House of the Gorgon (USA 2019: Dir Joshua Kennedy)

The chief draw causing most people to want to check out 25 year old director Kennedy's 16th film (yes, you did read that right) is the inclusion of four actors from the golden age of Hammer films. A self styled Anglophile all the way from Texas, Mr Kennedy's earlier movie titles hint strongly at his obsessions. His first, Attack of the Octopus People, was an affectionate nod to the films of Ray Harryhausen (as will be his next stop motion effort, the soon to be finished Cowgirls vs. Pterodactyls), while others include The Alpha Omega Man (2017), Voyage to the Planet of Teenage Cavewomen (2012), and 2015's, er, Dracula A.D. 2015.

But back to House of the Gorgon. Isobel Banning (Georgina Dugdale) travels with her mother Anna (Veronica Carlson) and friend Christina (Jamie Treviño) to the village of Carlstadt to marry her university sweetheart Dr. Julian Pritchard (Kennedy). En route they encounter Father Llewellyn (Christopher Neame), who knows what we don't yet know; the house where they're all due to stay is also the home to Gorgon sisters Baroness Bartov (Caroline Munro) and Euryale (Martine Beswick) who are seeking eternal youth via the sacrifice of virgin blood.

Kennedy is surely a man of his convictions. By fair means or necromancy he assembled a group of actors who have not worked together for nearly a quarter of a century, which is quite a feat in itself. Beswicke had previously been in the director's 2014 short The Night is Young, a 3 minute film involving him wooing the US dwelling actress by song, which gives you some idea of the extent of his cinematic passions. That many of his classic star choices are expats - Carlson and Neame also live in the States - probably helped with expenses (the movie was shot in the USA in a Spanish style house loaned by a couple of goth friends, who were in the audience for the London premiere of the film tonight). But that still meant ferrying Misses Munro and Dugdale - the latter being Caroline's real life daughter - over to America for the shoot.

And the result is, well, far better than expected. Munro and Beswicke camp it up a storm as the Gorgon sisters, and Veronica Carlson is suprisingly touching as alcoholic Anna Banning (which made me regret that she wasn't given meatier parts in her heyday) - Christopher Neame also pulls off a solid performance as the tortured priest, and Dugdale offers the right amount of Victorian primness as the film's 'final girl.'

Sure there are some technical problems - Kennedy needs to employ a focus puller and the sound is all over the place - but the sheer enthusiasm of the director comes across in every frame. In person Joshua is a bit of a young fogey, who reminded me in appearance and demeanour as a cross between Michael Medved and Toulouse-Lautrec, with a dash of Rufus T. Firefly thrown in for good measure. And it's clear that this rather unusual character was a tonic for his cast - all present at the post screening Q&A confirmed that the on set camaraderie was a big bonus in getting the resource shy movie completed. Kennedy fills House of the Gorgon with Hammer references, each of his 'vintage' cast members getting to utter lines from some of their films (although he loses points for failing to get Neame to shoehorn in his "Dig the music, kids!" line from Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972). Kennedy is also a bit of a whizz with a colour filter too - some of the scenes are beautifully drenched in reds and greens - and he affectionately recreates the 'zombie nightmare' sequence from 1966's The Plague of the Zombies very effectively. Prolific composer Reber Clark's score also has its moments, when it calms down from being awash with string synthesisers and concentrates on evoking a more sinister mood. Clark is also composer for the H P Lovecraft Historical Society's 'Dark Adventure Radio Theatre', and obviously knows his thematic stuff.

Less successful is the camera's insistence in lingering on the terrible fan art that lines the staircase of the mansion (my apologies if they were part of the fixtures and fittings of the house, but with the exception of a portrait of Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins, boy are they awful), and the Texan extras populating the obligatory tavern sequence who have clearly never seen such a scene in a Hammer film (and probably haven't heard of Hammer films either). Maybe I was swept up by the love for the film present in the room tonight, but House of the Gorgon is a genuine curio if only for its cast, and it's great to see the actors having a good time outside of the convention circuit, the only place that most of them can otherwise be seen these days.

Bailiwick (USA 2017: Dir Tonia L. Carrier)

Occasionally I get asked, out of the blue, if I'll review a film, and I'm always happy to oblige. Which is how I came, courtesy of the Michigan film industry website  mmm2weekender.com, to watch Bailiwick, written and directed by, and featuring Tonia L. Carrier. 

Described by distribution company Pinkie's Kids Productions as 'an ultra-low budget feature film shot in Michigan', it's principally the story of John, a classic 'quiet man' loner, exploited by his boss and shunned by his work colleagues. John visits a travelling magic show and is invited backstage by a conjuring duo, who pass the tools of their trade onto our unassuming hero, with the promise of bestowing great power.

John practises some tricks from a book given to him by the odd pair, and uses his skills to show off to his work chums, slowly integrating him into their circle. But he soon learns that the real gift that has been transferred to him is the ability to make people do what he wants just by asking them. It takes a while for him to believe this, but when he twigs what he can do, it can only be so long before his horrid boss gets his.

Essentially a riff on the classic Twilight Zone episode 'It's a Good Life,' Bailiwick is very ragged round the edges, but everyone looks like they're having a good time, and it feels like a collaborative project. However at over an hour and a half (and with the good stuff only really happening about twenty minutes before the end) Bailiwick is seriously in need of some trimming - not a good idea for the director to also be the editor - which is a shame as with some condensing of some of the more rambling sections this would have been a more fun watch.

As John, actor Dan Gerics does good 'awkward' although his transformation from geek to 'man with the power' isn't as dramatic as it could have been. But the star of the show (a relative term here, certainly) is Nicholas Joseph Mackey as boss from hell Kyle, with his home made haircut and shiny suits, he's a larger than life character who inspires real dislike. Mackey, like many of the cast, is a regular in Carrier's movies, and it's the camaraderie of the group that helps you see beyond the rather crude nature of the production. But as you can tell if you read my site regularly, I'd rather watch an independent effort than a major studio bland out any day of the week.

You can watch Bailiwick here. 

40 Years of Throbbing Gristle - Centro Iberico, Sunday 21 January 1979

Throbbing Gristle (and audience) - Centro Iberico, 21 January 1979

On this day forty years ago -  21st January 1979 - I made my way from my parents' home in Heston (a small village about three miles from Heathrow Airport) to an event organised by Throbbing Gristle, or more specifically by legendary Whitehouse manager (Jordi) George Valls. I had just started going to gigs on a regular basis - I was 17 - and was quite confident about attending things on my own. Few of my friends shared the same musical tastes as me in those days and even those who did would have balked at going to watch a group infamously titled 'the wreckers of civilisation' by MP Nicholas Fairbairn.

There were two unusual things about this particular 'gig' (that word doesn't really do justice to what I experienced). One, it was taking place in Westbourne Park, an area of west London that I didn't really know and had just started to frequent via regular trips to the Rough Trade record shop every Saturday morning (which is how I'd found out about the TG event). I was used to attending gigs in central London, mainly at The Marquee, clubs in Hammersmith and occasionally The Electric Ballroom and The Music Machine (now Koko) in Camden; 421 Harrow Road, Centro Iberico's address, was very much off the beaten track. I was unaware then of the counter cultural history of the area - it just seemed like the back of beyond to me.

One of the posters for the Centro Iberico event

The second odd thing was the timing. The gig was on a Sunday afternoon. At 3pm. So I sat down for Sunday lunch with my parents in their very sweet chalet style house where we'd moved four years earlier from my first home in Hounslow, prior to venturing out to one of the most important occurrences of my life. My dad had not been well - he was to retire on ill health grounds the year after following a massive breakdown - and things were strained at home as I recall. I hadn't helped matters by seriously getting into new wave/post punk music, which my mother hated, having seen far too many red top headlines and feeling that her son was only a couple of riots away from a prison sentence. I'd also started full time work in November the year before and was on a pretty good wage for a person of my years, which of course was almost entirely spent on vinyl, either from Rough Trade or our own version of that shop, 'Cloud 7' in Hounslow High St (if you wanted punk you went to visit Keith who operated a record stall at the back of 'Rumbelows' further down the road, but 'Cloud 7' was the best bet for imports and limited edition DIY 7" singles). So I was completely obsessed with music, cider, and the excitement of going out to see live music. Typical suburban kid then.

And as a typical suburban kid I of course was in thrall to the week-nightly John Peel show, and my listening at the time was equally split between more experimental music - Cabaret Voltaire, The Residents and This Heat included - and mainstream stuff; research shows that Peel Sessions leading up to the 21st included Gang Of Four, The Prefects, Gary Numan, Generation X, reggae band Capital Letters and The Members, which sort of summarised what I would have been listening to.

So how had I discovered Throbbing Gristle, who were clearly very different to most of these bands? The answer was an Ian Penman review of 'D.o.A. The Third And Final Report' in the NME, which I read and re-read fetishistically, before going out and buying the LP as soon as it was released in December 1978 (I always conflate the strange and varied sounds of this album, with the ghastly memories of my first office Christmas party, for some strange reason). So all I had to go on was that disc and the 'United' single, released earlier that year, in terms of sonic expectations.

Entry ticket for the event

A weather report of the time reads that heavy snow occurred on both the 17th and 23rd of January 1979 with fog a persistent feature of the 21st. I think it's safe to say that my memories of it being inhospitably cold were correct. So, dressed for my wintry trek, including a donkey jacket (with handmade cardboard-backed letters spelling D, E,V and O pinned on it - I'd been to see the band the previous December at the Hammersmith Odeon and was a big fan) I took the tube from Hounslow West to Hammersmith, changed onto the (then) Metropolitan Line and got off at Westbourne Park - the veritable stranger in a strange land. I remember getting a bit lost - I'm not even sure if I owned a London A-Z - and I'm fairly convinced I used a roughly drawn map on a flyer to navigate myself there.

Once at the building I experienced my first understanding of scene and situation. Centro Iberico, a Spanish Anarchist collective, had set up a squat in a dilapidated Victorian edifice, a disused primary school that had fallen to rack and ruin (it's since been demolished and, slightly psychogeographically, is now the site of the Paddington Law Centre). This was exactly the kind of place that the wreckers of civilization would and should play - a crumbling former seat of learning, now appropriated for counter cultural activities. To access the room where the event took place, punters had to walk up a couple of flights of stairs. There was a really long line of people which snaked down the staircase and out into the courtyard of the former school. I've since heard that this queue attracted a bit of a '100 Club Punk Special' reputation - if everyone who said they were at the gig actually stood in that queue it would have stretched back to Ladbroke Grove station. Well it didn't, and I'd love to say that I recognised all the great and good in the audience - sadly all I picked out were Green Gartside and Tom Morley from Scritti Politti, and Jim 'Foetus' Thirlwell.

It seemed to take a long time to process the customers, who numbered around 180. So much so that punters were still arriving towards the end of TG's support slot, a screening of their 1977 Coum Transmissions/TG film After Cease to Exist - I was presumably towards the front of the queue as I was present for the screening of the whole thing. I'd clearly read something about what to expect here already, as I'd prepared myself for the lengthy castration/surgery scene which takes up quite a lot of the film. I was no stranger to 'transgressive' cinema, but this was up there with Richard Kern's 'Death Trip' films made a few years later - very disconcerting (a 2K restoration is currently touring arts establishments of the UK - viewer discretion is, as they say, advised).

So yes, I was already pretty traumatised. But then the group took the stage. As to my memories of the next sixty minutes (and it was precisely sixty - they used a clock to count down the time and the equipment shut off at the hour point) I remember the arc lights shone at the audience, blinding us almost completely at times, and of course the noise. Oh god, the noise. It was my first sight of TG's on stage set up (as a budding electronic musician at the time I was fascinated by the sheer amount of hardware on stage - most of this would be stolen at a later date, forcing the group to move to a more stripped down, less DIY sound). The other thing that I wasn't used to was hearing a band and not recognising any songs. Now I'm sure I wasn't naive enough to think 'oh, they haven't played anything from the new album!' but even so I wasn't prepared for the incessant cacophony that only now and again disclosed a lyric or a halfway familiar guitar or bass motif. What I do recall, somewhat incongruously, is that Chris Carter, whose rig included a small portable TV which he'd plugged into the rest of his gear and was busily channel surfing (ok just three channels, but even so...) suddenly produced the unmistakable tones of Brian Moore commenting on 'The Big Match' football show (a Sunday afternoon TV staple in UK homes). A recording was made of this event, like all of TG's shows, and if you're lucky enough to get to hear it, it's unmistakable. I recall at the time that this was almost too weird - I was mentally projected back from this insanity, Proust style, to visions of an average suburban Sunday afternoon sitting at home while dad watched the football and mum quietly did the washing up.

Two stills from After Cease to Exist 

But something definitely happened to me during that hour - a sort of deflowering of my expectations of what sound could do. This was the famous 'winter of discontent,' where rubbish piled up on street corners, ignored by striking bin men, and bodies went unburied. Depending on who you believed, anarchy was a real possibility in the UK, and something in TG's performance effectively soundtracked that unrest in a way that a hundred angry punk songs at the time could never achieve. This was true nihilism, but nihilism as art, and I liked it a lot, even though it scared the pants off me.

When the 'set' finished, Genesis the 'singer' asked the audience whether they'd like to see the film again (for those who missed it the first time). I'd had enough, so didn't take him up on the offer, and made my exit.

On the train back to Hammersmith, I sat in a carriage next to Foetus and his (then) girlfriend. They both used to work at the basement Virgin Records shop in Oxford St (where he used to front up his own singles in the 7" racks, the cheeky so and so) and were the epitome of cool. As I sat there, stunned by what I'd witnessed, Mr Thirlwell and his partner saw my home made Devo badges and sniggered knowingly. They kind of had a point. I got home, rather confused, and turned the TV on. I'd made it back in time to watch The Muppet Show, but something suddenly felt very wrong. I turned the television off, ripped the DIY coat adornments from my donkey jacket, threw them in the bin and faced my future.

As a post script to this little story I'll leave you with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge's account of the Centro Iberico event:

"We decided to do it on a Sunday afternoon, as it was the least commercial time to play. It was really cold so we built bonfires inside. We were really surprised when almost exactly as we were about to begin there was this massive queue in the freezing cold outside, right around the building and out into this big Victorian school yard. We decided to put the fires out in case it was dangerous. It turned out quite crowded and the place filled up with choking smoke and steam. People who went there said it was one of the most intense atmospheres they'd experienced and that you could never recapture it. It seemed post-apocalypse. It summed up and decoded the whole of civilisation's collapse, and this was a tribal ritual that only those initiated would understand. It was in a sense so completely meaningless that it was very potent. That was the day we did 'Five Knuckle Shuffle' for the first time, our first real deconstruction of words, gibberish."

Two for Joy (UK 2018: Dir Tom Beard)

Tom Beard's debut feature, produced by his mentor Sadie Frost, is a film clearly inspired by the early works of Andrea Arnold and Lynne Ramsay. Samantha Morton plays Aisha, newly bereaved of her husband, heavily medicated and clearly not coping - she can hardly get out of bed. So it falls to her dutiful teenage daughter Vi to keep the household going. Vi's younger brother Troy, a tearaway with a recent involvement in the robbery of a convenience shop, makes up the remainder of the rather fractured family.

Vi convinces Aisha that they should spend some time at the coastal family caravan (in a later scene we realise that this break is in school term time, hinting at the dysfunction of the family). Once there, they meet site caretaker Lias, his sister Lillah and her wayward daughter Miranda, a kinetic ball of anger. Two for Joy concentrates on how these two families integrate and gradually disclose the details of their lives, until, almost inevitably, tragedy strikes.

Beard's movie does all the right things. It has a first rate cast, although its younger members occasionally threaten to outdo the adults here. Samantha Morton perfectly inhabits the role of a woman where bereavement has robbed her of all but the most basic faculties, and Billie Piper reminds us of her range as the brusque Lillah, torn between the protection of her daughter and her love for her abusive partner. But it's Emilia Jones as Vi and Badger Skelton as Troy that really shine. Jones achieves a stunning mix of teenage awkwardness, practicality in the face of grief, and split loyalties as the unofficial carer of her mother who increasingly resents Aisha's reliance on her. Skelton's Troy is a confused product of poor parenting, a world turned upside down since the death of his father, and a desperate need to run from everything. His developing relationship with Miranda (Bella Ramsey, a slightly too feral performance which robs the role of anything nuanced) is possibly the first time he's experienced a proper friendship with someone with whom his waywardness is understood and shared.

Two for Joy is photographed by Tim Sidell in the by now rather familiar muted tones of socially aware dramas, using the expected backdrops of broken housing estates and caravan parks (it was filmed in Dorset). Beard also uses a faux distressed frame around the screen, redolent of a device used to represent home movies, which seems a step too far in creating the film's scuffed look. And it's this feeling, that the director is trying a bit too hard, that detracts from the impact of the film.

The narrative setup, using death, abuse, post bereavement mental health and children struggling to make sense of the world, doesn't really amount to much more than a succession of scenes showing people in crisis. It's not like I was expecting a redemptive conclusion, more that I didn't see anything particularly emblematic in the lives I was being shown. Beard's script is serviceable, but occasionally stumbles a little implausibly into self help territory. What he's good at is the small details: keen fisherman Troy kissing a fish he's caught before returning it to the river; the terrified look on Miranda's face when she realises that the person constantly calling Lillah is her abusive father; Vi clearing up after her mother and the disappointment registering in her eyes. Beard is clearly a director of some talent. I just hope that his next film will explore some less well trod territory.

Two for Joy previews on Wednesday 20 February at the Screen on the Green including a Q&A Danny Mays, Badger Skelton, Bella Ramsey and director Tom Beard, Tickets to the screening  can be found here:

https://www.everymancinema.com/screen-on-the-green/film-info/two-for-joy-live-qa


The film is released on VoD on 25 February 2019. The iTunes pre order link is here:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/movie/two-for-joy-2018/id1443901223

Videoman (aka Videomannen) (2018 Sweden: Dir Kristian A. Söderström)

While the fetishising of the 1980s continues apace in the movies, Kristian A. Söderström's affectionate drama/thriller offers a rather different take on the deification of that decade.

Ennio (Stefan Sauk) is a man after his time. Once the owner of 'one of Sweden's most talked about video shops' back in the day, he's now reduced to setting up his immense VHS collection in a rather squalid Gothenburg basement apartment. Rows and rows of cassettes take precedent over everyday things like a bedroom, and Ennio, whose diet seems to consist entirely of bottles of whisky, faces an uncertain financial future. He also has an ex-wife tired of his obsession. "To be an expert on VHS...it's like learning the phone book by heart," she reasons at one point. But Ennio is resolutely single and independent, observing of a friend who has given up the VHS obsession for married life, "that's not compromise, that's fascism."

Elsewhere in the city we meet another 80s victim, also with a pronounced drink problem and an unhealthy attachment to the decade that taste created. Simone (Lena Nilsson) is a lonely office worker, estranged from her daughter, a woman who still crimps her hair and thinks that no good music was made after 1989. She has 200 followers on Instagram but "no-one likes' my photos" and she's lost in a haze of red wine,  cigarette smoke and regret.

It's perhaps inevitable that Simone and Ennio will meet, which they do at the point where Ennio is about to sell a rare copy of Lucio Fulci's Zombie to a UK collector called 'Faceless' for €10,000. It's a price that will alleviate his financial problems, but it's stolen from him with only a few days before the collector is due to call. Ennio does the rounds of his fellow enthusiasts in a search for the missing tape, at the same time that Simone is enduring some horrid office politics and trying to hold down her job despite her increased levels of drinking.

Much of Videoman is devoted to the September - September on-off relationship between Ennio and Simone, and I liked how the meet cute cliches are subverted (he's impressed when she disses the 1999 version of The Mummy because of it numerous factual errors). Both are hiding from life and have their own reasons for wanting to take refuge in a decade long gone.

Sauk and Nilsson give great, nuanced performances that elevate Videoman from an ok movie to a really good one, and it's to the director's credit, in a first feature too, that he gives time to the development of their characters - he also pulls off the ability to make the audience understand the nature of obsession, rather than a mere character tic or something to be laughed at (you feel Ennio's pain when at one point he peruses another collector's VHS library and bemoans the fact that they're sorted by director). The on point soundtrack by Swedish synthwave composer 'Waveshaper' may at times convince us that we're watching a thriller movie, but for the most part this is a very accomplished film about loss, regret and the importance of remaining individual.

Point of Death (UK 2017: Dir Steve Stone)

Here's a 2015 movie, formerly known as 'In Extremis', now repackaged with a new title and the tag 'It's the end of their world' carried over from the original poster.

So don't expect many laughs here. It's a very sober story, centred on troubled dad Alex, who lives in a palatial but remote house with his wife Claudia and daughter Anna. It's a very taught setup - Alex is a bit of a coiled spring, not averse to beating up a tramp in the office car park or trashing the desk in his study.

Anna warns him that a storm is coming, and before you know it a tempest does arrive in the shape of huge darkly swirling clouds (an impressive effect in a low budget movie) and deafening room shaking thunderclaps.

But is it a storm or a portent of trouble to come? Something is seriously wrong in this family's world. First, the rowan tree in the garden dies, and Anna reminds her father that it was there to protect them. But from what? This is swiftly followed by the demise of all the foliage on their land. Anna mysteriously collapses at the base of the tree and Alex takes her to hospital - or what he thinks is a hospital, but it turns out that he's treated as a patient.

Point of Death is a film constructed on dream logic. Characters appear and disappear, time seems to re-set itself, and the viewing audience, particularly if they've seen Jacob's Ladder, knows that no good can come of this.

The problem with the film is that because it's heading for a fairly obviously guessable end reel, everything that comes before it is deliberately abstract and fractured. The presence of a dark man, hovering on the edge of the frame as a constant threat, isn't particularly threatening, and the pace of the movie, maintaining a dreamlike detachment, serves the purposes of the denouement but is pretty punishing to sit through. It's a slightly Pinteresque piece but script wise sadly lacks much depth; and while the cast - David O'Hara as Alex (who reminded me of Sam Neill in 1981's Possession), Lisa Gormley as Claudia and Isabelle Allen as Anna - give good performances, they're let down by the fact that nothing else is really happening save for their fraught interactions (oh Toyah Willcox - who also gets to sing the song over the end credits - and Neil Person both turn up in bit parts that may have been for box office draw purposes judging by their prominence in the credits).

There's no denying that Point of Death looks impressive and the passive, stately photography provides the stillness that the drama needs to unfold. It's just a shame that there's little content to get hold of, making this a rather arid viewing experience.

Distorted (Canada 2018: Dir Rob W. King)

King's latest movie, his first since the dystopian Nicolas Cage vehicle The Humanity Bureau back in 2017, covers similarly glum territory - cynical government forces and expendable humans - but to somewhat better effect.

Lauren Curran (Christina Ricci), a self confessed manic depressive, is looking for new surroundings to take her mind off her past troubles. Husband Russell (Brendan Fletcher) finds a luxury tower block in the middle of nowhere called The Pinnacle, boasting state of the art features but offering her the solitude she craves (a very Ballardian concept).

But of course a happy life in her new home wouldn't make for a very interesting movie, so it's not long before the clearly still troubled Lauren develops paranoid feelings, mainly centred on other residents of the high rise, but made worse when she 'sees' subliminal messaging coming from the TV. Russell has been through all this before - there is a painful back story around the death of their child - and remains understanding but increasingly intolerant of her theories.

It's only when she stumbles across a journalist and dark tech expert in a chat room (real name Vernon, played by Trump baiting John Cusack) that she realises her supposed delusions are rooted in truth, and the complex in which she lives has an altogether more sinister purpose.

Distorted is refreshingly old school in its 'who can you trust?' storyline and subject matter of surveillance and mind control - although as Vernon comments, when he assures Lauren of the truth behind her suppositions, the world has finally arrived at the technological point where the wildest ravings of conspiracy theorists can now fairly easily be enacted.

Former child starlet Ricci, now approaching 40, still has the wide eyed innocent look which has probably denied her many leading roles but which suits her well as the vulnerable Lauren, and her ability to transform from scared wife to a woman of action is good to see. Her co star, John Cusack, is his insouciant best in a role requiring him to do little more than mutter tech speak and walk around in a hooded black anorak, looking like the murderous Cash Flagg persona of the late great film director Ray Dennis Steckler. And Brendan Fletcher is landed with the role of the husband who may be straight down the line or up to his neck in it, which to be fair he could do in his sleep.

At a little over an hour and a quarter, the movie zips along very nicely. It's only the last third where there's clearly been some judicious editing, which may have been done to maintain narrative pace but not without sacrificing some clarity of plot. But it's good to see an old fashioned conspiracy movie without an over reliance on hardware, favouring character over set pieces.

Distorted will be available on digital download from 4th February.

Supermarket Sweep #6 - Reviews of Redwood (UK 2017), The Toybox (USA 2018), Down a Dark Hall (Spain/USA 2018), Stephanie (USA 2018), Nocturne (USA 2016) and The Terrible Two (USA 2018)

Time for more scouring of supermarket shelves, digging deep and paying cheap for movies to make you weep. For various reasons, probably.

Redwood (UK 2017: Dir Tom Paton) Another movie, another Nietzsche quote; "When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes long into you." No me neither.

Flaky musician Josh and girlfriend Beth are a young couple - what else? -  taking a hike in the US's Redwood National Forest (although actually filmed in Poland). The pair need some alone time - Josh has just found out that he has leukaemia and is about to start chemotherapy - and hopes that the trip will bring them closer together. Bumping into Steve the Ranger (a bizarre turn from Burnley born comedian Muzz Khan, whose American accent is frankly awful) he advises the campers to keep away from the grey zone. A warning which is echoed by another ranger, Vincent (a quick day's work for Nicholas Brendon), who they also encounter on their travels and who is doing a spot of 'animal control.' He also advises against visiting the mausoleum in the forest and he's right, because we've already seen bad stuff happening there. There's no miracle cure, he warns, sensing Josh's sickness. What can he mean?

Genre requirements dictate that a) Josh and Beth get lost, b) become increasingly irritated by each other and c) wander into the grey zone as a quicker route to where they want to go. Cue more bad stuff, with their tent getting attacked by humanoid things, forcing them deeper into the inhospitable woods, and inevitably the mausoleum.

Redwood's rather banal storytelling is thankfully leavened by some lush photography of Poland's Snieska State forest and some night shooting that is moody rather than murky. But sadly that's about it. Leads Josh (Mike Beckingham) and Beth (Tatjana Nardone, who at least has a vaguely passable US accent) are only convincing when in full bicker mode - they don't have much chemistry as a couple in crisis. The two strands of the story only really connect at the end, and frankly it isn't worth the wait. Neitzsche also famously wrote "what does not kill him makes him stronger" which seems curiously appropriate on viewing this.

The Toybox (USA 2018: Dir Tom Nagel) Films about haunted vehicles have been absent from our screens for a while now. Most famously John Carpenter adapted Stephen King's novel about a possessed Plymouth Fury in Christine (1983) but along the way we've also had a murderous truck in Duel (1971), a killer car in The Car (1977) and a phantom hearse in, well The Hearse (1980).

Tom Nagel feels we're not finished with this sub genre yet, offering us the splendid and rather bonkers The Toybox. A dysfunctional family (what other type is there?) decide to take a rather run down RV, recently purchased by the newly bereaved dad of the unit, on a bonding trip into the desert. Along for the ride are Charles's sons Jay and Steve, plus Steve's wife Jennifer and their daughter Olivia. En route the family also pick up stranded travellers Samantha and Mark, and then the fun starts.

For the RV is haunted by the spirit of serial killer Rob Gunthry, who used the vehicle as a mobile butcher's shop - the 'toybox' of the title - and despite the police cleaning the vehicle out in their forensic enquiries (but clearly not doing a very good job), there are enough bits of evidence in various cupboards on board to convince our intrepid caravanners that Gunthry is up to his old tricks from beyond the grave.

The Toybox earns its horrific spurs for two reasons: firstly it's proper nasty. There's a Texas Chainsaw Massacre feel to the whole thing, and the RV, which starts off life rather cruddy, gets more and more disgusting as the spirit of the killer takes hold - the murders are pretty grim too, including a child death which is a bit of a rarity in this type of movie. Secondly the cast. Mischa Barton's in it (as Samantha) which is a sure fire exploitation guarantee these days. Also Denise Richards, looking a little older but still game for a pout, is Jennifer, a woman who ends up the victim of a jump rope - you'll just have to watch. And, as a bonus, go to horror movie bit player, the ever dependable Matt Mercer, also crops up, although he's despatched criminally early. A first rate rubbish movie, where you'll believe that someone can die in a camper van, in the heat, and be kept there for days without anyone mentioning the corpse.

Down a Dark Hall (Spain/USA 2018: Dir Rodrigo Cortes) Quite why Lionsgate sought to get an 18 certificate slapped on this well made, reasonably big budget but ultimately rather inconsequential 2016 filmed teen supernatural horror is anyone's business.

Kit (played by AnnaSophia Robb, who I last saw in Trudie Styler's fairly poor Freak Show) is a troubled teen forced into a strict school, Blackwood, by her parents, as an alternative to an almost certain prison sentence. She's joined by a number of clearly bright but equally wayward girls, who are brought under the tutelage of the strict Madame Duret (Uma Thurman, looking somewhat embarassed) and her sidekick Mrs Olonsky (Rebecca Front, clearly having a better time than Uma). The school seems to bring out the natural giftedness of the girls: Izzy (played by Isabelle Orphan, The Hunger Games Fuhrman) becomes good at equations; Kit comes on leaps and bounds on the old 'joanna'; and Ashley (Taylor Russell) gets to be a dab hand at poetry, even if her verse reminds her tutor of progressive 19th century poet Elizabeth Webb.

For something is going on at Blackwood. Madame Duret is not what she seems, and the girls were brought to the school on purpose to act as conduits for a darker purpose. Kit must work out what's going on before Duret's plan is fully hatched, and protect both herself and her classmates.

This is largely teen horror by numbers stuff, although despite the almost constant gloom - the school has an on/off (pun intended) relationship with the electric lightbulb - director Cortes, who made the rather claustrophobically good movie Buried back in 2010, mounts a fairly lavish production. The gothic touches threaten to overwhelm as the movie progresses - all candles and dramatic piano flourishes - and the denouement recalls a more threatening Poltergeist (1982). But this is a movie that knows what it's doing and its target market (despite the aforementioned 18 cert) - I couldn't help laughing at the obligatory 'research' scene, where Kit explores a number of old tomes to find out the history of the school, filmed in a succession of quick cuts as if worried that the young audience might find the idea of books a little tedious.

Stephanie (USA 2018: Dir Akiva Goldsman) What's all this? Quality movies clogging up the snarkfest that is 'Supermarket Sweep'? These days the appearance of the Blumhouse ident at the start of a film triggers a fairly standard response in me. It's going to be well made, teen focused, and resolutely unoriginal. This one bucks the trend somewhat. While Stephanie nods both to A Quiet Place and the movies of M. Night Shyamalan, it also has enough original ideas to make it rather a refreshing and an occasionally very bleak watch.

The opening scene gives a good example of what's in store. Little Stephanie (an extraordinary performance from Shree Crooks, who was also very good in the hugely underrated 2016 movie Captain Fantastic), alone in the family house, attempts to make a smoothie in a blender; fumbling for a jar of fruit she drops it, but, heedless of the shards of glass lying around the kitchen, scrapes some off a jagged piece of the jar into the mixer, licks the broken shard and carries on. Knowing what we know later this isn't such a surprising act, but the scene sets the nerves jangling.

After around half an hour of watching Stephanie clearly being 'home alone' the film has a pronounced sense of unease, not helped by visitations of an unknown growling beast which sends the little girl hiding under the bed, and the presence of her dead brother in an upstairs room. It's only when Stephanie's parents come back home (after a prolonged absence) that anything like reality is restored. But this sets up lots of other questions: why did they leave her? What happened to her brother? Hints are given on the TV news (which Stephanie ignores in her search to find cartoons) about some epidemic, but the truth is much stranger. It's also only briefly explained (suffice to say that there's some Night of the Living Dead stuff going on).

I'm not going to explain any more of the plot. You'll just have to see it yourself and I recommend that you do. It's a slow paced mood piece, which like that other 'quiet' movie of last year lets the characterisation guide the action for the most part. Yes there'a pyrotechnic climax but it's well timed and effectively done. Incidentally the 2018 year of production was initially a bit confusing because the movie was actually released in 2017, but it seems that the producers subjected the original version to a significant overhaul, which worked well in its favour.

Nocturne (USA 2016: Dir Stephen Shimek) On a budget roughly equivalent to the costs of Stephanie's catering van, Stephen Shimek's second adult horror feature (he's more known for family friendly fantasy stuff) is, and I haven't used this term for a while, a real melon twister.

A group of friends meet up for graduation drinks prior to them going their separate ways. They're a tight knit bunch with all the usual rivalries and relationship issues that come with close friendships - a change from the rather loose characterisation that dogs a lot of genre films. Among their number is Jo, who's far less a party animal than the rest, and Maren, who also seems a little detached and watchful.

When a random conversation about religion and the supernatural leads to an impromptu seance, the group get more embarrassed than spooked (especially when questions to the spirit world are based around how many times people have had sex) and shrug off the experience.

But the aftermath is not so great, particularly when one of them confesses that he's dropped acid and may have spiked other drinks too. Things begin to get really weird, with Maren acting strangely and beginning to quote bits of the bible. Yep, it looks like the ouija board has opened a gate, and the devil's come a calling.

Around two thirds of Nocturne is fairly straightforward youths-letting-their-hair-down action. Drinking, strip poker, tears, sulks, more drinking etc. Where the film succeeds is that the last third begins, to quote someone else, 'to fuck with the fabric of time.' It's not the first time that micro budget movies have used timeshift sequences to create interest in lieu of budget, but the capable cast are believable in their confusion, and some scenes are genuinely unsettling. I can forgive the rather hokey Dead of Night ending, for this is worth a watch. It's a lot more intelligent than the setup suggests.

The Terrible Two (USA 2018: Dir Billy Lewis) Ah a return to the more usual fare offered up in 'Supermarket Sweep' with this unintentionally funny quasi religious story of demons in the southern states of America.

Rose and Albert Poe are a young couple looking for a home in which to start a family. Rose is already pregnant and they have plans for two kids. They're shown a house by a smarmy estate agent that looks perfect. Sadly seven years later both children, sisters Addie and Jade, have died in an accident on their birthdays, and Rose and Albert, inconsolable in grief, must find a way to go on, the two of them now rattling around in an otherwise empty house. But Rose starts to hear the dead children's voices, and when she finds a manuscript in the loft called 'Chasing Legion,' detailing a history of evil entities that live in the house, she and Albert start to fear for their lives.

At one hour and twenty minutes, this film never seems to end. While the daylight setting of a newly built house may have thrown up a few incongruous scares in the Paranormal Activity movies, here the setting just gets you questioning the interior design taste of the average American - it may be a matter of personal choice, but it really is an ugly house, and we spend the entire movie in its confines.

We also spend the whole film with Rose and Albert, in the shape of actors Cari Moscow and Reid Doyle, whose received direction seemed to have been 'act catatonic.' Grief is a really difficult emotion to act, but these two are way off the mark. And as if that isn't bad enough, in the final scenes they're called upon to show 'terror' and 'panic,' wherein Mr Doyle seems to stand around looking like he needs the bathroom in a hurry.

There's an awful lot of religious stuff going on in the movie, and sure enough, director Billy Lewis's Twitter handle sees him passionate about 'God, family and film.' Which probably explains the quotes from the bible that litter the movie, and Rose's insistence on the power of prayer ("It's as if I've lost my relationship with God," she says at one point). As with a lot of 'religious' based horror movies, the actual threat doesn't seem to be thought through - it's enough that there's evil in the world.

But if you want to see a movie located in a soulless suburban home, where grown adults are reduced to gibbering wrecks by the sight of two little girls wearing fright masks, and where the script has people running around spouting lines like "I just found a death note in the sock drawer," well then step this way. And out of interest, what's with the title? Just awful.

Dark Eyes Retrovision #3 - Opera aka Terror at the Opera (Italy 1987: Dir Dario Argento)

"It's the opera. Macbeth brings bad luck!"

Dario Argento's much maligned and misunderstood Opera had a very inauspicious beginning, to put it mildly. The movie was a total failure at the box office in Italy on first release, mainly because the distributors cut a lot of the violence from the original film, hoping to appeal to a wider and younger audience - the very audience who would have been more likely to see the thing in the first place if it had retained the gore! So the gamble didn't pay off and people stayed away in droves: when it was exhibited at Cannes in 1988 the film continued in its ignominy, with the traditionally tough festival audience deriding the hideous dubbing that distracted from the story.

The film was subsequently released as Terror at the Opera (the version which I first saw at London's Scala cinema at their Horror and Cult Film preview Festival in 1990, and which had even more cuts added to the original - unreinstated - ones, including the removal of some narrative scenes which made it occasionally rather incomprehensible). Orion, the distributors, clearly did not know what to do with it, and as a result never effectively promoted the movie.

Career wise Opera came at an odd time in Dario Argento's career, sandwiched between his 1985 movie Phenomena and a bizarre TV show called 'Giallo', cancelled after one season, which sounds like an Italian version of the 1970s UK TV series 'Whodunnit', in which a panel watch short films about murders (directed by Argento and Lamberto Bava, among others) and have to guess who did it - now that I'd like to see.

On a personal note I have a particular fondness for this film, as my review of the festival in which Terror at the Opera was screened was my first published piece of writing (in John Gullidge's superb magazine 'Samhain') so it feels that I've come full circle in finally getting to see the movie, as Argento, originally intended, via the new CultFilms release, complete with original title.

Cristina Marsillach as Betty, destined to see everything in Opera

For those who have not seen the film, its plot is simple, and probably the least remarkable thing about it.

An Italian opera company is mounting a lavish version of Verdi's 'Macbeth;' but when the star diva is run over by a car outside the theatre (a role originally to be played by Vanessa Redgrave, who walked before filming could begin, necessitating Argento to use a series of PoV shots to avoid actually showing the singer), pretty understudy Betty (a game Cristina Marsillach) is asked to step into the lead. But Betty is being stalked by a be-gloved mysterious killer, who seems very keen for her to see him at work, via a rather sadistic device of a row of needles taped under her eyes, forcing her to keep them open. First he knifes her boyfriend to death in front of her, then takes out the company's wardrobe mistress. What is the strange connection between Betty and the killer, and can suave police inspector Alan Santini (Urbano Barberini) solve the case before the murderer strikes again?

Opera is less interesting for what goes on in the film than how it's depicted. Argento's love of Hitchcock is clearly to the fore, both literally (the production uses real ravens which at one point go on a very The Birds style pecking spree) and metaphorically. Opera is a movie about watching, whether it's the audience viewing the opera, Betty being forced to view the killer at work, or the camera gently gliding around observing the cast. Some rather clumsy scenes hint at the psychological denouement of the film (including a rather poor model of a throbbing brain) but overall Opera looks sumptuous and stately - there are distinct Peter Greenaway touches here - and yes the dubbing is much better. The transfer is glorious, and the film has never looked better. It's by no means Argento's finest work, but this version does restore some cohesiveness to the storytelling, even if the heavy metal elements soundtrack do sound a little dated.

CultFilms releases Opera on Dual-Format Blu-ray & DVD and VOD 21 January 2019. Extras include:

Aria of Fear : A brand new candid interview with director Dario Argento
Opera Backstage : A detailed, period documentary showing Argento making Opera (40 minutes)
Restoration featurette on the process from raw to scan to the re-graded, restored final vision

Inner Ghosts (Portugal/Brazil 2018: Dir Paulo Leite) plus interview with the director

I had the privilege of seeing Paulo Leite’s challenging and unorthodox tale of science and the supernatural last year at the inaugural Soho Horror Film Festival. Sharing the programme with a diverse range of films shown during that weekend, Inner Ghosts shone out as something rather special, an intriguing combination of quaintness and naivety, big ideas and, towards the end, some truly scary moments.

Inner Ghosts is primarily the story of Helen, a scientific University researcher studying the brain and its capacity to retain information, bidding for a grant to investigate how memory might be unlocked in the mind of Alzheimer’s patients. Helen was also a ‘sensitive,’ past tense because she let lapse her psychic abilities following the death of her daughter Lily, with whom she could not communicate after Lily's passing.

After Helen’s mentor Moira dies, she bequeathes the researcher an apartment, rich in atmosphere and spirits. Feeling that there would be some worth in carrying out memory experiments with the dead, Helen installs herself in the flat with her protégé, Moira’s daughter Rachel, a psychic in training. They are later joined by Elsa, a young graphic designer who appeals to Helen for help because of demonic visions that she has been experiencing, which are becoming more and more powerful and increasingly frightening.

Fuelled by Helen winning the grant for the research, the three ‘sensitives’ begin a series of experiments to test the extent of ‘brain’ retention by spirits. Helen’s boss Dr Steinman, anxious to make commercial capital from the successful grant bid, is keen for Helen to reach her conclusions using more secular techniques, but when Helen discovers after one successful psychic session that certain images have been imprinted on a roll of blank film left in the room, images which might provide a stronger link with the dead, Steinman’s interest is piqued, and events take a much nastier turn.

Inner Ghosts is predominantly a film about ideas – the conflict between religion, spirituality and science. For the most part it’s a very talky film, and the closest comparison in terms of tone is probably Nigel Kneale’s 1972 BBC drama The Stone Tape. That’s not to say it doesn’t take a dark turn about two thirds in, with one particular scene guaranteed to shock audiences expecting 90 minutes of chin stroking erudition.

It also contains some great performances. Iris Cayatte and Elizabeth Bochmann are impressively bewildered and scared as Rachel and Elsa respectively, and Norman MacCallum is a decidedly nasty specimen of University life in the role of Steinman. But the biggest applause must go to Celia Williams as Helen. Not only is she in every scene of the film, but she has the unenviable job of conveying dialogue convincingly which in less talented hands might have sounded rather hokey. She absolutely succeeds.

Helen and the team face a terrifying vision in Inner Ghosts

I was so intrigued by this quietly audacious film that I tracked down Paulo to ask him some questions about the making of it. I am extremely grateful to him for being very candid and honest about the highs and lows of independent film-making in his responses.

DEoL: Can I first ask about your production company, ‘Bad Behavior,’ in that it’s a horror film based outfit located in Portugal, a country which doesn’t really have a fright movie history?

PL: I worked in Portuguese films for over 15 years and rarely saw a project that remotely touched the horror genre - which is sad because horror is a genre where you can say and do virtually anything, from brainless fun to the sharpest social commentary. If you look at the genre’s canon, you’ll see an incredible diversity of subjects, voices and styles that makes me think that 500 years from now, researchers who want to learn about 20th and 21st Century humans will look into our horror films more than into any other genre. Sadly, the Portuguese cultural scene and our film community are very snobby when it comes to the horror genre. They do not see any interest in it and our film fund follows the same trend. But regardless of that I have always written horror stories and screenplays. Lots of them. Because I could not find any producer interested in the genre, I decided to produce myself. That’s why my company, ‘Bad Behavior’, was created. I wanted a space where we could discuss horror projects without any prejudice; a place for horror lovers with horror projects. Because I had previous experience with film marketing and financing, I used the networking I had in order to secure some funding for the company. The rest was hard work.

DEoL: You funded some of Inner Ghosts through a Kickstarter programme. Obviously, you met your target (as the film got made!) but what types of people or organisations gave money to the movie? 

PL: Inner Ghosts was privately funded based on my pitch and then I worked on the script for a few months. It’s important to say that I wrote five horror scripts before Inner Ghosts. However, I needed one project to start the company – one I could produce with very little money. That’s why I chose Inner Ghosts, which was the sixth film I wrote, specifically to be the first one produced. I used venture capital to fund the company and the film. I already knew the investors and we have a great relationship. They trusted me and my long-term vision – and I am very thankful for that. I showed them the film a month ago and they loved it. The Kickstarter campaign came during the last stages of post-production. We ran out of money for the sound mix because of some VFX that were needed and I decided to try crowdfunding. I had helped other campaigns in the past and studied a lot about the subject, so I was eager to try it for myself. In order to make our case more “alluring” I gave an Associate Producer credit to my backers. They appear on IMDB and on the film’s end credits. Executive Producer credits were given to people who made a significant contribution to the film – not always in the form of money.

DEoL: Before we talk about the film itself, I must mention the casting. It's a largely female cast, and the central performance from Celia Williams as Helen is extraordinary. How did you find your actors, and was it hard to get them on board a movie which is quite unorthodox?

A visitation from the beyond in Inner Ghosts

PL: The casting of Inner Ghosts was a weird journey. From the beginning I wanted to make the film in English language. First, because of commercial reasons. I wanted to make some money back on my film and everybody knows how hard it is to sell any film in a foreign language. Now, one of the things that I learned was that you cannot make a Portuguese cast perform in English. We do not have many actors who are so fluent that the audience wouldn’t notice. So, I set another – even harder – goal: to get a majority British cast. Now I had a bigger problem: how do I get British actors in Portugal when I can’t afford even one airline ticket? Again, I was extremely lucky because I found a theatre company in Lisbon that performs in English... with British actors! On one hand, I was limited to the number of British actors I had in Lisbon. On the other hand, because I chose them early in the process, I could write for them as the rewriting process went along. Celia Williams was love at first sight and because I knew I wanted her the moment I met her, I could write for her. A similar process happened with the other roles. They all read the script and were highly supportive. They fully understood what I was going for and trusted me. I also think that horror projects are so rare in Portugal that they also saw Inner Ghosts as a 'and now for something completely different' career move. I’m happy they did.

DEoL: Turning to the movie itself, you wrote the script. What influenced the story? I mentioned when I met you at the Soho Horror Film Festival that the themes of science and the supernatural were very Nigel Kneale like, so I take it that was one influence?

PL: Yes, I have always been a huge fan of British horror and sci-fi. I must have hundreds of old British films I’ve been accumulating since the old VHS days. As a kid growing up in Brazil, I used to watch (and collect) British films and they had a big influence on me. Some of my influences are, by now, a kind of cliché like Dead of Night (1945), Village of the Damned (1960), The Wicker Man (1973), Demons of the Mind (1972) and Frightmare (1974). However, I am also very drawn towards lesser-known gems like The Night My Number Came Up (1955) and Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968). I’m also a die-hard fan of British horror TV shows like Hammer House of Horror that I used to watch religiously every week. I’m also a big fan of non-horror British films like In Which We Serve (1942). Nigel Kneale’s large body of work is also a big influence: Quatermass was an instant hit with me, but I also love his lesser-known plays like Beasts (1976) from which I steal a lot. British films have an elegance in speech and style that I particularly love. British horror builds everything on top of that. That’s why it is so unique.

DEoL: The science in the film feels well researched and very plausible. Did you do a lot of research? Also, was it the science or the supernatural (or both) that appealed to you more as a story device?

PL: I read lots and lots of ghost stories; and at some point, I decided to read non-fiction about the paranormal – always trying to understand it a little better. But the books I have read about ghosts left me truly disappointed. That includes most of the best-selling books written by famous mediums and psychics. They write a lot, but rarely say anything that’s meaningful. What I mean is we get a lot of stories where the dead say they are fine, that they loved aunt Felicia’s eulogy during the funeral service... and little more. I have always been left with the impression that those high-profile mediums are either frauds, or they’ve been hanging out with the wrong spiritual crowd (I can’t tell which is true). It’s hard to believe that people with actual access to the other side only get superficial stuff. Let’s be honest: so, you have access to the dead and you never asked them what it feels to be dead? Come on! There’s a lot more to know: do they watch us having sex? Do they smell our food? Do they still keep in touch with the things that were relevant to them when they were alive? Do they have relationships on the other side like we do? Do they talk to each other on the other side? How close are they to God? No books ever addressed these questions. Then I tried to find scientific research and papers that actually try to give us answers. And there’s plenty of it. They offer fascinating information that horror films could use, but never do. I tried to use some of it.

DEoL: Despite its location, the movie feels very 'English' - was that deliberate?

PL: Yes. That was the idea. It’s part of what I like to see. I do not think I was very successful (I disagree - DEoL), but I will try to make it better.

Celia Williams as Helen in Inner Ghosts

DEoL: Without giving too much away, this is a film of 'two halves' - a very quiet, thoughtful and spiritual first half, which gives way to a more visceral second section. Without spoiling too much, can you tell me about some of the more challenging effects work in the movie (which comes across really effectively, by the way). Mitch Harrod, lead programmer at the Soho Film Festival, said that there were scenes in your movie which he'd never seen done before. Were you aware while making it that you were breaking new ground?

PL: Well, thank you for the kind compliment. The horror genre is so diverse, it’s unlikely that I’ve been really breaking new ground. However, I did want to show a couple of things I had never seen in other films, since my knowledge is limited. Or, things that I saw, but that I thought I could push a little further. Putting that into Inner Ghosts was a huge challenge for several reasons. First, because the experimental nature of what I was doing was very difficult for everybody to grasp. Through the shooting process I had to fight to get what I wanted, since some people could not envision what I was trying to get, therefore, tried to give me something else. The problem was that I myself was not entirely sure we could pull it off. Like I said before, I was willing to take the risk. Many times, when a filmmaker takes risks, he’ll be alone. Why? Because of the second reason: at our budget level, being alone in our risks is inevitable. Inner Ghosts was made with very little money and we could not afford some tests (well, we could but then we wouldn’t be able to afford the shooting!). Sometimes you only have one chance to shoot it and you’ll end up with whatever you shot. In some scenes you are very successful. Some other scenes won’t go that well and you’ll end up cutting. The third challenge was time. Because I had never done those scenes and my crew had never done them either, it all put a big pressure on me because I only had three weeks to shoot the entire film. I simply could not afford another week. That’s micro-budget film-making: you’ll never end up exactly with what you wanted. You’ll end up with something else. That’s the thing that fascinates me. In a certain way, I’m also a spectator.

DEoL:  So the movie is currently screening at various film festivals. How is it being received? What sort of things have people been saying about it?

PL: It’s a mixed bag. Some people don’t like it. Some do. Some hate it. Some love it. My goal is that they won’t forget it so soon. I don’t want people to be indifferent. I understand that both the first half and the final sequence are very challenging. However, I believe there’s an audience who wants to be challenged. People complain about the sameness in too many horror films. Well...

DEoL:  It's certainly in my top 10 films of the year. I loved its bravery, the way it wasn't afraid to take its time, and the slide into the nightmarish which you almost don't see coming. How much does the film match up to your original expectations when you scripted it?

PL: It’s difficult to say, because I never wanted it to be exactly like I scripted it. I love working with actors, so I gave them a lot of freedom to say what I wrote with their own words. And there was a lot of that in the film. This means that the actors will always transform your script. The murder scene and the final scene, however, surpassed my expectations. Like I said, there was a lot of risk in those scenes and that resulted in a lot of work to get it right. I had to change the editor months into the post-production because he could not get it right. Plus, I had to change the sound post crew three times because none of them could envision the sound for the final scene. It took months to get that right. We had to break that final scene and design the sound for each part.

There were several things going on and they couldn’t sound the same. In a film like this, no one is really sure about the end result while we are shooting. I was following my gut feeling and a desire to try something a little different. I was ten times more nervous than anyone. However, I was fully aware that my search would continue during post. I learned a lot about film-making by making Inner Ghosts. It was a nerve-wrecking experience.

DEoL: What's next for ‘Bad Behavior’ productions? Can you say that you've almost single handedly put feature Portuguese horror on the map?

PL: Well, the hardest film in a filmmaker’s career is not the first one. It is the second. I have two films I wrote that I must make. They are a bit more expensive and way more complex. One is called Through the Eyes of a Child and other one is still untitled. Both scripts are finished and I’m trying to raise the money to make them. Both projects have been selected to markets and had great feedback. I’m currently trying to get a British co-producer, since I’d like to make them in London. They are very different from Inner Ghosts but continue my explorations into the paranormal. They both bring to the table a few concepts that, again, I have never seen done in the same way I want to make them. Putting together the financing of those two films will be my mission for 2019. I should be shooting a proof of concept for one of those films in the first quarter of the year. If other producers want to work with me in their projects, I’m also game. We’ll see what happens. In the meantime, I’m also working as a consultant to other filmmakers, helping them with their horror scripts. Producers like my feedback and I love reading horror scripts.

DEoL: And lastly I note that you're also a fan of disco music. I take you're not DJ Paulo Leite from Portugal, who seems to crop up on Spotify lists? If you are well done! If not, do you DJ?

PL: No, I don’t DJ. It’s funny because I get that question a lot, since we both share the same name, and yet we have never met. But yes, I am a big music fan. I have a huge record collection and disco is one of my favourite genres. I even wrote a book about music licensing for films and most of the examples I give are horror films. Your question is twice interesting because I feel there is an element in disco music that has everything to do with the horror genre. Most disco music has a clear message: let’s dance, have fun, love and have sex. That’s a powerful message that reflects the very positive, prosperous and carefree spirit of 70’s America – a spirit that was smashed by the 80’s and all of its horrors (AIDS being one of them). Since the end of the disco era, you’ll never find such an optimistic sound landscape, ever again. Now, horror sends you the opposite message: horrible things happen to nice people and the cavalry is not coming! We are all alone in a universe that does not care about us. I love the contrapuntal possibilities of horror’s nihilism and disco’s deliciousness. Hopefully, I’ll be exploring this in the projects I’m trying to make next.

DEoL: I can't wait. Thanks for your time Paulo and best of luck with Inner Ghosts and all your future projects!

Backtrace (USA 2018: Dir Brian A. Miller)

Action director Brian A. Miller has developed a bit of a reputation for serviceable, quick and dirty movies with a straight to streaming market in mind, and his latest, Backtrace, is no different.

Donovan Macdonald is the lone survivor of a 2011 bank heist gone wrong, where $20 million remains hidden and so far unrecovered. Unfortunately the only person who knows its location, Macdonald, has developed severe amnesia. Incarcerated in a secure facility since his arrest, the missing money and the identity of the heist shooter has become a cold case. But when Macdonald is sprung by a young inmate, Lucas, who offers to help him regain his memory, and the money, by injecting him a new, still under trial drug. Macdonald has no choice but to oblige. But once they have escaped from prison, and the serum starts bring back Macdonald's memory, the escapees find out that they're not the only ones interested in finding the loot.

Backtrace is one of those movies where all the money has been ploughed into the stars' salaries, leaving little else. Consequently it's a movie with famous faces which looks, if not cheap, well, a little mean. Luckily Miller knows what he's doing and makes the most of what's on offer, directed with a brisk pace throughout, although the advanced years of some of the cast - I'm amazed he wasn't tempted to call it 'Backbrace' - limit the physical action on display, any tension generated either through extensive but strangely inert gun battles, or cops and baddies stalking each other in a deserted cement factory. Having your external locations restricted to a small area of Georgia doesn't help - most of the last part of the movie is shot within constant sight of Savannah's Talmadge Memorial Bridge.

So where has the money gone? Sylvester Stallone for one, starring as police office Sykes. At over 70, Stallone has the whole 'shrug, a curl of the lip and a blank stare' thing down to a fine art, and happily lets people act round him while providing a solid centre to his much younger supporting cast, while standing in the police incident room looking at interconnected bits of string. Matthew Modine as Macdonald, at under 60 considerably more sprightly than his co-star, gets to deliver an over the top and frequently persuasive performance as the memory drug painfully courses through him, a performance not well served by a rather cliche ridden script, which requires him to deliver his lines in. A. Rather. Shatneresque. Way.

Ryan Guzman as Lucas is a creditable bit part actor who finds some nuances in his part, but best of all is fifty something Meadow Williams, as the former nurse turned money-grabber Erin, who gets to administer the syringe somewhat inanimately to Macdonald and then stand around doing little else. Gossip column fans may find some irony in the casting, recalling Ms Williams as the woman who made headlines back in 2016 after successfully fending off claims from the family of her deceased ex husband Gerald Kessler, that she forced a change in his will to receive an $800 million settlement following his death. 

Backtrace is released on Digital HD from 7th January 2019 and on DVD from 14th January 2019.