TYTD Reviews

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/

Y’know? In the whole time I’ve been doing this channel,I don’t think I’ve talked about “Category III” films on here. It wasn’t really by choice per se, it’s just never really come up. So today? Let’s change that! In its simplest terms Category III refers to a rating system that was introduced in Hong Kong in 1988. Now…I’m not best versed in the history of Hong Kong cinema, so do please bear with me, but from my understanding, prior to 1988, if you lived in Hong Kong, there was no ratings system for films released in cinemas. Instead, rather than policing who could go and see movies, they policed the movies themselves with stringent restrictions on sex, violence and even moralistic takes, an example being that bad guys couldn’t be seen to win in the end. Assuming your film met the criteria set out (or could be edited to meet the criteria) your film would be pushed out to cinemas and anyone of any age could go and check it out.

This all changed however in 1986 when director John Woo released a movie called “A Better Tomorrow” , a gangster film that really pushed the boundaries of the then Hong Kong motion picture system. As such, there was an outcry from a cross section of the general public who were concerned that some films may have objectionable effects on children in parallels not TOO dissimilar to the Video Nasty outcry in the UK. After mounting pressure, a law was passed introducing “The Hong Kong Motion Picture Rating System” in November of 1988.

Similar to systems established in the UK, any film that was to be screened in Hong Kong from that date onwards would have to be submitted to the office for film, newspaper and article administration, who would extensively watch the film and grant it both a permit to be screened and a category rating depending on how explicit the content was, with only educational, instructional or religious films being exempt.

Cat I, IIA and IIB are advisory ratings, it’s basically at the discretion of the theatre or the parent to determine if they’re old enough to watch the movie or not. But Cat III DOES carry some legal implications and most movie theatres carry a legal right to check a person’s ID before issuing them with a ticket to see a Cat III film.

With Cat III films being a bit of a broad church you never can quite know what to expect from them, some can be rather mild, a couple of scenes of heavy gore here and there, a few nude shots…that’s your lot. On the other end of the wedge however you can end up with extremely graphic simulated rape films, movies of EXTREME torture gore and violence and much much worse.I think it’s fair to say these films do NOT fuck around.

So! In order to ease into the world of Cat III nice and gently, today! We’re going to be taking a look at 1991’s “The Holy Virgin Vs The Evil Dead” a sort of horror, sort of thriller, sort of martial arts movie, sort of action film with just a dash of comedy that within only the first 10 seconds of the opening title card alone, managed to more or less fully win me over! This ones pretty close to the “tame” end of the wedge, but still has a few moments that’d surprise.

The film opens with a montage of clips from moments we’ll see throughout the film and a weird, border lounge sounding title theme. This is rather misleading because the rest of the film is effectively a bit of an explosion of ideas and not *quite* as laid back as the theme tune would have you believe. It’s here that we’re introduced to Shiang Chin-Fei, a history professor at a local university who’s out on a field trip with a group of young female students. They’re having a bit of a party out in the woods when all of a sudden, the moon turns blood red and a mysterious being erupts out of the shadows and basically massacres everyone, knocking Shiang out cold.

When he finally comes to, it’s a bloodbath and he’s almost immediately taken in by the police who interrogate him heavily before seizing his passport and releasing him when his brother turns up to pay bail. But the superintendent at the station puts two detectives on Shiang’s trail to see if he incriminates himself when back out in the open. While heading away from the station, everything pretty much all kicks off AGAIN when Shiang spots a person who looks almost EXACTLY like the killer he saw in the woods. He almost immediately starts violently wailing on them until the detectives rush in and restrain him, they let him go with a warning that if he tries something like that again, he really WILL end up back at the station.

We then cut to later in the day and a scantily dressed woman called Shaman is enjoying some downtime with one of the detectives who’s been trailing Shiang who goes by the name of Chen. Just as things are about to turn a little…heated. Chen gets a message through on the police radio to say that Shiang has been spotted at a particular set of coordinates…and that’s problematic because those coordinates, are directly outside the house that Chen and his lady friend are currently hooking up in. They rush outside and it’s revealed that Shiang and Shaman have a history together and that he’s here to grab the last of his things from her place.Its here that the beginnings of the main plot start to form.

Later that evening a couple are out having sex in a car, when our killer from the opening of the film swoops in, kills the guy and kidnaps the woman. He returns to a makeshift shrine and after some caressing, he basically eats her flesh. The police turn up and begin trying to find clues as to what exactly has happened. When the guy who came to bail out Shiang from prison rocks up again to take some photos of the crime scene (and in particular its moustachioed shrine) before asking Chen if there were any leads on the case. This is Chow. Shiangs somewhat daydreamy brother, and here he’s passing himself off as a private detective to try and find out what’s going on. He’s quickly escorted off the premises.

After searching the site they find some hair samples, which are later revealed to not be of any known human or animal on earth…oh and they also violently explode on a whim. Meanwhile Shiang and Chow head to the university’s library, where they’re greeted by a specialist librarian who, on seeing the photos of the shrine, takes the pair upstairs to a private archive of restricted texts. It’s here that the pair learn of ‘The Moon Goddess’ a deity from Chinlan folklore based out of Cambodia.

As the story goes, in 300 BC a large number of natural disasters ranging from tsunamis to earthquakes to the moon turning blood red rocked the Cambodian regions. Apparently the tribes of Chinla kneeled and prayed for mercy, at which point a goddess descended from the moon and stopped all the disasters. The tribes were so pleased by this that they set up temples in her name and referred to her as the “God of all mothers” and the “Goddess of the Moon”. They also find out that this goddess requires 3 female sacrifices to feast on every so often, or it is believed the natural disasters will return.

The guys put 2 and 2 together and realise that whoever is doing all of these murders must be doing so as part of some kind ritual for the Moon Goddess. And they pretty much head out to try and learn more. Meanwhile, later that night we’re introduced to Ma-Tian, a pipe smoking gentleman all in white who seems to have some kind of connection to our blood feasting killer. He raises a concern to the killer that he’s being a bit too cavalier and needs to tone things down a bit. He then gives the killer a strange contraption, telling him that in order to regain his full supernatural powers, he’ll need a specific type of woman to feast on, and that the device he’s provided will begin to bleed when he’s near such a woman.

And, almost immediately it starts bleeding when he enters town…and wouldn’t you know it, the woman he needs is none other than Shaman. Who is hanging around with Chen while he interviews the librarian that Shiang spoke to in order to find out WHAT exactly Shiang was looking into. With everyone caught up on each others business, our killer hops a fence and tries to kidnap Shaman, a messy fight breaks out in which the killers beaten, shot multiple times and eventually electrocuted in a pool, freeing Shaman and putting the killer in the morgue…where he seems to stay for about 20 minutes until he’s had his nap. At which point he gets up and kills the mortician.

Back at the library, the librarian and Shiang are working late into the night to try to get to the bottom of what they’re dealing with, and after some nice backing and forthing, the pair seem to be really connecting. Shiang has to leave for the night, but he tells her it would be nice to hang around in somewhat less formal circumstances sometime. Which the librarian seems keen on. Shiang heads out and almost immediately a blinding red light hits the librarian and we cut to Shiang sitting in a police station, being informed that the librarian was found both Decapitated and missing her heart.

He’s clearly upset but Chen offers some good news, he’s being removed from the suspects list and he can have his passport back. Chen takes Shiang and Chow back to Shamans place where the gang all have a drink and Shiang basically announces that he’s going to go to Cambodia to figure out what’s going on once and for all. At which point, we hard cut to Cambodia. Where we’re introduced to a local tribe with a very in demand princess. She’s the object of affection for most of the warriors and princes of the other tribes. The tribe have a simple test to see if the suitor is worthy, they just have to out manoeuvre her in an athletic display (either that or catch her…the subtitles wernt entirely clear) in either case shes fast as lightning, slippery as an eel and agile as a…agile thing. And no ones matched her yet.

It’s here that our Gang arrive in Cambodia and 2 things happen simultaneously, almost immediately Shaman gets kidnapped by Mi-Tians goons and our killer rocks up in cambodia and meets our princess, the pair have a violent exchange in which she attempts to blow him up, and he wounds the princess SO badly she ends up passed out on the roadside, where she’s found by Shiang and the guys, who take her back to the hotel, heal her up and try to get some more information out of her.

And this, in effect, leads us into our final act. As the princess reveals the killer’s true identity, the guys realise that Shaman has been kidnapped and mount a rescue attempt and the true powers of the moon goddess reveal themselves. Will Shiang and his crew manage to stop the curse of the blood moon!? Will the princess put an end to the killer!? And will the other detective who quits the force half way into the film ACTUALLY have a point in this thing? Well…all this and more will be answered if you check out “The Holy Virgin Vs The Evil Dead”

And I’ve gotta say, this film is an absolute delight. It’s a buffet of ideas presented in a fairly clean and concise manner. There’s a bit of something for most genre fans here and while, predominantly I’d say this was a martial arts film. I feel like it’s a bit of a disservice to categorise this as “Just a martial arts film” because layered on top of that martial artistry we have a decent amount of gory horror, some well managed thriller elements, some tongue in cheek comedy and even a hearty helping of erotica. And it seamlessly dips in and out of all of these genres with tremendous elegance in my opinion, ultimately creating an atmosphere that was just a total delight to sit through.

From a script perspective the things pretty rock solid. We have a decent three act structure that transitions smoothly from beginning to middle to end at *roughly* 30 minute intervals, we have some, more or less rock solid pacing that helps keep the film on track and in the groove, and tonally I think they get the balance JUST right in terms of knowing when an audience will have had enough of one type of genre and when to start pivoting into another thing. For example, the fight sequences are lengthy, but they throw in some more traditional action while the martial artistry is going on in the form of guns, explosions and similar. They try to establish the lore of this world’s history, but while doing so they’ll also experiment with special effects or just weird visuals that stop those scenes from feeling like we as the audience are just being talked at.

This is a movie thats seldom dull by any stretch of the imagination, and, to be honest, the only floor I found in the whole thing was Shamans kidnapping, which here, is a bit of a scene stuffing moment. It felt to me like the film was underrunning by 10 minutes or so. So in order to hit the 90 minute runtime they basically created a scenario where Shaman got kidnapped and as a result it allowed the rest of the cast to detour into a subplot for 10 minutes to pad out the clock. It doesn’t add anything really to the plot other than a VERY minor point about how Mi-Tian requires both Shaman and the history book of the moon goddess for some notorious purpose. Beyond that point, it adds nothing to the plot and about 5 minutes after the guys rescue Shaman from Ma-Tian he leads the group down into a cave system where he kidnaps her AGAIN. Which did annoy me a bit.

I’m also having some difficulty commenting on the dialogue written for this film, in part because it’s not in english, and in part because the subtitles included in the copy of the film that I saw, had burnt in subtitles that were in broken english. It looks like whoever transcribed the film for English speaking audiences went down the route of literal translation because there were moments where I had to pause the film and spend a few seconds re-reading (and in some cases re-re reading) lines to not only try and make out what was being said (because the subtitles had no drop shadow, so if the bottom of the screen went white at any point, your not reading them anymore…) but also to then take what was being said and make it make sense in modern spoken English.
Of what IS here that I can talk about, I think there’s some decent lines. This seems like a rather minimalist script, it doesn’t really waste all that much time with line stuffing. It basically puts across what it needs to put across pretty concisely and then it gets on with the punching and the kicking. Which I think is for the best really. It’s a really well crafted script, and having covered a fair chunk of martial arts and foreign action movies in my time. I’d absolutely say this was one of the more solid and entertaining offerings I’ve encountered.

The script was written by Ho-Kwan Lee he has 6 writing credits with his last being in 1992, being completely honest I don’t know if any of these films are more memorable than this one. But this ones a pretty good party, so if this is his best credit. I’d say he did a bloody good job. The film was directed by Chun-Ku Lu. He has 40 directing credits with their last entry being in the year 2000. Again; i’m not 100% sure if they made anything quite as unique as this production in their career. But if they didn’t. This is a hell of a good credit to have. Chun was really more of an Actor. With 54 credits in that field, and I *believe* He’s still active on the scene in that regard. So I wish him well!

On the direction front, this ones actually pretty solid, this is a relatively complex production given the extensive amount of choreography required for the fight scenes, the wirework and the fact that a decent chunk of the film is shot at night and given all the effects and other weirdnesses that have to be factored into the production. The end result clearly shows that Chun-Ku was on the ball with this thing as we have a stylized end product that really pulls out all the stops, and he clearly had experience of managing all the various crews and teams as here? It really feels effortless.

The same could be said for direction of the cast, who are for the most part incredibly fluid in there delivery of lines, giving the film the exact tone they need, Chun-Ku has helped shape their performances into an animated, decently vocalised and consistent production that’s allowed the cast to utilise the set space effectively, there’s a real sense that they were encouraged to work with props and the features within the location as there’s almost constant movement within the frame, which I thought was a really nice touch.

The fight choreography too here is nothing short of show stopping, we have several keen martial artists pulling out all the stops here, with soft touch combat and weapon play that’s worked into incredibly complex pieces of choreography, only enhanced by the speed at which the sequences have been played out AND the choice to speed up the footage to for added freneticism. This is arguably some of the best martial artistry I’ve seen displayed in a movie in a long time. And implementing the wirework into these sequences as well is what really helps pep up the sequences, giving the whole film a definite lift that takes it from being pretty good, to something truly spectacular.

As for the cine? We’re again playing with something really quite nicely handled. Shots have clear thought put into their compositional choices, blocking is implemented effectively and there’s a wonderful use of colour throughout with pastels contrasting rich greens, reds and blues to create something very vivid and striking that suits the tone the films going for down to the ground.

There’s a lot of experimentation on display throughout, especially within the more effect laden shots, and this willingness to try new things creates sequences that are varied, intricate and genuinely refreshing in a genre that has a real trouble with just locking off a camera and letting two or more people wail on each other, uncut (barring crash zooms) for 10 minutes. This is especially effective in the editing around the fight sequences where they’ve managed to not only frame the shots PERFECTLY so that the soft contact fighting feels weighty but also to hide any instances where they’ve had to go no contact. It also makes the scenes with swords, guns and more feel a lot more dangerous than they probably were. Which is EXACTLY what a good, solid sequence should do. It’s tight, well handled and looks great. So a big thumbs up from me on this front.

Performance wise? Again it’s pretty solid! As mentioned, the cast utilise their set spaces well, they’re animate, deliver their lines fluidly, with JUST the right amount of passion and energy this kind of film needed to take it into a slightly more campier area. And critically, they aren’t afraid to add a bit of darkness or pathos to their performances where required. Which is perfect for this kind of film as it creates a wonderful contrast of lighter more mirthy moments working in tandem with hard gore, murder and other bleakness. It’s great.

Of note; Donnie Yen is a fantastic leading man here as Shiang working a full range across the runtime and effortlessly flipping from acting style to acting style as new situations present themselves. He’s a fantastic performer and I can’t wait to see some of his other movies to really get a feel on his range in other genres. Pauline Yeung also astounds as the Princess in this, having a real sense of independence and mobility that just isn’t seen really in films from this time. She’s straightforward, blunt, no nonsense and a total powerhouse here who swipes first and asks questions later. A fantastic performance quite honestly.

Ben Lam as Sgt. Chen is also good and solid, acting as a good foil to Donnie Yen and offering *Just* enough difference to Yens performance to compliment the rest of the cast nicely. That’s not to play down the other cast members however, who also excel here. In fact, I honestly can’t really think of a bad performance in this thing, everyone seems switched on, in the zone and most importantly it looks like they’re having fun. Which is great to see and reflects nicely in the quality of the output.

And finally; The soundtrack! And I think the most distinct thing about this is simultaneously how generic the music is in this film and how tonally out of place it is for this kind of picture. It sounds like lounge muzak. If it was in a romance movie or a comedy, I wouldn’t bat an eye, it’d just come across as overly generic, but a relatively reasonable fit. Here? Well…imagine if Terrifer was almost entirely scored with upbeat 80s pop. because that’s basically what’s happening here. And it’s a frankly bizarre but somewhat inspired choice. I can’t explain HOW it works, but it’s a contrast that I very much got on with. And arguably, given how many of these martial arts movies I’ve see; it’s one of the better scores outside of mainstream examples of the genre.

The Holy Virgin vs The Evil Dead was released on VHS in the UK in 1991 by Eastern Heros Video. I can’t find a big box or ex-rental release for this title. It looks like it basically went straight to a retail release. While I cant find any information to suggest the film was cut on its release. Given the BBFC’s absolute disdain for the martial arts genre, I’d be genuinely surprised if this movie came out in the UK in ‘91 without SOMETHING being trimmed out.

It was released on DVD in the US in the mid 2000’s but it’s long out of print, there’s surprisingly little information on it available online and again, I can’t tell for sure if it’s cut or not. Finally in June 2020 Gold Ninja Video released the film fully uncut on bluray with a wonderful raft of extras and easter eggs, including a full feature commentary, a Donnie Yen retrospective, a trailer pack and not 1 but TWO additional movies included! It was a limited edition set with only 300 copies being produced, but they later ran a non limited, limited edition version that was available via an indie gogo campaign. Which I MORE than took advantage of.

The print quality here is a little rough around the edges, but Gold Ninjas M.O is to present these films exactly as they would have been found in video stores, what takes things to the next level is the fact they provide the supplemental materials that help give the films weight and add story, it makes them come alive in a way that just randomly stumbling on them wouldn’t. which I think they’ve achieved quite nicely here, not only does the film look about as good as it’s ever looked on home media, but the extras compliment this set brilliantly, and should it ever become available again, I’d absolutely suggest picking it up.

The Holy Virgin Vs The Evil Dead was a rollercoaster of a picture, with stunning visuals and fight choreography, solid direction, a simple but VERY decently handled script, fun performances that were interesting and engaging. It’s lively, weird and wonderful and I think it’s one of the best martial arts movies I’ve seen in a good while. Definitely one I can recommend, I think this would probably pair up quite well with something like “Lady Terminator” So, if you’re looking to blow the cobwebs off your martial arts collection, I’d say give this one a go!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-holy-virgin-versus-the-evil-dead/1/

1978’s Supersoul Brother, Also known as “The Six Thousand Dollar-” Noooooooooooo no. we won’t be calling it that…that we will not be calling it…Sees us return after something of an absence to the blaxploitation genre. I have a fondness for the genre, but I always seem to never quite get round to covering more of them. So! I’m hoping to change that today! And here we have a picture that…well, it kind of defies genre definition. The closest I can really pin it down to is that it’s basically a knock off attempt at making a Rudy Ray Moore film, but without Rudy Ray Moore. Instead, filling the position of the man of action is “Wild Man ” Steve Gallon. A comedian, entertainer and media personality who clearly wanted a piece of the pie that Rudy had established with films such as “Dolemite” and “The Human Tornado ”.

Going one further, Steve was actually friends with Rudy Ray, having appeared in one of Rudy’s films “Peaty Wheatstraw”. And so, in 1978 with a skeleton crew, whatever money could be fished out from the couch cushions and a lot of heart. Steve reached out to up and coming talents “Rene Martinez Jr.” and “Laura S. Diaz” with the pitch that he wanted to make a picture that was a comedic take on “Superman” with an all black cast. The first Christopher Reeves film was in production around this time, so Steve presumably felt like it was a good opportunity to capitalise on it. However, the budget wouldn’t stretch that far, and so, revisions had to be made. And as time went on the film’s scope and scale shrunk and shrunk until eventually…we arrived at “Supersoul Brother” one of Florida’s finest outputs…im not kidding.

The film opens in a laboratory belonging to one, Dr. Dippy and his assistant Peggy. Dr. Dippy is a little on the suspect side and is currently receiving funding from two gangsters called Bob and Jimmy in an attempt to produce a serum that, when injected, will hopefully turn the subject into a super strong, bulletproof ultraman. All of the experiments so far have been conducted on mice and they’ve garnered mixed results. The serum has done the job up to the point of transforming the mice into ultra strong killers. But the downside it comes with a side effect where the subject, once injected, will only live for 6 days. At which point they’ll die a painful death.

The Gangsters are happy with the former developments, but not the latter. When Pressed Dr. Dippy says work on a ‘Neutralizer’ that’ll prevent death after 6 days is in the works, but isn’t quite there yet. Not content with the slow progress Bob and Jimmy press Dr. Dippy to jump to Human trials. Dippy says that no one in their right mind would agree to be the test subject for a serum that is not only completely untested on humans, but is guaranteed to kill them after 6 days. But Bob and Jimmy don’t much care for ‘experts’ and basically head out to go and round someone up.

And it’s here that we’re introduced to Steve, a homeless Wino down on his luck who’s the victim of repeated attacks from people in the neighbourhood who accuse him of stealing bottles and newspapers. After a particularly unpleasant encounter in which Steve is knocked out cold. He’s spotted by Bob and Jimmy, who pick him up, take him to the lab and promise him a home and supplies if he agrees to undergo some examinations and testing. Steves out of it but half agrees and before we know it we’re back in the lab and Steves getting a physical from Peggy, the pair hit it off briefly and the results come back saying he’s all clear. As such, Bob and Jimmy push Dr. Dippy into running the experiment on him.
In order to butter Steve up for the experiments, Bob gifts him a place, and leaves him in the company of a young lady in a VERY saucy maids outfit, with the promise that she’ll do whatever he wants her to, no questions asked…So naturally, The first thing on his mind…is a delicious feast and someone to wash his ass…im not kidding, that’s literally all he wants…oh yeah they have sex. But that’s treated as an afterthought, an “Oh yeah! And while you’re at it” moment if you will. Anyway, after a good night’s rest, Steve returns to Dr. Dippy’s office refreshed and ready to undergo some further tests. At the end of this, he’s given some medication and told to rest up and NOT TO EAT A SINGLE THING beyond midnight, as the experiments will formally begin the next day at 10am. (This points never brought up again)

Overhearing that Steve needs to take it easy and be cared for, Peggy offers to head home with Steve to keep an eye on him and make sure he’s as peaceful as possible. The gang reluctantly agree and as soon as they get home, Peggy tries to look after Steve while Steve tries to have sex with Peggy. And this goes on for AGES with a fair dollop of homophobic and questionable humour thrown in to boot! This all leads to the revelation that Peggys a virgin. At which point Steve practically drags Peggy to the bedroom for some rather sketchy “Bouncy Bouncy”.

Finally, the day of the experiment arrives, Steves nervous, but after some reassurance, he willingly takes a jab to the buttocks and BOOM! Within an instant our homeless alcoholic is now the world’s strongest unmurderable man! Which they illustrate by having him bend a steel pipe, lift a heavy safe and as a bit of a treat, Bob takes Steve back to the scrubland where the people who accused him of stealing papers hang out, where Steve gets to wail on them uninterrupted for a bit.

And it’s here really that we enter our final act. As Bob manages to convince Steve that he’s in the business of testing other businesses’ security systems and that, as a practical joke. He wants to take Steve to a jewellery store and take their safe away while the front desk is distracted. Steve questions the plan because it doesn’t sound like THAT funny of a joke. But Bob responds that it’s a joke that the Jewelry store owners would understand and that it’ll also help them tighten their security when they see how easy it was for someone to walk in and take their safe. Steve seems happy enough with this, and with that! The raid is on!

In a…actually kind of slow going final act. Will Steve find out the truth about Bob, Jimmie and the super serum? Will Peggy and Steve let their true feelings be known!? and…Why is Dr. Dippy living as an underground dodgy doctor when he’s been able to design a serum that can literally *temporarily* create an army of super soldiers. The total value of the project is $6000 which in modern day money is almost $27 grand. Which is NOTHING compared to some budgets for medical research/testing or production. This man made super serum for around the same cost of some cars. There would be some companies willing to bite his arm off for that kind of patent. ugh…I don’t know…what I DO know is that all this and more WILL be answered if you check out ‘Supersoul Brother’

And to be completely up front with you, this movie isn’t very good. Apart from the fact that the films only 74 minutes long and that it takes 45 minutes for the ACTUAL advertised plot of the movie to begin. I found it to be a rather flat and uninteresting experience in all honesty.

For starters, the scripts a bit of a piss take honestly. There’s some serious structuring issues on display here, with the first and second acts kind of blending together into a one note, repetitious and padded mess. Seriously, all that really happens in the first 2 acts of this thing is, we get told about the serum, Bob and Jerry find Steve, bring him in, feed him, clothe him and let him fuck. And then it’s the final act! There’s a weird tonal shift in the 3rd act as well. The first 2 felt like some kind of ‘real life’ ‘drama’ (I hate using that term here because it doesn’t fit, but it’s the best I can come up with) with heavy handed and dire comedy elements dropped in randomly, but the third act feels more like a narrative driven thriller with a lot more physical comedy present. Which is a bit jarring honestly, it kind of feels like there’s 2 films here (everything up to the jab and post jab) battling it out for the audience’s interest. Which is quite unusual for a piece like this.

As I mentioned earlier this film is very reminiscent of the works of Rudy Ray Moore, and what I like personally about Rudys films is that his films not only have a sincerity about them that came from Rudy as a person. But the comedy throughout was a layered mixture of intentional and unintentional gags. I personally find the standup sections of ‘Dolemite’ to be a bit dull, but I LOVE Rudy’s characters when they play larger than life and oftentimes it can just be the way he delivers a line or reacts that can be the saving grace of a movie.

Here? Steve is clearly trying to make a film that apes Rudy’s style. And while I wont deny he has heart and this film *largely* feels sincere. It completely lacks that element of the unintentional. There’s maybe a handful of lines that are delivered in such a way that raises a chuckle, maybe the occasional look to camera that could startle a titter. But the vast VAST majority of the film’s comedy comes from Steve trying out his standup material. And he’s just not got that solid a set to carry the film on that alone in my opinion. His attempts at being over the top feel forced and at times can just come across as irritating. I can appreciate what he’s trying to do here. But I couldn’t escape the fact that this was a film built on bad comedy, with maybe a 25% hit rate if i’m being generous and the cheapness of the whole production just made things feel a bit desperate. This film absolutely didn’t need attached to it.

Only making things worse, most of the dialogue is over written, convoluted and lacks fluidity. I mean, the cast don’t help the situation (more on that later) but this is a very wordy, very ‘written’ sounding script that really lacks the sharpness or finesse that a comedy like this needs. I think it absolutely needed a few more drafts, and I was left thoroughly irritated by the fact that the film’s main marketing point, the thing that SOLD the movie. Was relegated to 24 minutes at the back end of the picture with next to no actual development of that idea beyond a single heist and a total lack of spectacle when it came to the ‘superhuman’ powers. All we get is Steve lifting 2 heavy things about 4 times total. With over 50 minutes of the production being a total runaround waste of time.

Had they structured the film properly, the first act would have dealt with them finding Steve, preparing him for the experiment and getting him jabbed, the 2nd act would have been him learning about his powers, maybe doing a few spectacular things and maybe a couple of heists. And the 3rd act would have had Steve find out he’s being played and the confrontation with the doctor, Bob and Jimmie. Instead, it’s a wash out.

As mentioned the script was written by Laura S. Diaz. This is her only writing credit and if IMDB is to be believed, she never worked in film again. The film was also amended and directed by Rene Martinez Jr., an at the time, up and comer with 3 directing credits and 2 writing credits. Their best known work is probably another blaxploitation flick “The Guy from Harlem” but their other credit “Road of Death” is apparently well liked and known too. This was their final directing credit and they also seemingly dropped away from directing shortly after this film.

On the direction front. Again, it’s just…not that great. We’re dealing in the absolute barest minimums here. Rene is able to wrangle lighting, sound and camera to work together in such a way that’s produced a product that JUST…JUST manages to hold itself together across the runtime. But that is by NO means an indication of quality. While these elements have resulted in a production that can *just about* be CALLED a production. They’re all running fairly independently and as such there’s a definite case of peaks and troughs in terms of what’s been presented. Good direction wrangles all the elements of cast AND crew to create a piece of cinema that is both competent, clean and coherent while also giving the film a sense of style or distinction that acts as the directors signature mark.

This film is not distinct, it’s a film from 1978 that almost looks as rudimentary as some of the poverty row monster movies of the 1940’s. In fact, in some ways it’s even less than the poverty row monster movies of the 1940’s because at least THOSE movies would often have action, suspense, a monster of some description. This thing has NONE of that. Its flat, lifeless “Get the job done” fodder, that almost HAD to be that way due to the incredibly low budget of the production. There wasn’t a lot of money for sets, props or other things, so the majority of the film is shot outdoors or in locations that the crew had access to film in. As such it feels VERY cobbled together and spur of the moment.

Direction of the cast doesn’t fare much better, we have a rather small cast list, with most actors outside of the core cast of 5 appearing on screen for less than a couple of minutes each. And not ONE person here outside of Steve looks like they have a SINGLE idea what the hell is going on, because the cine is so basic, and no doubt retakes were limited due to the cost of film stock. Most of the actors stay firmly bolted into place throughout there scenes, reading their lines as if it was the first time they’d ever seen it (with mixed results) largely with a look in their eyes that would suggest that something horrendous was going on just off screen. They seem confused, aimless and I genuinely get the impression that the director, AT MOST, talked them through a scene and then just did a take until they got the lines as close to right as possible. It’s shocking quality…it really is.

The cine is positively lifeless. Shots are washed out, drab and uninteresting, with no thought, rhyme or reason put into composition. Everything appears ‘floodlit’ meaning a lot of the sets have heavy shadowing as the cast go through their scenes, there’s almost no experimentation, everything is basically wides, mids or head and shoulder reverse shots for conversations. The most extreme cine we get is a pan for god’s sake…it’s just dire…it really is.

It does get worse though, because the cine is SO basic, it has a knock on effect with the sequence building, and I am 90% convinced this thing was cut with a knife and fork at this point. For the most part, they’re overly basic sequences with maybe a couple of shot types cut in to help break up the flow, nothing intense, nothing creative. It’s better than just cutting raw rushes together. But not by much. What IS a problem however, is there are some scenes where, for some reason, they’ve absolutely failed to cut the film correctly.

The one that sticks out in my mind is the footage around the Jewelry heist. For some reason, they decide to use smash cuts from an ‘over the shoulder’ 2 shot of a conversation, to a reverse shot thats a close up head and *sort of* shoulder shot of the jewellery store clerk. But the way they’ve timed the cuts means she’s always *just* Out of time in responding to the conversation, they cross the line to put her face on screen, and they use mixed audio sources, meaning she goes from sounding distant in the over the shoulder shots, to crystal in the forward facing ones.

To your average joe, they may pick up on the fact that something is not quite right with the sequence. But as an editor. This film made me want to commit war crimes. It’s just so underwhelming, irritating and poorly planned, it’s worse than some of the lower budgeted SOV movies I’ve covered on here in the past, and THAT’S saying something. Not helped either by the fact that the existing film print for this picture, as you can see, is absolutely trashed. I’m told that the DVD release for this is actually a MASSIVE improvement over previous releases, which were apparently basically unwatchable. But even so, this looks rough.

Performance wise? The only performer worth your time here is Wildman Steve, he’s got the largest share of lines in this movie, he tries to keep animated and lays the jokes on thick and fast, and overall I’d give him a pass. He doesn’t have much in the way of range here. But he’s solid enough. Joycelyn Norris as Peggy is fairly solid, but unfortunately doesn’t get too much to do here. Which I am genuinely a bit upset about because, of what I’ve seen of her performance I think she could have had scope to be a decent ‘Straight guy’ to Steve’s pratfalling mischief. Instead she’s relegated to a supporting role that doesn’t give her a lot to do, but I personally think she’s a bit of a hidden gem here and that, with the right director she probably could have given a relatively solid performance.

The rest of the cast really kind of failed to ‘light my fire’ they all felt stiff as a board and twice as wooden. As mentioned, none of them seem to really know what’s going on for most of the runtime, most of them do NOT deliver their lines confidently and, for the most part I wouldn’t be surprised if they either had cue cards off screen or if there was a chronic need to look up lines because, whats on display here has got to be some of the worst read dialogue i’ve heard this season…and THAT’S saying something. They barely animate, they don’t utilise props or set space effectively, they might as well be on a black backdrop for as much as the set matters to these cast members. It’s honestly ridiculous.

And finally; The Soundtrack, if you like slightly demented funkadelic sounding music that sounds like it’s being played underwater, this is your soundtrack! It’s muffled, bizarrely utilised with some scenes getting music and others having total silence. And it sounds almost like they raided a sound library and grabbed whatever they could. Because the mixed quality of the recordings is beyond distracting. It’s not a hit by any sense of the word.

The general audio quality is a mixed bag too, I have to assume they didn’t get much in the way of room tone when they shot this movie, because what’s presented here is a patchwork of audio recordings ranging from relatively clear for low budget 1978, to basically inaudible. But rather than picking the best take and synching sound around that, they cut from audio take to audio take with no processing to help smooth over the cuts. As a result it’s a VERY jankey mix with a balance that goes all OVER the place and is incredibly distracting. This is not a great cinematic experience.

Supersoul brother was released on VHS by Xenon Home Video in 1989, I’m also led to believe there were a couple of bootleg iterations of the movie floating about before ‘89 and after the official release. But Im struggling to nail down any specific dates or labels. I don’t doubt there were boots floating around, I just can’t find anything concrete. But if you know of any, do let me know in the comments! From what I can gather it also had some DVD bootlegs in the 2000’s, but its official DVD premier arrived in 2015 when Vinegar Syndrome teamed up with the AGFA to put the film out on shiny shiny disc.

As mentioned the picture quality is pretty atrocious, and this is the film with some level of remastering so, lord knows what the condition of the unremastered film print looks like. It’s watchable, But it’s a FAR cry away from their usual output. No extras on the release either! Just the movie and a scene select on a basic menu. Which is a shame, as I’d genuinely love to learn a bit more about this picture, trivia is very thin on the ground. So this could have been an ample opportunity to help make the film come alive. Instead, it does rather have a bit of a ‘dumped on disc’ feeling about it. In either case, it went out of print in 2023 after one of vinegar syndromes flash sales, but there are copies floating around on Ebay if your curious…not that i’d recommend it.

Supersoul brother has heart. To a certain extent it has charm. But that’s where the niceties begin and end unfortunately. This is a production that, ultimately has been hindered both by the lack of budget and the lack of a skilled cast and crew. In proper hands, I haven’t a doubt in my mind that this film could have been one of the greats, the pitch sounds brilliant! But because money was so tight and the crew were winging it for the most part, it left a film that has an underdeveloped and overly wordy script, direction and cine that’s basic, bland, lifeless and drab. A patchwork soundscape, performances that could best be described as “startled” and comedy that has an incredibly low hit rate, with comedians trying WAY too hard, to the point that it almost becomes irritating. And that’s not even the half of it.

The only way I could recommend ‘Supersoul Brother’ is if you were doing a Rudy Ray marathon and wanted something to help add a bit of variety in, in between pictures. Outside of that, this films a really poor show in my opinion, not one I’ll revisit on its own and not one I can recommend, even if you’re into the blaxploitation genre. There are WAY better productions out there and honestly? This isn’t worth your time.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/supersoul-brother/1/

1981’s “The House By The Cemetery” Is a supernatural horror slasher from our good friend in gore and gross out Lucio Fulci. It’s also the concluding part of Fulci’s VERY loosely planned “Gates of Hell” Trilogy, and yes. I realise im doing this thing ass backwards, but when it comes to category 1 Video nasties (Which this VERY much is) sometimes we have to approach things the wrong way to get the results we need…hell if i’d have started with “The Beyond” then NO ONE would have been happy, so we’re gonna be working backwards through this sucker. And honestly; this one might end up a bit “Short and sweet”…

The film follows Norman, Lucy and their rambunctious little crotch goblin “Bob.” a fairly typical family living in New York who are soon to relocate. Y’see, Normans a researcher and he’s just been assigned a project to complete on behalf of his late colleague professor Peterson. Professor Peterson had a rather sudden and unfortunate demise in which it was discovered he was having an affair when his mistress was found brutally murdered and the professor was discovered a short time later hung in a nearby library.

So! Norman decides that this is the absolute perfect time to relocate his wife and kid RIGHT into Petersons former bloody abode “The House By A Cemetery” in Boston., with the aim of completing Petersons project and maybe finding out a bit more about how Petersons end came about. While all this is going on Bob starts receiving strange messages from a mysterious girl called May, who warns him to try to convince his family to avoid going to the house by ANY means necessary, this of course doesn’t really work out as the parents listen to what Bob has to say before pretty much immediately dismissing what he has to say because he’s like…8.

In any case they head over to the estate agents to get the keys and May tries once again to stress how important it is that Bob ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT GO ANYWHERE NEAR THE HOUSE. And Bob responds to this by getting out of his parents car and going to chill in a nearby patch of grass with some kind of strange doll he just…found. His parents find him in about 10 seconds (after the film gets an artificial tension scene out of the way because…y’know…runtime and all that) and with that, they make a quick jaunt to the house!

And in a tale as old as time, within minutes of landing and getting set up TWO key factors are brought up, one is that Lucy is off her medication because the side effects include “Hallucinations” and the other is the appearance of a mysterious, attractive and minimally spoken live in babysitter for Bob in the form of Anne, who has a weird fixation with the house and in particular the basement. Which is heavily boarded up in such a way that would imply that you probably shouldn’t open the thing, so you better believe that things getting opened up in the next 10-20 minutes.

After starting to get settled in we then cut to Norman, who’s up working late on Petersons research when he hears an unusual cry that sounds like a child. So he heads over to Bob’s room…but Bob’s fast asleep. Heading away he hears even louder commotion coming from the kitchen and on entering finds Anne by the basement door trying to pry the wooden bars off with the crying seemingly coming from within.

Nonplussed, The next day, Norman heads to a meeting at the library to catch up with one of the overseers of the project, who comments that it’s so nice to see him as it had been a while since he last saw him and he asks about Nomans daughter…which puzzles Norman as this is the first time he’s been here and he doesn’t have a daughter. While that’s going on Lucy begins to more properly clean up the house and while moving an old rug from the living room she stumbles on some kind of stone artefact. A stone artefact that’s a little too religious to REALLY just be a stone artefact…it is infact…a tomb. The tomb of one Dr. Freaudstein.

A short time after discovering the tomb, Lucy too begins to hear the noises, they get louder and louder to the point that she has a full blown breakdown and that night after returning from work, Norman finds Lucy behind a chair weeping and mumbling to herself quietly. After some time trying to bring her back down to earth, the pair discuss the tomb, but Norman dismisses it as “A culture thing” claiming that, in the winter it was so cold that the ground was too hard to dig up, and that, in Boston at least. Burying a family member inside your home was as much a tradition as Christmas or labour day. (Any Bostonians watching this care to confirm?)

After an extended sequence in which Norman and Lucy decide to investigate the basement and come a cropper with some bats leading a particularly gory stabbing scene, May telepaths Bob once again to tell him to get out of the house, Lucy and Bob head out to run errands and while they’re gone the estate agent for the property turns up for a chat. Realising they’re out, she starts to head out herself, but when she steps on Freudsteins tomb, it crumbles, causing her to fall through the gap, damage her ankle at which point, a mysterious figure with necrotic hands appears brandishing a poker, with which he stabs the estate agent repeatedly before dragging her off to god knows where.

Some time passes and Lucy becomes increasingly unsettled by Anne (the big weirdo) so she goes to talk to Norman about it, Norman doesn’t really say all that much about her, but uses the opportunity to fill Lucy in on his research (…I love it when men are there emotionally y’know?) It transpires that Dr Peterson’s research had led him to the work of one Dr. Freudstein. An early 20th century surgeon who was dabbling in genetics and experimental operations. Norman is convinced that Peterson was already going a bit goofy, but when he relocated to Freudsteins house where all of the experiments took place…it was enough to drive him fully over the edge. Which is confirmed the next day, when Norman has to head to New York to speak to his boss to get permission to look into the Peterson/Freudstein link where he finds a personal tape from Peterson in which he madly rambles on about Freudstein amongst many MANY other things. Norman promptly destroys the tape and races home.

As we enter a…rather confusing final act really in which Bob and Mays relationship continues to grow and the mysterious noises from the house continue to get evermore present. Will Norman finally discover what Peterson was up to?Will Anna find out what’s in the basement? and …Why DO so many people hate Bob? Like, I don’t exactly “like” him…but I don’t hate him NEARLY as much as most of the “horror community” profess too…I’ve seen much more annoying kid characters in horror beyond him…eh…Either way, most of these questions will be answered if you watch “The House By the Cemetery”.

And, honestly? Of the three “Gates of hell” movies, this ones probably the one that makes the least amount of sense (mild spoilers from here on out unfortunately, but it’s kind of necessary) So, the biggest problem the script has is purely around how wishy-washy it can get in places when it comes to what’s ACTUALLY important and real, and what’s just…not. They regularly focus on detail or information across the films runtime that just, isn’t really relevant. At one point when Norman and Lucy go to explore in the basement there’s a fleeting moment where the camera focuses on a ring. And you think “Ahh! That’s going to play into this somehow in some way!…” Never gets bought up again.

The point of Anne as a character in this is totally confusing and ultimately pointless…At first she’s introduced with the hint that she knows something that the family don’t when it comes to what’s going on in the basement. The film then ramps things up even MORE implying that Norman may be about to have an affair with Anne in the same way that Peterson cheated on his wife with a mistress at the house (giving some hint that the house has a malevolent presence) THEN the film kinda starts to imply that Anne may in some way be influencing Bob as she take him out to places fairly regularly but has inconsistent or vague recallings about what she ACTUALLY did with Bob for the hours that they were gone.

None of that matters. Because it transpires that, No. Anne doesnt know what’s going on in the basement (at most she might have a hint of an idea. But given her reaction when she actually SEES what’s going on down there, I don’t think she had a scooby) NO. She isn’t going to have an affair with Norman, in fact, apart from 2 scenes I don’t think the pair even directly talk to each other…and NO. she isn’t influencing Bob. Anne is a macguffin of a character, invented to artificially extend the runtime and very little else, she turns up, acts weird, then goes into the basement and gets decapitated. And the fact that the film invests so much time introducing and building her up only to do nothing with it upsets me.

There’s a LOT of just…totally random moments in this where you get shown something, or a character will say something in passing that makes you think. “Oh that’ll be important” and then it just…never is, or if it does come up again it’s for completely out of left field reasons that don’t make a whole lot of sense.

I also kind of disliked the ending. (Skip to the “Who wrote this” chapter if you don’t want to be majorly spoiled from here) but…at the end of the film, it’s revealed that Dr. Freudstein has been living in the families basement and that he’d been working on an experiment to achieve immortality by draining people on a cellular level of their “energy” in order to revitalise himself. They all head down to the basement, where Freudsteins waiting for them, a scuffle ensues and Norman gets killed, Lucy and Bob try to escape, but the door won’t open, leading them to try and escape by busting out of the the tomb entrance in the living room (it turns out it’s actually a fake tomb entrance that Freudsteins been using to get in and out of the house)

There’s another scuffle, Fruedstein grabs Lucy and drags her down the stairs where she’s murdered off screen and in the final moments, Bob manages to just about bash through the rock where he’s rescued by May. But it turns out that, at some point in the rescue, Bobs been transported into a version of hell, where he’s to spend the rest of his days with May and (presumably) May’s mother. That’s the end of the movie.

And…while it’s refreshing to have a horror film from this time end with all our main characters dead (including the children…ESPECIALLY the children…) it did rather lead to a mute closing. I had a lot of questions, not a lot of answers and just felt fairly deflated. I mean, basic stuff here but…how has Freudstein managed to live from 1915 (his “death”) to 1981 when the only people we know who’ve lived in the house was Doctor Peterson and that HE only moved there to learn more about Feaudstein recently. How can the basement of the house be one of the “gates of hell” but also the tomb entrance/exit ACTUALLY be a different gate to hell, did Anne have some idea about all this or was she LITERALLY just a mcguffin.

I dunno…I just found it very underwhelming that Norman and Lucy both got killed (Lucy offscreen even! Which is a slap in the face honestly) and that the closing moments of the film are just “Well…everyones dead…g’night folks! Thanks for watching 3 of these!” I’d have just liked a bit more to the whole “Gates of hell” thing beyond “there are some gates to hell all around the world.” and that’s it. Because, as it stands…it’s a very underwhelming closure to what was otherwise an interesting idea.

Beyond that however, we have a relatively solid 3 act structure that has clearly indicated gear changes and, for what it’s worth, the pacing is pretty solid too, i’d say this is easily the best paced of the “Gates of hell” trilogy. It’s managed to massively slim down the padding and wordy exposition dumps while also keeping up the amount of violence, blood, guts and gore that anyone coming to a Fulci film expects.

I feel tonally after “City of the Living Dead” and “The Beyond” this film gets the balance between the cheesy and stereotypically generic Italian horror movies of that time and the more abstract and border absurd nightmare fuelled elements just about right. While “City” was decent, I found it WAY too cheesy and generic to be something I’d go out of my way to catch, especially given there are way more cheesy and entertaining movies out there from that time that do similar things, but more fully commit to the bit.

Equally; while I really liked “The Beyond” It did drag a bit in places because of the change in direction to something a little more serious and a bit more symbolic. This film is still fairly bedded into the abstract and subtextual world that “The Beyond” established. But it also isn’t afraid to embrace the guts, gore and gross out side of cinema that “City” pretty much lived and died by. It’s pretty central between those two movies, leaning ever so slightly towards “The Beyond” and I feel in doing that, it’s probably made the right move. It didn’t *fully* win me over. But I think of all three entries, from a script perspective at least, this was the one that most won me over, and it’s probably the film I’m most likely to put on on a whim out of the three.

In terms of dialogue? It’s…well it’s an Italian movie dubbed into English. It’s definitely not the worst i’ve seen, things are fairly fluid and make sense (for the most part) but don’t go into this expecting decently crafted, naturalistic and engaging dialogue. It’s messy, broken up, not as bad as something like say… “Bloody Moon” but not quite as “possible” as these things go. What I will say though (and I need to stress this because its important) is despite the lacklustre dialogue, despite the ropey ending and the total brick walls that the plot throws up randomly. This script is FUN. its daft, gory and *mostly* entertaining FUN. on a professional level, it deserves a drubbing. But as a movie going member of the public and schlub on the internet who’s been at this for over 6 years, I can’t deny I didn’t have a good time with this thing. Which means it’s pretty much halfway there to winning me over!

The script was written by Elisa Briganti, Dardano Sacchetti and Giourgiou Mariuzzo. Elisa has 15 credits in a career spanning over 23 years with highlights including “Zombie Flesh Eaters”, “1990: The Bronx Warriors” and “A Blade In The Dark”. Dardano has 96 writing credits across a 42 year career with hits including “A Bay of Blood” and “Cannibal Apocalypse”. His last credit was in 2013. And finally Georgiou has 52 writing credits, mainly for lots of dirty DIRTY erotica, but he also wrote “The Beyond” and “Aenigma” with his last credit being in 2012.

The film was directed by none other than a true Maestro of Italian Horror Lucio Fulci. The man was a powerhouse of the genre churning out pretty much all the tent poles that established the Italian slasher genre of the late 70’s and early to mid 80’s. Don’t believe me? *ahem* “Zombie Flesh Eaters”, “Cat in the Brain”, “The Devil’s Honey”, “The Beyond”, “City of the Living Dead”, “The New York Ripper” and the absolute STANDARD of horror cinema “Manhattan Baby”…okay i’m kidding with that last one, but Still..the guy knew his horror onions.

In fact he’s only one of TWO directors to have 3 or more pictures on the Section 1 Video Nasties list. With the only other person sharing such a title being none other than Jess Franco. He was a workhorse right through to the end, sadly passing away in 1996, but even then he still had several projects in active development with his final credit getting released a year later in 1997. The man WAS Italian horror. In the same way that Carpenter or Craven have come to define US horror of the 1980’s Fulci WAS one of the prominent horror directors on the scene at that time. And his body of work is as strong a case as you’ll find for that era.

On the direction front, What we have here is a much more subdued but focussed offering from Fulci. This isn’t “The Black Cat” or “Manhattan Baby” or “City of the living dead” where it’s constantly cutting to crash zooms, extreme gore or violence. It’s much more muted than that, but instead, it trades in atmosphere with the occasional bout of extreme violence to tide the viewer over. And I think it’s tight as a nut quite frankly. With this film, he’s managed to unite the cast and crew on a focussed goal that I feel has been achieved with a level of stylish zeal and relish. It’s by NO means a “showy” production, that’s not its function, but it IS a film that manages to build a wonderful sense of atmosphere that it maintains across its entire runtime, seldom faltering. I can honestly just really appreciate a well made rock solid production like this that DOESN’T feel the need to get up in my face, it knows it doesnt NEED to sell me anything, which means it can just crack on with what it’s trying to do.

Direction of the cast is fairly well handled too, they all seem highly animated and seem to have a good grasp of what they’re doing. A LOT of information is expressed through the occasional glance, the way props are utilised and the way the cast occupy the set space. In short, they do a good job. I can’t honestly fault them really beyond any of the general issues that plagued Italian horror of this era.

For me however, it’s the cine where the film probably has its weakest element. While the direction itself has created some wonderfully moody and atmospheric moments, I don’t feel it really properly translated that mood into the cinematography. This is a very flat, very dull looking production, predominantly shot in what looks like autumn or winter weather. It’s chronically grey and cold looking and given there are only really a very small handful of locations (the house, the basement, the graveyard and the library is about as varied as it gets) it means there just…isn’t a whole lot to look at.

While the occasional coloured gel shot comes out as a way to do “day for night” the lighting is flat and fairly uninteresting with most of the cine here that DID “wow” being undercut by the fact that it was “borrowed” from the previous 4 films that Fulci had worked on. You say Iconic, I say “stolen”. And if anyone wants to argue that Fulci cant steal cinematography off himself then ill shift from “Stolen” to “Lazy.” It’s all just a flat, dull and fairly bland affair, which is a shame because so much efforts gone into setting the moods on the locations and sets. I feel with just a bit more “oomph” behind the wheel on this front it really would have taken this film to the next level.

Performance wise? Well, Bob aside, it’s not a bad bunch really! Catriona MacColl as Lucy continues her wonderful stint in these films with a wonderful performance that is a tad melodramatic, but all the better for it! I’ve really enjoyed her across this run of films and it’s a shame she didn’t really do very much in Italian cinema after this, instead going into a career in television before recently returning to film in the last decade (I should really check some of those out…)

Paolo Malco is just about okay as Norman, if i’m being honest, I just feel like he doesn’t quite fit the bill for the role required. There’s no real fault with his performance, I just think he’s a little too *dreamy* for what is supposed to be a deeply involved researcher. They basically just shoved some glasses on a guy and went “He’s such a nerdy dork, check him out doing the science like a dork!” Like I say, I don’t think he’s BAD, I just don’t think he was the right fit here…He’s still fairly solid though, and manages to just about get through the movie without causing *Too* I’m very upset.

The rest of the cast…if i’m being honest are all fairly unmemorable. Most have only a handful of scenes and just about give good enough performances to get us through the runtime…there was no one here who I thought was particularly awful or of note for negative reasons. And where issues do arise I honestly think the problem lay more with the script than anything else…so yeh, on the whole…ehhhhhh…

And finally; the soundtrack! It suits the role of the film and nothing more, it’s synthy driven atmos tracks, similar to “The Beyonds” score, but because of that it’s much less innovative. If “City of the living deads” score felt like a rehash of “Zombi 2” and “The Beyonds” score felt like a breath of fresh air and a new step in the right direction for the works of Fulci, this? Feels a bit like panicked graspings to figure out what comes *after* you’ve reinvented yourself…like…it’s not offensive. I just felt by this point it had been done.

As for the ADR in this (or more specifically the English dub track) well…let’s just leave it at “It could have been better” eh?…let’s just leave it at that…

The House By The Cemetery was released on VHS in 1982 by Eagle films and in its debut it had a slight cut to a couple of the murders from the theatrical release bringing the runtime down to 84 minutes and 49 seconds. That seemingly wasn’t enough however to prevent it being put on the video nasties list in 1984 removing it from circulation for the best part of 4 years until, in 1988 it finally got re-released by Vipco, with just over 4 minutes of cuts made over the previous release. In 2001 it as released again on DVD this time with only 33 seconds of cuts before finally arriving on Bluray in 2009 courtesy of Arrow video fully uncut, the Arrow version is more than serviceable, but given the improvements in not only restoration technology but also home video tech in the last 15 years, it is starting to look a little choppy when compared to some of the more contemporary restoration releases, I don’t know if it’s an older encode, or a bit of a dodgy time with compression…but yeh, I reckon it could look nicer than it currently does. Still…at least it has Arrow’s signature “boat load” of extras to shore it up…

As for whether this should have been on the Video nasties list? No. no it shouldn’t have. While there are a couple of graphic murders dotted across this thing’s runtime, it’s otherwise nothing outside of your bog standard slasher fare. There’s nothing here that the original Friday the 13th or Halloween’s 1 and 2 were not doing WAY stronger around that time…frankly I think this is probably one of Fulci’s tamer efforts. But, that’s the nature of the video nasty game unfortunately…sometimes these films just wound up on here for LITERALLY no reason other than “it has a woman being menaced for a bit in it”…shocking really.

Ultimately; with ‘The House by the Cemetery’ I was left a bit conflicted, but ultimately won over. It’s just a quite well made fun little Italian slasher picture that showcases a slightly different tact from Fulci and while I don’t think it’s by any stretch a “Great” film, the fact that it acts a bit like a bridging point between “City of the Living Dead” and “The Beyond” in terms of it carrying some of the gross out elements and character development tropes from “City” and marrying them up to the suspense, ultra violence and stylistic choices of “The Beyond” was what ultimately won me over. It’s not one I’d come back to again and again. But of the three, this ones probably the one I’m most likely to pop on purely from its own merits. And it’s definitely one I’d recommend if you’re looking for a good entry point into Italian horror in general.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-house-by-the-cemetery/1/

I have experienced fever dreams less vivid and demented than 1983s Carnival Magic. And I feel the need to establish that up front alongside putting this warning *Ping* on screen throughout this review because. To be honest I don’t entirely know what to make of this thing. It’s literally supposed to be a kids film, but I feel like making a kid sit through this thing would be akin to committing one of the “Forbidden Experiments”. I’m getting ahead of myself a bit though, so…maybe I should wind back a little.

Carnival Magic is a 1983 kids adventure movie directed by veteran exploitation master Al Adamson. Al for the majority of his 23 year career in film making had predominantly bedded himself into horror and sexploitation pics such as “Dracula vs Frankenstein” or “ “Lash of Lust” but for reasons that…have ultimately been lost to time and are frankly too bewildering to contemplate. After completing work on his last pair of pictures “Nurse Sherri” and “Death Dimension” Al decided that he wanted a new challenge and set his sights on wanting to produce a kids film to play solely at matinee.

At the time, the matinee slot for kids films, despite being understated was surprisingly popular and you could make good money putting films on as part of double features for parents to drop their kids off to for some “screentime babysitting” So what happens when you take a filmmaker 22 years into their career as a graphic and gory sexy exploitation director and set him up making a movie that’s core demographic probably couldn’t even do their times tables? (im sure there’s overlap between those two audiences) well…you get Carnival Magic.

The film was shot over 3 weeks in 1980 in south carolina at the Peach Festival Carnival with the main star being Trudi an aging female chimp who had been deemed to be too old to be used in the film safely, chimps have a habit of y’know…not giving a fuck past a certain point of maturity and this was illustrated perfectly well when Trudi had had enough of filming one day and full on headbutted a script advisor while on set. Putting the guy in the hospital for several days.

Nevertheless, the shoot was cheap and cheerful and after that the film spent 3 years in both post production and distribution tendering before making its way up to screens on a limited run where it bombed HARD and vanished into the either, being considered lost for the best part of 26 years. So. with that in mind; what’s this absolutely mental monkey movie ACTUALLY about. Well…

Carnival Magic takes place at a small time, travelling fair owned by down on his luck carnival operator “Stoney”. In the opening of the film it’s established that the Carnival has landed on hard times and that, without a major attraction to help shake things up, the carnival will have to close at the end of the season. From here we’re then introduced to two of Stoney’s biggest carnival attractions Kirk, a wild animal expert who may or may not be mistreating his animals and a mysterious “quiet” magician called Markov.

Kirk and Markov don’t see eye to eye, the main reason being that Markov continually keeps sneaking into Kirk’s animal tent and “Staring out” Kirk’s tigers. Kirk claims that whenever Markov does this, the animals flip out and basically refuse to follow his instructions anymore. It’s revealed that Markov in fact has some kind of psychic/telepathic ability that allows him to read people’s minds, hypnotise and influence people and most critically, it allows him to communicate with animals.

While the film doesn’t explicitly say what Markov and the tigers “Discuss” its clear that Markov has some influence over teaching them about respect. And that annoys Kirk who basically informs Stoney that he either needs to get rid of Markov or he’ll quit. Stoneys not left with much of a choice due to Kirk being the carnivals main draw and heads over to give Markov his papers. Stoney tells Markov he can stay till the end of the week, but Markov tells Stoney he’ll be gone by morning.

That night; Markov takes a walk out in the woods, but…somethings not quite right. He’s talking to someone, or rather…something, specifically he’s telling whoever or whatever that it’s becoming increasingly hard for him to hide them from public attention, and that he doesn’t know how much longer he’s going to be able to keep it up. While on the way back to his caravan he passes by a tent and spots Ellen (otherwise known as Buddy) asleep on a bench. Ellen is Stoney’s daughter and runs the ticket booths around the carnival. Ellen’s mother wasn’t built for the carny lifestyle and ran away when Ellen was very young, breaking Stoney’s heart and leading him to only ever call Ellen “Bud” and dressing her masc in order to stop Stoney from feeling quite so upset about the situation. But Ellens not happy with things as they sit.

Markov wakes her up, and tries to get her to her bed. But as the pair are leaving the tent, Markovs secret is revealed. Markov has a monkey! A TALKING Monkey! A talking monkey who can do magic tricks, reads magazines and is domesticated to the point it can cook a meal, sweep floors and much much more! This, is Alex. A monkey that Markov trained in his ways of psychic and telekinetic abilities with his unfortunately passed away wife Sara. The pair have been travelling together since Saras death and Markov is fiercely protective of where Alex goes and what he gets up to. Ellen is astounded by Alex’s monkey magic and begs Markov to show Stoney as she’s convinced this is the act that’ll save the carnival. But apart from the fact that Markov DESPERATELY doesn’t want to turn Alex into a sideshow attraction. He tells Ellen that he’s been sacked and will be leaving in the morning.

After some backing and forthing with Ellen, Markov decides to leave the decision up to Alex, he explains the situation and effectively says that, if he doesn’t want to be in the limelight, that’s understandable. But that him and Markov can only stay together as long as Markov has the funds to keep Alex fed and he can’t guarantee that’ll be the case if they have to leave the Carnival. Alex says he wants to perform and so, the next day Ellen drags Stoney to Markovs trailer where, begrudgingly, Stoney has a sit down meeting with Markov. Markov introduces Alex to Stoney and…in a bizarre turn of events. Stoney seems WAY more astounded that Alex can cook and sweep floors than the fact that MARKOV LITERALLY HAS A COHERENTLY CONVERSING CHIMP IN HIS POSSESSION. In either case Stoney snaps up the chance to put a magic,charismatic talking monkey on the bill and Alex and Markov are rebranded “Alexander the great & The Magnificent Markov!”

And with that we’re treated to an elongated magic act between Markov and Alex in which the monkey largely looks confused and terrified. In the audience of the opening show is a somewhat sinister looking man in a suit who, rather stoney faced, quietly makes notes on the show for its full duration. We’ll get back to him shortly but for now, the show was a success! And Stoney and his PR man David are dizzy at the possibilities Alex and Markov could open up for the carnival. They immediately begin working up a merch and branding campaign centred around the pair.

Markov meanwhile goes for a woodland walk when a fellow Carnie Kate asks if she can tag along for the trip. The pair introduce themselves and Kate shows a clear interest in Markov, who expresses that he isn’t really in the headspace for a relationship. He elaborates that he and Sara were married and expecting their first child together when a freak accident killed Sara and her unborn child, and because of that, he isn’t ready to start something new.

Meanwhile, ALEX STEALS A FUCKING CAR AND GOES ON A CRAZY CAR CHASE WITH A WOMAN IN THE BACK SEAT WHILE BEING CHASED BY THE COPS. in what is arguably one of the most bizarre scenes this film throws up, we spend almost 5-10 minutes racing around with Alex…and then that scene just…ends, and it’s never referenced or mentioned again. It’s like the film got hijacked briefly and then had to run a gaslighting campaign to convince you it DIDN’T just show an extended monkey car chase…

We get an extended heart to heart between Markov and Ellen about Ellen’s mum and Markovs dead wife, Alex breaks into Kate’s tent and steals her bra while she’s sleeping…hilarity ensues. and then we cut back to Kirk. who’s been hitting the booze pretty hard in light of Markov and Alex’s success. Because they’ve been doing so well, Stoneys been prioritising them over him and because of that he feels his influence over the carnival is weaning. That combined with his animals increasingly misbehaving for him has left him in a place where he’s beginning to have serious confidence issues and has hit the bottle to cope….KIDS FILM.

And it’s here we begin to get into our third act, as Stoney and David begin to kick into overdrive in the marketing of Alex and Markov and David works up the courage to ask Ellen out on a date. We get introduced once again to the mysterious suited man who made notes at Alex’s first show. This is Dr. Poole, a scientist interested in studying Alex as he believes him to be “The Missing Link” Markov refuses and from there the stakes go off the chart. As Poole shifts from “We want to study him for a few days” to “We’re going to vivisect him and harvest his organs if we so much as get a second alone with that damn dirty ape.” and he’s willing to go through nefarious means to do so.

In a…dumbfounding finale for lack of a better word…Will Dr. Poole Get his hands on Alex’s Monkey magic!? Will Dave and Ellen finally get it together!? And will Stoney manage to make enough cash to save the Carnival from closure!? All this and more will (probably) be answered if you check out “Carnival Magic”

And honestly; I know the words “Disorienting” and “wild” get thrown around a lot these days, but that’s the only way I can honestly describe this film. The actual plot is pretty simplistic, in essence it’s a bit of an E.T rip off…though this is a bit of interesting situation as the film was shot in 1980 and E.T didnt come out until 1982…so my guess is they didn’t INTEND to make an E.T knock off, but kind of…shaped it into something of an E.T knock off during its elongated post production session. In either case the end results really do feel almost dream like…like, if someone explained this film to you and you didn’t KNOW it existed. You’d swear it was someone misremembering something or making it up.

The script’s plot is pretty simple, this is basically a family drama comedy for most of the runtime with the kidnapping and rescue/adventure part of the film being relegated largely to the final act. But how we travel through this piece is positively ADHD driven. There’s a three act structure largely pinned by Markovs relationship with Kirk, with the opening act being Markov being sacked in favour of Kirk and Alex’s rise in the scene, the 2nd act being Kirks downfall and the rise of Markov and Alex and the 3rd act being Kirk’s full collapse and Markovs rescue attempt of Alex. but that basic plot is punctuated by a HELL of a lot of padding. Heart to hearts where similar information is exchanged over and over again, it’s one of the rare instances where the script feels like the writers want the characters to go one way and the CHARACTERS are almost disagreeing with the writers…which is bizarre.

The writers seemingly REALLY want Markov to date someone, whether it’s Kate or Ellen. But Markov flat out refuses and even by the end credits he doesn’t really end up going with anybody. Despite the film vying for it throughout the entire runtime. I mean, it’s an interesting approach to purposefully mislead your audience with themes that literally won’t be elaborated on beyond the 10-15 minutes they’re explored . But I don’t know if it’s conducive to a decent narrative spinner.

Given that this is a G-rated movie the film deals with a lot of themes that absolutely aren’t suitable for kids, or rather, themes that kids don’t really wanna deal with in a talking monkey carnival film. We see domestic abuse, complex talks about feelings of abandonment, gender dysphoria and comments on gender identity, there’s a scene where Kirk gets gorily mauled by a tiger, alcoholism and addiction, vivisection, depression, sexually inappropriate conversations and much more. And I’m not saying those themes can’t have their place in a kids film, they absolutely can if they’re handled with the appropriate level of maturity that a kids audience can digest without becoming confused/bored or upset.

But instead; Adamson’s Exploitation roots shine through here and it appears he just couldn’t keep himself from introducing, what by his standards were light exploitation elements, but by kids film standards would be almost like cutting to random clips from Salo. and when the film isn’t doing these kitchen sink serious heart to heart moments, its flip flopping DIRECTLY in the opposite direction with things like the MONKEY CAR CHASE, or a moment where its implied Alex molests a nurse, or at one point near the very end of the film there’s just a full blown street parade that happen for no real reason other than “We gotta end the film someway!”.

To me? Alex’s kidnapping happens way too late in the film, I’d have bought that forward to around halfway into the 2nd act leaving the 3rd act to set up the rescue attempt and all the drama around what happens when they find Alex with proper closure to Kirk, Alex, Ellen, David, Kim, Kate and Stoney’s plotlines. Because what happens here is the film introduces everyone, pissarses about for the entirety of the 2nd half of the first act and opening half of the second act. Then remembers it has to set up a kidnapping which it does near the very end of the 2nd act meaning the 3rd act is pretty much entirely bogged down by having to execute the kidnapping, THEN having to execute the rescue mission meaning that, by the time all’s said and done. There’s about 5 minutes to wrap everyone’s storylines up…not NEARLY enough time to do these characters any kind of justice.

Character development too goes to the wall here, the only character who really gets anything CLOSE to an arc is Ellen. Who starts the movie having to hide her femininity and across the runtime we see her open up about her feelings on wanting to be able to embrace that feminine lifestyle, she meets David and by the end of the picture she’s engaged, and fully out as the feminine lady she’s always wanted to be with full acceptance and reconciliation with her father. And y’know what? That one arc is decently handled. The rest of it’s bollocks. Barring Kirk, who goes from being a sober arsehole to being a drunk (and presumably arrested) arsehole. all the other characters pretty much end the film more or less where they started. Top end they may have started the film with a minor bug bear that…without any effort or challenge to the character is magically resolved by the end.

And the dialogues absolutely all over the place as well, I don’t believe that Alex’s lines for this were scripted. I think they assembled an edit and just got someone who was around in the dubbing facility to mumble and grumble whatever came to mind based on what was happening. In some cases there’s a disconnect between what Alex is saying and what’s actually happening on screen. Sometimes it’s subtle, but sometimes it’s a clear show that, whoever is dubbing this film has NO context as to what is actually happening in the scene.

The cast dialogue is awkward and repetitious, not a tremendous amount of plot progression is spoken about in the first 2 acts of this film. Points are just raised, reraised and re-re-raised with minor additional pieces of info bolted on each time. Some scenes have absolutely NO point other than to re-address earlier raised points and due to poor script structuring we find ourselves in scenarios (the introduction of Dr. Poole is the one that immediately springs to my mind) where they establish things, then forget about those established things for upwards of 20 minutes before coming back to it again and then having to re establish what they’ve already established because too much time has passed without them doing anything with the points they’ve tried to instigate. It kills time, but my god it’s exhausting.

All these elements combine together to create a script that should be straightforward and easy to execute, but instead ends up chronically going off message, has to repeatedly reintroduce and re-establish plot points BECAUSE it keeps going off the beat and path, is unevenly paced, has a BEYOND questionable tone behind it and introduced plotlines and imagery that I won’t forget anytime soon.

The script was written by Mark Weston, Bob Levine and Elvin Feltner. And if youuuuuu can believe it, this was their first and ONLY writing credits. And in the case of Bob and Elvin, this was the only thing they EVER did in the film industry. Mark on top of his writing credit managed to have 9 acting credits and rather ominously Carnival Magic was his last performance credit too. And, to be fair I could absolutely believe that someone would star in this film and then decide to never appear on film again.

The film was directed by Al Adamson, and…as mentioned he has an illustrious career in the exploitation and Sexploitation film genres with around 30(ish) directing credits under his belt and 7 writing credits. His work is often defined as some of the strangest and wildest movies in the history of cinema. Adamson would go on to direct one final film after this, “Lost” (Also known as Buddy & Skipper on it’s home video release) and the combination bombing of that film and Carnival Magic was enough to put Adamson out of the film business entirely, he went into working in real estate where he’d remain right up until his death in 1995 at the age of 66.

And on the direction front, while I know a lot of people take pot shots at Adamson for his less than stellar output, I think Carnival Magic is a corralled production. He’s able to use the elements he has available in a fairly complimentary way and his co-ordination of the various crews and cast, while maybe a bit chaotic, has at least produced something of a professional looking product. I have seen a LOT worse come out of this era of filmmaking. That being said, is it GOOD direction? No. No. no it is not. This isn’t a pretty film by any mark and while being able to mobilise and organise a cast and crew effectively IS the main job of a director. Being able to turn out a product that doesn’t look like arse is a close second. And while he HAS somewhat managed the former, it’s inescapable that the end product looks…for lack of a better word. Sweaty.

There’s a constant feeling of things being rushed, of some kind of madness happening off screen. Presumably because they had an old chimpanzee headbutting and starting knife fights with the crew members in between takes. But probably also because they were heavily limited on extras, heavily restricted on what they could and couldnt do while filming in an active and busy fun fair and slowly coming to the realisation that they’d written something that wouldnt be out of place in a David Lynch film that again, HAD A TARGET AUDIENCE OF SMALL CHILDREN.

Despite feeling like a snuff film charting a chimps last known whereabouts for most of the runtime. Adamson’s films always have a decent heart running under the surface and I’ll absolutely admit that some of the scenes between Markov, Kate and Ellen are absolutely wonderfully handled. Adamson really seemed to know how to get the best out of his cast, and even when the cast weren’t A-game amazing. He was still able to get them to a place where they could be managed. Which is a critical and important skill to have as a filmmaker. Even in this film’s worst looking parts, it still has heart. Which I think is what endeared me to it so much…well…that and the MONKEY CAR CHASE…WITH THE POLICE.

On the cine front, it’s ugly. As soon as the opening shots of the movie revved up my immediate first thought was that I’d accidentally loaded “She Freak” into my player. But no, and comparing this film to “She Freak” on the cine front is a bit of an insult because “She Freaks” cine was actually quite delightful…for 1967. “Carnival Magic” was shot some 13 years later and released 16 years later and it LOOKS like a late 60’s movie. Which is incredible because the leap in technological advancements not just in how we understand cinematography, but in the cameras and other tech we used between the late 60’s and early 1980’s was a revolution. A revolution that seemingly passed Al Adamson by. Shots are flat, lifeless, there’s maybe a handful of shots of the carnival that look passably good. But the vast majority of sequences are shot for necessity rather than form. They’re minimally constructed with little variety and barely any consideration for composition.

While some day for night footage is handled somewhat amicably. Most of the lighting is shot to be as broad and plain as possible, I don’t know if they originally planned to do something stylised with the flat profile they shot in, but I’d be lying if I said this film didn’t look and feel like it came from another age than the one it was made in. The editor in me was captivated by it, but if you’re used to pixel perfect mainstream cinematography or you’re one of those weirdos who picks up on continuity issues and holds it up as an example of how shit the studios are for not even being able to create a totally faultless unique experience. You are probably going to have a nervous breakdown over this movie.

Performance wise, I mean…Trudi the chimp…when not attacking the cast and crew is decidedly charming as Alex. though if you ever want a movie to highlight why regulations on animals working in films need to be as tight as possible. This is the film to show that. In the 80’s people probably wouldn’t have batted an eye. But by modern standards there were several scenes where I winced as she gets chained up and is clearly distressed by large numbers of people making noise. It’s…a product of its time…and it’s not okay.

Don Stewart as Markov is probably the best performer here, given he’s being asked to work with a script that could best be described as “Madlibs” he gives a very decent performance, delivering his lines with quiet sincerity and when he needs to play deep, he really hits the notes required. It’s a shame the rest of the film undercuts that with stuff like A CHIMP CAR CHASE SCENE. But he does a decent job and really shines. My only criticism is his physical presence is a little underplayed here. He’s supposed to be Markov the Magnificent and while he’s fine in his “off stage” persona. It maybe would have been nice to see his ON stage persona have a bit more of the copperfield “razzle dazzle”.

Jennifer Houlton is wonderful here as Ellen really delivering on what the script gives her and going above and beyond in showcasing her transition from wallflower who’s afraid to be who she really is, to fully blossomed woman. Her relationship with David is somewhat rushed (the film umms and ahhs with what to do with them for most of the first and 2nd acts, before putting them together around the midpoint of act 2. They date for what seems like an eternity even though it’s only really a few days in film, and then they’re suddenly engaged…Its a bit hectic) but on the whole, she does a more than decent and convincing job here and I was astounded to find out that this was her last acting role after only 3 credits.

The rest of the cast are decent enough, Joe Cirillo has a decent turn as Kirk, absolutely bringing weight and passion where required to a role that relied on it to carry the performance. He does a decent job and it’s just such a shame the film got so hung up on countryside walks with Ellen and David that it actually forgot to bother to make him a bit more of a focal point. It would have been nice to see him lose his cool or make a few more mistakes more consistently throughout the film to help make the transition from lead act of the carnival to drunk on his final warning a bit smoother. As it stands he basically goes from leading the carnival, to being a bit worried about his place, to ONE scene where it’s implied he’s getting sloppy, to full blown drunk willing to get into Chimp thievery to make ends meet. ALL OF THIS unfolds across only a few days in film. It’s not explicitly stated how much time passes. But given it’s the summer season and it’s well underway at the time the film starts, the whole movie can’t unfold in any longer than a 3 week window.

And finally; the soundtrack; and what we have here is one of the most demented scores I’ve heard for a movie. It’s mostly synthy minimalist attempts at circus music. But it’s not done particularly well. As a result, it sounds less like a score that’s been written for a professional production and more like some randomer was offered a couple of bottles of wild turkey to bash out music for whatever Al needed to have bashed out. Circus music at the best of times has a bit of demented edge to it, but badly played bizarrely paced entirely synth keyboard generated circus music is a whole other level of “What on EARTH am I watching!?” for some reason most of the sound effects in this movie are also sourced from video games including Centipede and Galaga. It’s just…wild.

There are several rumours around what happened to Carnival Magic. As mentioned earlier it was produced with the aim of solely playing at children’s matinee shows, but beyond that there were no plans for a home release and once it had finished its theatrical run, it pretty much disappeared off the face of the earth. For the longest time there were anecdotes that the film was “illegally” screened as backing footage for several punk bands during some illegal gigs at a regional abandoned indie cinema. The interesting point being that the people ATTENDING the gig stopped listening to the music and instead started watching the crazy talking chimp movie.

The film remained the stuff of legends and was considered lost until the mid to late 2000’s when members of AGFA were asked if they were interested in a complete set of reels for the film that had been rescued from a cupboard of that very same abandoned theatre. AGFA transferred and restored the film where it received a premier on TCM, much to the bewilderment of audience members. It was then followed up with an appearance on the revived MST3K where it established and grew an even larger cult following. The film was eventually licensed out to Severin Films as part of their Al Adamson masterpiece collection blu ray box set released in June 2020. It also received a solo DVD release from Severin at the same time.

Both are now considered “Out of print” with the solo DVD slowly creeping up in price (honestly, if you want a copy get one now because it will go crazy VERY soon if it hasn’t already) and the Adamson box set, at the time of recording going for frankly obscene money, and having contacted Sevrin enquiring about any chances of a potential reissue, I was politely told “No.” At the time they initially put it out I couldn’t afford it, and boy do I regret it… I’d very much like to explore Adamsons work in more detail because…after seeing THIS. I have a LOT more questions than answers.

Carnival magic feels like a made up movie. And I think, realistically, 1983 was probably the last time you could get away with making a film so blatantly cheap, bizarre and bordering on having the ASPCA and PETA raiding your set. It’s a cacophonous experience that I’d LOVE to see play out in an actual cinema sometime. If you have children, show them this movie. Let me know what they made of it, the younger the better. I’m genuinely intrigued to see what they’d make of this…assault on the senses. With an all over the place script, ugly cine, controversial themes, direction that’s off the mark and a soundtrack that could score a Five nights at freddy’s game. I can only wholeheartedly recommend “Carnival Magic” dim the lights, grab a snack and let the 85 minute long Monkey based surrealism wash over you like so much hot vomit. Recommended.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/carnival-magic/1/