really nothing standout to me, the cine is ultra basic tripod shots for the most part with maybe 1-2 tracking shots thrown in?…But thats about it, colour use is basically whatever they could get their hands on, with little coherency or ‘coding’ put into the set design. it is very literally just thrown together.

The edit is rough around the edges with cuts happening way to late or way to early quite regularly. they didnt film enough B-roll to help keep sequence structuring fluid so the whole thing is just LONG stretches of mid wide shots cutting occasionally to a head and shoulder close up, and then back again…and thats it.

The performances are probably the only reason to stick around. Loye hawkins turn as our lead detective Al Connors could best be described as ‘So close to shaft, but just…ONE CLICK off’ which is JUST enough to make the entire performance awkward. He’s sincere! my GOD he wants you to believe he’s a super cool detective. But he just cant quite sell me on a single line that comes out of his mouth. and the vast majority of the time he comes across as ‘well intentioned, slightly trippy neighbour’ than ‘Badass detective on a mission’

Wildman Steve is here in a cameo playing Harry De Bauld the father of the Daughter who’s kidnapped in the 2nd half of the film. and he’s probably the most GENUINELY entertaining part of this movie, because he can rev up from a 1 on energy to a 10 in about 3 seconds. He does it so effortlessly and he has some of the best deliveries here…That isnt saying much honestly…But its the best we’ve got.

The rest of the cast get maybe a sentence or two to say every 5-10 minutes, most of it just exposition. they dont have a whole lot of physical presence. In fact i’d say a good 75-80% of the performances here are delivered while fixed firmly in place, or sat in a clearly marked chair to avoid them going off camera or missing the frame. for low budget indie film making from the 70s? this isnt *Too* out of the ordinary…but its sparse and absolutely on the lower end of the scale.

And as for the soundtrack? ‘The Guy from Harlem Theme’ is a bop…but everything else is just elevator music to me. I really didnt get into it. and the editing of the scoring was blunt to say the least. its basically either on, or off. No attempt to time a needle drop well at all.

I didnt outright HATE ‘The Guy from Harlem’…But I just dont see a whole lot here to really LOVE. To me? it just felt like an incredibly low budget blaxsploitation film that had a handful of entertainingly bad moments…But not enough to carry the production as a whole.

Who knows? maybe the Rifftrax riff is the ‘secret sauce’ to this whole thing, and a good set of riffers will take this 1.5 star rating up to a 4? It’s definitely piqued my interest to see what Mike and the gang had to say about this one. But unriffed? it was a slog, not one i’d recommend and not one i’ll be revisiting any time soon if I can help it.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-guy-from-harlem/

Watched on Wednesday January 29, 2025.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-six-thousand-dollar-nigger/2/

One that hits a little *too* close to home for me (seriously, the events of this film happened about half an hour away from where I was born) I had relatively high hopes for ‘The Black Panther’ going in, it touted a fairly accurate depiction of events without going to heavily into ‘exploitation’ terratory, and the fact this film carried with it a rattle from the Mary Whitehosue brigade to get it pulled from cinemas (which, effectively worked, as the film was pulled shortly after its release) had me VERY interested to see what it was up to.

As you can imagine, the film depicts the events of the infamous ‘Black Panther’, a chap by the name of Donald Neilson who was trained in the military and began a spree of burgalreys in the late 60s, which developed into robbing post offices in the early 70s, which in turn led to a string of GBH and eventual murder charges, before probably his most infamous incident, the kidnap and (allegedly accidental) murder of a 17 year old heiress he hoped to use as a blackmail piece, in order to take 50 grand from a wealthy family in turmoil.

Of course, non of this goes to plan, and via a series of borderline dark comedy incidents, Donald for one reason or another ends up fumbling things with horrific consiquences.

Donald Neilson by all accounts was a rather nasty piece of work, and his arrest in 1975 and subsiquent death in 2011 clearly made the country a safer place. But what I find fascinating about this film is that they dont shy away from the complexity of Donald as a human being.

Theres really two ways to interpret this film, one is as a man who was failed by society and had a crap childhood and adolesence trying to regain control of his reality and set himself up comfortably, without compromise for the rest of his life, and anyone who gets in the way of that be damned (family included).

Or, this can be read as the story of a deeply disturbed individual, who was further disturbed by his time in the army, who used the skills there to brutally murder and steal from dozens (if not hundreds) of people, who never took accountability for his actions and only showed remorse once his freedom was removed.

This film makes it clear that Donald didnt really WANT to kill anyone unless he felt he had no other option. But at the same time, it doesnt focus on any kind of aftermath of the murders either. In fact, this film really makes it feel like Donald felt nothing towards murder, even though hes quite reluctant to do it in the first place.

The film, I feel leans more towards the latter of the two situations, but I find it quite ballsy of the film makers to not shy away from that former interpretation. They show Donald as a complex figure, a brutal thug and murderer in one scene, but equally as a someone who does have a bit of compassion.

The script itself is pretty accurate to the police reports and court findings on the case, not a whole lot has changed in the time since this film came out and the present day (theres more evidence now to suggest Leslie fell to her death, rather than being murdered by Donald. And this film came out a year before Donalds wife would be arrested for forging postal cheques, something Donald made her do, but a court still found her guilty and sentenced her to a year behind bars) Which does rather keep this film feeling quite fresh.

At 98 minutes its maybe just a *smidge* over long, I think a round 90 would have given it a bit more a clip to its pace. But while it may be a bit slower boil than I personally would have liked, I have to commend the film for really trying to pull the audience into Donalds world and the situation. What really saves this film is the VERY even act sturcturing on hand. all three acts are pretty nicely balanced out, with decent amounts of action married up to exposition, it never feels like its getting too bloody OR too talky. And having that balance across the 3 acts, and having the 3 acts themselves transition rather seamlessly and smoothly, I feel really helps keep this thing afloat.

Given its based on a true story and they take very few liberties in showing what happened, I dont really have much to say in terms of the plotting. I think it does a fine enough job of it, and while they do shy away a bit from character motivations and more personal complexities (due largely to this case only being about 2 years old at the time this film came out) I feel like it does a quite faithful job of presenting these characters as they were.

The direction is a little on the stiff side, its about as 70s Britain feeling as its possible to get, with most of the film taking place either in the pitch black dark, or entirely backlit by archtypical british weather (Murkey, dreary grey skies and drizzle) Its the type of framing where you feel the cold through the screen. Sequences are largely static, with the occasional cut to B-roll helping improve the flow of scnenes. But given a lot of the Panthers activities happened at night, it does really quite limit exactly what they can do with the visuals here, with the lighting mercifully coming to the rescue in those scenes giving us some decen chiascuro pieces.

The cine is much the same, stiff locked off shots with only the occasional dolly or pan to help the effort. Composition is pretty rock solid and i’d say there are some very creative and inspiring shot choices on display here, particularly during the kidnapping segements. But for the most part, it is quite a flat production. and I really wish they’d taken more time for close ups and a bit more experimentation.

Performance wise, its basically a character piece for Donald Sumpter, who I feel fully captures Neilsons awkward and violent mannerisms. he works a perfect range, delivers a transformative performance and is both unpredictable, and at times thoroughly scary. I think he did a fantastic job portraying Neilson and is easily, on his own, more than enough reason to check this film out.

The supporting cast try their best to help set the tone and mood too, for the most part they’re pretty solid, but as the film follows Donald for the majority of the runtime, they feel more like accompanyments to his story, rather than complex and fully fleshed out characters in their own rights…in fact, from what I could see the only other character who gets a bit more than just ‘what was in the trial notes’ is Debbie Farrington as Leslie Whittle, she gives a genuinely terrified performance and looks every bit as petrified as was needed for this film, an incredible piece I think she was marvellous in this.

Throw in a fantastic instrumental soundtrack that marries orchestral pieces to semi-droning incidental synth music (I’d love to hear this isolated) and all in all? ‘The Black Panther’ is a genuinely compelling, if not a little slow movie.

While I think the script could have maybe been a bit tighter, it has strong performances, decent act structuring and it captures the feel of the time perfectly. It would probably pair up well with the much more fictional ‘Town that Dreaded Sundown’ But I can absolutely say this one is worth a look in.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-black-panther/

I dont feel I fully understood what I was getting into with ‘Dracula (The Dirty old man)’ most writeups for it that I found were a little uncertain of what this film actually was, but when AGFA and Something Weird bought the film to bluray, a cross section of film folk I respect got very excited so I decided to take a punt, and im kind of glad I did.

Something I should probably mention up front, mainly because its a key reason as to why this film IS as liked and infamous as it is, is down to the films audio. Or rather lack there of. i’ve heard conflicting stories. With some saying they didnt record ANY audio for this production on set or location, and some people saying that they DID record audio for it, but that it was so awful in terms of the delivery and background noise, they were essentially FORCED to redo the entire audio scape in post production…and they didnt really know HOW to do that in post production. leading to an end result that sits somewhere between ‘Franky & His Pals’ and ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’

The plot follows Mike, some kind of real estate agent?…I assume? Who’s sent a mysterious message from an unknown seller who’s interested in purchasing and reopening a disused mineshaft in the middle of nowhere, and he’s called on Mike specifically to broker the deal. Mike heads out there, and on entering the mine he finds non other than the unliving, unbreathing lord of the undead Count Dracula!

Drack makes Mike an offer, either he’ll kill him outright, or he can be given the power to transform into a Jackyl man at night with superhuman powers, but less willpower than he has now. Where he’ll be tasked with bringing the count beautiful women for him to perv on and drain of blood, and in exchange any woman the count doesnt want. He’ll give to Mike to play with.

Mikes hesitent, but reluctantly accepts and the Count transforms him into the beast, rechristening this monster ‘Irving Jackylman’…and from there? we, basically enter a 40 minute loop of Mike taking a pretty girl out, transforming into Irving and then contacting Dracula who teleports them down into the mineshaft, where he fixes them to a cross, pervs on them for a bit and then drinks their blood. But as the film progresses Irving realises he’s not getting a particularly fair share, and plots to oust the pesky pervy Count once and for all!

And, quite honestly, what makes this film as entertaining as it is is purely down to the redubbing. The script itself is a SUPER high level plot of Dracula commanding a monster to bring him girls…thats the entire movie. But the redub (which feels largely improvised) adds an entirely comedic layer to the production that I feel wouldnt have been there in the original audio.

Dracula sounds like Jackie Mason for the majority of the runtime, and the whole thing is filled with bizarre and awkward improvised lines, line readings that only vaguely match whats ACTUALLY being said on screen, and more often than not. the actors ARNT even talking, they just decided to dub weird and silly improvs over the footage. While I wont personally go as far as to say its hilarious, its mesmorisingly captivating because, you have NO idea what these guys are going to say next and they DO genuinely come out with some funny stuff.

As a knock on to that though, it means there isnt really a whole lot to talk about from a script perspective, I feel like (clocking in at just over an hours runtime) it paces itself about as well as it could, the stark contrast of late 60s grimey, seedy and scratched to buggery film stock combined with the upbeat border ‘beavis and butthead’ style riffing on itself makes it feel refreshingly ahead of its time. and I had a ball just seeing where the film would go next! (It was also while watching this that I realised a couple of clips that were easter eggs on the ‘Monsters crash the Pyjama party’ dvd release were from this movie!’

Direction wise, as mentioned it feels uncannily like ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’ super basic scene building with minimal to no effect work, shots are barely in focus 90% of the time honestly and a lot of it feels like it was set up for function over form. Its rough, im not going to lie. But it at least vaguely holds together like a movie should, and even though the plot is repetative, the combination of riffing in the ADR and that simplicity just makes it get funnier every time Irving kidnaps someone.

Cine wise? its a mess, composition is basic at best and largely unfocussed (both in construction AND in the sense its super blurry) scene building is overly basic and they hang on mids and mid close ups for WAY too long, there really wasnt enough B-roll to help flesh this thing out. This combined with an edit that is impricise and feels very much thrown together, rather than considered does make this a VERY messy piece of work. But! in some regards that does lean into the films favour, making some of the gags and riffs even funnier because of how abrupt the edits are.

As for the performances…well theres only really two characters worth talking about here Vince Kelley as Dracula and Billy Whitton as Mike/Irving. I have NO idea if they got the pair back to redub their voices or if they just found someone uncredited to do it instead. But their physical performances are absolutely dire. they give either nothing, or everything and there is no middle ground…its great. And smoothing over that roughness is some super silly dubbing, Its clear by the time they were redoing the audio that everyone had realised this was never going to be taken as a serious sexy horror movie. hell, even if the comedy was intended from the get go, I dont think anyone would have bought into the other elements. And the pair embrace that, delivering 2 memorable performances that are frankly as strange as the movie itself.

As for the soundtrack? I may be misremembering. But Im pretty sure, what we have here, is a single ONE HOUR improvised jazz backing track dubbing the whole movie. there may be the occasional pause here and there. But otherwise, if you dont like Jazz with a hint of early synth work. then your gonna have a real bad time here.

I was honestly expecting this film to be a bit more ‘Pornier’ than it was. and was VERY pleasently surprised to find out that it was actually much more silly and comedic than it was erotic. I can absolutely see why Something Weird Video had some involvement in preserving and saving this movie, equally I TOTALLY understand AGFA putting it out. its a big daft film, it never quite hits the BIG big laughs. But if you like rifftrax or MST3K, and have a particular softness for ‘Manos’ I think you’ll be very pleasently surprised. Reccomended.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/dracula-the-dirty-old-man/

“How much piss do these convicts HAVE?!”

I picked this film up a while ago based souly on the marketing advertising it as one of the more notorious ‘Roughie’ pictures of the 70s. Which was enough of a batsignal to pull me in, but I didnt *quite* realise what I was getting stuck into…This thing is a mess. a dirty…DIRTY mess.

The films just over an hour long and has a plot so loose its hanging around its ankles. We open on a farm with a banjo weilding title theme song that sets up all the characters, Ma and Pa are farm owners, and Pa is restless for some action with Ma, meanwhile the farmers daughters Martha, Jane and Kate are fascinated with this whole ‘Sex’ thing and regularly drop by the house to catch their own parents ‘in the act’. The local farm hand ‘Fred’ is also on the scene and wants all three of the daughters, who tease him relentlessly for it.

And based on the first 10 minutes of this film, I thought I thought I was going to be in for a fairly generic ‘farm based’ adult feature with maybe a little rough housing and mildly incestuous themes (as is expected in farm porn) But it genuinely surprised me at just how depraved the film gets in places. As what follows is an extended sequence where the daughters rape and pee on Fred, who swears revenge. only; THEN, the film cuts to 3 new characters who are escaped convicts on the run. They find the farm house, find ma and pa and decide to incapacitate Pa, so they can have their own fun (against her will) with Ma.

things pretty much devolve from there into rape based, water sport rampant, sodomizing incestuous insanity from there on in. and while a LOT of this film made me feel a bit uncomfortable, the absolute rediculousness of this film on a technical and thematic level made it genuinely too funny to turn off.

For a starters, the film itself is chaos. We open with the intros to the characters, cut to ma and pas sex scene (which repeats the same 2 minutes of sex footage out of sequence for a full 8 minutes) with AWFUL…AWFUL ADR overdubbing that sounds like two furbys having a conversation through a tin can telephone.

The film then jumps BACK in time to reshow the ma and pa sex scene from the daughters perspective, but nothing new is added apart from some footage of the daughters looking through the window and reacting to the sex. we then get the Fred rape scene, in which the actress who rapes Fred is shown either bottom half being penetrated, or top half reacting to being penetrated, but you only see a full body shot once. it’s SO weird. at first I thought the actress had quit out and they’d had to get another adult actress in to shoot the penetration scenes, but then towards the end of the scene you do get ONE full body shot of her having sex, and then it cuts back to the weird ‘top half only reaciton shots’ or ‘bottom half being penetrated’ stuff…

We then jump WAY back in time AGAIN to go through the entire films run up to this point AGAIN from the cons perspective as they flee from the law, find the daughters raping Fred, head up to the house and find Ma and Pa at it, and decide to run a train on Ma.

and what follows from that is LITERALLY all over the place. Im fairly confident the film only existed as one sentence pitches on cocktail napkins. NOONE seems to know what their lines are or how to deliver them, the writer clearly had NO idea how to structure a script because, everytime he forgets to add in something about a character, the film just…BEGINS AGAIN, from that characters perspective to add in 1 extra scene where they clarify that the character DOES know something.

The tone is bizarre flitting between graphic and unpleasent depictions of rape to utterly surreal line deliveries that literally made me wheeze laughing. I dont know what Zebedy Colt thought he was doing here. But in terms of leaving a lasting impression. He has.

The directions incredibly high level, we’re trench deep in that period of 70s adult features where everyone looks ill, even the film stock looks ill and sickly. everythings starkly overlit, and everything has a dirty seedy green and brown vibe to it. 90% of the shots here are done for function over style, Colt makes, the BIZARRE choice to shoot most of the sex scenes in 3 different styles: Top half with actors and actresses clearly gyrating on nothing, but reacting. Bottom half – which is basically just awkwardly placed, murkey, unpleasent penetration shots. and probably the least appealing of the 3 options; extreme eye shattering closeups of genitles. Im talking top to bottom, left to right, barely focussed shots of butt holes, vaginas and penises looking unclean and unpleasent. I brought a yoghurt up with me to watch with my movies tonight, its staying in its pot now.

direction of the cast seems to be nothing more than telling them bluntly what to do ‘Do her doggy style and say something like ‘Do you like piss bitch?!’..and even then the cast dont *quite* nail even that. its just…obscenely rough around the edges.

And thats not even getting into the cine, as mentioned you have the 3 different shot types for the sex scenes. But this whole thing looks atrocious, its largely shot free hand, shots are hideously composed, have no colour coordination, no attempt at visual story telling, and because of the lighting everythings blown out and its a wonder we can see anything at all.

But easily, the worst…THE WORST. part of this movie, is its edit. I thought my DVD copy of this was broken, I honestly did. So…from the top. Because they didnt shoot enough footage of the sex scenes, they just repeat the footage over and over until the ‘pop’ shot. meaning 2-3 minutes of footage can end up running for 7-9 minutes. they didnt bother recording sound during the sex scenes, so they’ve had to ADR ALL the porn scenes. I hope you like the sound of a man slurping soup directly into a microphone thats recording WAY hotter than it needs to, because that WILL be blasting out at you at an unreasonably loud volume whenever a blowjob scene happens.

The ADR doesnt always match up with whats happening on screen either, sometimes its just actors pissing about in a vocal booth saying anything that comes to mind, no matter how ludicrous or strange. (This is an element I actually really like because they’re genuinely hilarious)

The editor seemingly didnt know how to cut a narrative together, so as mentioned, the film flip flops around in time showing the same sex scenes 2- 3 times from each of the characters different angles with very little difference between each run. Theres NO attempt to try and intercut these 3 plots into one coherent story. they literally do just, restart the film every time they want to add something in.

The film will randomly cut WAY too early (mid sentence during conversations) or WAY too late leaving people just standing around. At at least two points, the film abruptly stops mid sentence and just…sits on a dirty block brown screen for 2-5 seconds before hard cutting to a totally different scene. they frequently intercut flash frames from other parts of the movie randomly into the sequence. and the finale is quite literally a seizure inducing flash frame extraviganza of ALL the footage leading up to the end of the film haphazardly thrown together with no rhyme or reason…I felt like I’d entered the 2001: A Space odyssy time tunnel…I sincerely believe this film was edited in a blender.

The cast are all manic, WAY over the top and just plain weird, which again, Is something I really enjoyed because, their delivery choices and physical presences are all SO awkward and strange, it makes simple lines instantly quotable. Not a SINGLE decent performance in the entire movie…but you want a quotably bad performance? this films got you covered.

And the soundtracks mostly banjo tunes apart from the title track which has a bonus narrator added over the top for good measure. its cut about as well as the footage, so…yeh. its WILD.

Its rare these days that I get genuinely surprised by an adult feature, and with ‘The Farmers Daughters’ I wasnt expecting anything *too* surprising. But this films genuinely nuts. I have no other way to describe it. Its the ranting incoherency of a horny HORNY man who wanted to share his pent up frustrations with the world. I could see some people calling this work offensive, but I think ‘The Sam Raimi Defence’ applies here. In the sense that this work is SO over the top and rediculous that I dont think anyone could ever take it serious, letalone an advocation.

If your into ‘Roughie’ cinema or ‘adult films’ I’d absolutely say this is worth catching at least once, it’s in the same pedigree as films like ‘Batpussy’ for just how incoherent and fever dreamy it feels. You’ll feel fine for the first 10 minutes, but just be ready for that skillet to the side of the head! its a doozy!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-farmers-daughters/

After spending most of this week in the company of Rob Zombies ‘Firefly’ trilogy, there was one question that I had burning in the back of my brain. ‘If ‘The Devils Rejects’ was so enjoyable, and ‘3 From Hell’ was so boring and generic. Was Zombies earlier direction a fluke? Or was there a definitive decline in quality? Well; I found out today that ‘Tubi’ had Zombies next ‘original’ production after his somewhat disasterous attempts at ‘Halloween’ remakes. So I figured, while im in Zombie country, why not finish off his straight horror releases…And I think its been a LONG time since i’ve been quite so dissapointed by a production.

The plot takes place over a week and follows Heidi, a local celebrity DJ and a third of Salems number 1 radio team for the area. They’re your typical, slightly obnoxious Radio hosts. But they’re open to exploring and spolighting talent, on a segment of their show they call ‘Smash or Trash’ The idea is simple enough, Heidi and co source some local bands, play there music and get people to call in calling ‘Smash’ or ‘Trash’ and if its a ‘smash’ they get more airtime and possibly an interview at the station.

Heidi and her Co-host ‘Whitey’ are responsible for picking the titles, and while finishing up the show on monday night, Heidi recieves a mysterious package, a record sealed in a hand carved wooden box, addressed to her birth name, rather than her celebrity name. Weirded out, Heidi takes it home with Whitey and the pair decide to give the record a spin. Heidi is disturbed by the music, but Whitey thinks it would be a great idea to include it in their ‘Smash’ segment, so the next night, while on the air with an expert historian on Witchcraft in Salem, the pair play the record and…strange things begin to happen.

While nothing immediate, Heidi slowly begins to become more and more unwell, the historian asks the name of the artist, only to be told its from a band called ‘The Lords’ which the hosts have instead decided to rename ‘The Lords of Salem’. And what follows is Heidi slowly falling down a surreal and strange rabbit hole into covens, witchcraft and other unusualities. While her friends around her and the historian desperately try to figure out whats happening to their friend, and more about ‘The Lords’.

And the thing is, the way this is pitched on most ‘Bio’ synopsis sites and even on the back of the box for the DVD and bluray version is ‘Local DJ gets sent a mysterious record in the mail, decides to play it on her show and accidentally awakens a coven of pissed off witches who want her dead.’ And, to me? that sounded amazing! A kind of intersect horror thriller marrying up elements of ‘Halloween 3’ and ‘It Follows’ with our DJ having to essentially go into hiding and try to find ‘The Lords’ to figure out why a load of pissed off witches want her dead now. That sounded ace!

This film however, is not. This film is Rob Zombie once again doing his ‘Big Brain’/ ‘Im SO into Horror films, LET ME SHOW YOU’ crud again. Essentially this film is a kind of reimagining/grungey reinterpretation of George Romeros ‘Season of the Witch’ but with a hardy helping of Andrzej Żuławski’s ‘Possession’ heaped in for good measure. But both feel distinctly ‘Dollar Tree-Ized’. Oh! and the 3rd act, bizarrely suddenly shifts into ‘Lair of the white worm’ terratory…I guess Zombie changed channels half way through one of his movie marathons.

The script is slow burn to the point of being immobile. A not insignificant chunk of this film is just Heidi wandering around her apartment, wandering around the town, or walking to and from work learning French. With the rest of the film essentially boiling down to just characters info dumping in very abstract and ‘spiritual’ style dialogue.

All the things I like in this film, are essentially ‘liberated’ from the films i’ve mentioned above, and whats left is an INCREDIBLY derivative film that feels like someone dumped a DVD collection into a blender and hit go. Its so bad on that front that I honestly dont know whats original film making on Zombies part, and whats just something from a horror film I havent seen thoroughly.

The tone of the film is at least somewhat consistently dark, with horror and shock being the main elements being worked on here, I did quite like the occasional peppering of lightness here, it made a contrast that I feel did help lift the production ultimately. Even if it’s ‘lifting’ was from ‘Bad’ to ‘Meh’.

I think the biggest flaw this script has (apart from the endless references to other movies) is just that the characters arnt particularly well balanced. We spend the vast majority of the film with Heidi. But as a character we dont really learn a lot about her. In fact, the film is kind of haphazard with her as a character at times making it even harder to really get a feel for exactly who she is and what her motivations are across the runtime.

A good example of that being that around the end of the first act, they just randomly drop in that Heidi is a recovering Drug addict…nothing leading up to that reveal would give any indication that the character was a drug addict…And once that ‘recovery meeting’ scene is over, we dont really hear anything about that piece of information till the end of the film when (mild spoilers that arnt really spoilers here) she has a relapse.

In fact, that was something that particularly annoyed me about this film (skip the next couple paragraphs if you dont want 3rd act spoilers). At first I thought they were going to try and play with the idea of ‘Is there an ACTUAL coven of witches trying to use Heidi as a vessle for the rebirthing of the antichrist, or is this going to flip things on its head and play around with the idea that Heidi is just an exhausted, stressed DJ dealing with a lot in the work AND home life who’s dealing with all the symptoms of withdrawal, and, on relapsing accepts her fate and ‘makes a deal with the devil’ metaphorically…

But then as the credits rolled on the film, they have a radio announcer overdub state ‘Nah, she actually WAS kidnapped and mind controlled by witches in order to rebirth the antichrist, shes ascended into hell now and 32 women committed suicide to make it happen.’ and I just felt the most pained feeling as an audience member because they had ONE good thing going for this film, the fact it could be read in two ways…But they just HAD to clarify ‘No shes the mother of the antichrist, BYE GUYS!!!’…*Sigh*

She gets a bit of a bad hand in terms of character development and actually giving us something to feel about her. But the supporting cast get an even more raw deal. Her co-hosts, who are basically supposed to be the supporting cast for this movie get a meaty 20 minutes or so across the first act, and the first half of the second act…And then they just dissapear for a HUGE chunk of the movie until near enough the end. I dont know why Ken Foree is in this movie as ‘Herman’. Other than cracking a few jokes on the show, he LITERALLY does nothing to impact the plot of this film in any way…Its wild they actually put a notable name from horror in this role because he does NOTHING. Hell…at least Petricia Quinn got a couple of moody ‘palm reader’ moments here to be fun.

Whitey is supposed to be Heidis on/off love interest here, but after the first act he basically vanishes other than a few moments at work and a couple of phone calls. I dont know anything about him, Herman OR any of the coven who appear in this movie. I know more about the Historian guest visitor and the strange heavy metal artist whos only in the film for 5 minutes, than I do about Heidis co-hosts who are supposed to be main players here…and THAT. is a problem.

Add to that, that the film itself is WAY overlong at an hour and 40 (this should have been sub 90 minutes, and EASILY could have been 70-80) and the result is a script that feels largely cribbed, with anything not borrowed badly crammed into place.

The direction kind of goes that way too, expect references within the cinematogrpahy from everything from ‘Silent Night Deadly Night 4’ to ‘Carnival of Souls’ to ‘Fire walk with me’ across the runtime. Honestly I was kind of amazed at just how much of it was visually borrowed from other films. We once again have Zombie flashing up footage from old 40s public domain flicks, it feels even MORE out of place here than it has done in all his previous movies…Once again, its derivative. with even the grander more interesting creative cinematography choices being ‘half inched’ from films like ‘Cinema Paradiso’ and ‘Dantes inferno’.

Well, Does he handle what he’s showing well? NO! because the problem is, this is all stuff borrowed from other movies and squeezed into his mould. The issue being that he’s shooting ‘because it looks cool’ rather than understanding exactly WHY the shots were shot like that in their respective original movies, quite a few shots here, had visual MEANING in the films they were taken from. it was supposed to give a visual subconcious ‘tell’ to the audience about something going on on screen. But here? Zombies just used it because it looks cool in the moment, and the result is a hollow offering for the most part, with only one or two scenes actually feeling the weight of what they’re showing.

To which end, the cine is ultimately passable, its a dingey seedy looking picture, but its kind of aiming for that, so In that regard it does well, the film does manage to balance a sense of grandness against the more ‘micro’ world that Heidi is slowly being boxed into. But its all a bit ‘by the numbers’ with the only standout shots being the aforementioned ‘lifted’ bits. The edit too kind of suffers a bit because of that, as you suddenly find yourself trying to accomodate random shot types into the scene structuring when it really doesnt work with the visual story telling at play.

Performance wise? This is essentially a character piece for Sheri Moon Zombie…and, I dont want to come across as too harsh here, but she really just, isnt the right type of actress for this kind of production. Rob Zombie clearly loves her (or, at the very least he loves her ass as its shown approximately 200 times in this movie AND in every other movie hes ever made) but I feel very much like this was a miscast. Sheri struggles with nuance. subtle micro movements within the performance that give the audience a better idea whats going on in her head. She can do extremes relatively well, but she cant work a spectrum. She can do ‘explosive’ anger, or inconsolable sadness. But ask her to dial down from there to ANY level, and it quickly becomes sub ‘The Asylum’ level fodder.

Heidi as a role required someone who could work with subtleties and give a full range of emotions across the spectrum to the part, its not enough to just get blunt melee’d with extreme emotions…Not helped either by the fact she just simply cant play genuine shock. she can do ‘Oh my god!’ shocked. But ‘head empty’/’jaw dropped’/’lost for words’ shock is something she just cannot physically show, and this film needed that range a good half a dozen times across the runtime. She just doesnt have it, she has moments where shes good! but the vast majority of the time I just really wished they’d given this role to someone able to work with and balance contrasts.

As for the rest of the cast, its a pretty open and shut case. Bruce Davison, Judy Geeson and Patricia Quinn are all great as the historian and Heidis landlords ‘Lacy’ and ‘Megan’…I just wish we got to spend a bit more time with those characters to really get under their skin, instead of being stuck with them strictly in a ‘need to know’ basis.

I dont know why they even bothered having Ken Foree and Jeff Daniel Phillips in this, Its like when Zombie started working on the script he really built them into be main players…But by the 2nd act he forgot they existed and had to hastily pick them back up in the finale. They’re totally unmemorable and get almost nothing to do in this film.

Probably the strangest performance goes to Meg Foster as Margaret Morgan, the head of the coven. Fosters performance is absolutely fine, SOLID even, i’d say shes one of the better parts of the film! But they underuse her to the point that when she does turn up, it takes you a moment to remember who she even really was, and given they do take some time to make her out to be a terrible horror from realms unknown…she basically just shuffles and cackles a bit…ocassionally she messes around with guts and gets naked… and then vanishes. I kind of wish there was more to her than that…but that was about it.

And finally, the soundtrack? drone mainly…mainly drone…a handful of jukebox tracks help give this something approaching a character…But its not enough honestly…

I think there is absolutely a great idea for a low budget indie film in here somewhere. the pitch that does the rounds online is the barest of bones to this film and I feel if it were to be reimagined, with a creative talent behind the wheel, this could be a pretty rock solid picture…Unfortunately we got Rob Zombie. and the results are a movie once again trying its best to tell the audience how much Zombie loves ‘The Incredible melting man’ and the works of ‘Ken Russell’ and does very VERY little with the original scraps presented here.

If nothing else, this film inspired me to want to go make a much better movie than this. So in that regards I have to be grateful. But I probably wont watch this one again, I absolutely cant recommend it. and I really really hope Zombie manages to get some new movies in his collection soon, because the well he’s mining from is running DRY.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-lords-of-salem/