10 great Halloween Novelty Songs

I've had a thing about Halloween novelty songs for a very long time. Last year I even guested on a radio show playing two hours of them, which you can hear here.

Anyhow as it's the glorious 31st I thought I'd give you the skinny on ten of my all time favourites - and they're not the classics, so don't worry, this is a 'Monster Mash' free zone.

#10 - Werewolf Watusi - Don Hinson & The Rigamorticians - a number of rather similar songs  saw the light of day (or should that be the darkness of the dungeon?) following the release and massive success of Bobby 'Boris' Pickett's 'Monster Mash' in 1962. 'Werewolf Watusi' wasn't a single as such - it was in fact a cover of an original song performed by Bobby Pickett and the Rolling Bones in 1964, so this is a cover version of a novelty record that pretty much copies the original. The culprit was actor/stand-up comedian/Las Vegas and Arizona DJ Don Hinson, clearly out to cash in (although WW was produced by Gary Paxton who also twiddled knobs on Bobby's 1962 hit). Hinson collected a whole load of these things together for his '64 LP 'Monster Dance Party' (best title on the album? 'Riboflavin-Flavored, Non-Carbonated, Polyunsaturated Blood'). But Pickett and Hinson's seemed to be a fairly amicable rivalry: Pickett in turn covered 'Monster Swim,' a track from Hinson's album written by Paxton, that same year. So many crummy Karloff impersonations, so little time.

#9 - Graveyard Rock - Tarantula Ghoul - Ms Ghoul's real name was Suzanne Waldron (1931 - 1982) all the way from Portland, Oregon, and this is probably my all time favourite Halloween novelty record. In her TG guise, Ms Waldron was host of the TV show 'House of Horrors' on Portland's KPTV station; the channel's bosses has seen Suzanne as a witch in a production of 'Macbeth' and were looking for their own version of Vampira (the Morticia Addams-alike hostess played by Maila Nurmi on a Los Angeles TV channel). As TG Waldron did her thing for two years, between 1957 and 1959. 'Graveyard Rock' which was actually the B-side to the inferior track 'King Kong', was recorded in 1958 at the height of her fame. Ms Waldron was quietly let go from her role when it was discovered that she was pregnant out of wedlock! She revived the TG persona a few times in the early 1960s, but her gothy flame was brief. Tarantula Ghoul, and Suzanne Waldron, both died at the tragically young age of 50 from cancer.

#8 - Whatever Happened to Eddie - Eddie and the Monsters - a break from all that 1950s and 1960s nonsense for a while. This rather extraordinary (and mercifully brief) two minutes of your life is the product of Butch Patrick aka Eddie Munster all the way from 1983. As well as tearing into the Munsters theme tune as the basis for the song, the lyrics go some way to explaining his, er, state of mind. The thirty year old former child actor had drifted slightly after achieving fame as a 10 year old in the long running series The Munsters, giving up acting in 1975 to work with his father. It was at this point he started to learn bass guitar, and eight years later the self referential 'Whatever Happened to Eddie?' appeared. Sadly this single was Mr Patrick's only vinyl output. In later years the stories of drugs and assault charges became the things he was better known for, but on listening to this, I'm thinking he was already on his way. Great video too.

#7 - The Lurch - Ted Cassidy - years before Butch cashed in on his Eddie Munster glory, Ted Cassidy was doing much the same. The 6' 9" tall actor was perfect for the role of Lurch the butler in the long running TV show The Addams Family, which aired for 64 episodes between 1964 and 1966. Slap bang in the middle of that run, Cassidy was persuaded into the recording studio in 1965 for a song which used as its inspiration an AF episode called 'Lurch Learns to Dance' where he does just that. The music was written by Gary 'Monster Mash' Paxton - clearly the go to guy for these sorts of things at the time - and Cassidy doesn't so much sing as lurk in the background uttering lines like "Satisfaction...jubilation!" in response to the singers who have successfully learned the dance (there is no guide how to do 'The Lurch' in the song, dance craze fans).

#6 - Screamin' Ball (at Dracula Hall) - The Duponts - the explosion of Halloween novelty songs in the late 1950s referencing the Universal classic monsters was in direct response to the syndication of those great movies to US TV in 1957 by Screen Gems, and shown on the 'Shock Theater' programme. Hosted by people like Vampira and the irrepressible Zacherley, this was the first time that a new generation of kids had been exposed to the Frankenstein monster, Dracula, The Mummy and The Invisible Man. Not only did this glut of classic horror inspire the late Forrest J. Ackerman to start up the influential 'Famous Monsters of Filmland' magazine, but it also sparked a rush of songs which named the creatures. The Jimmy Williams/Johnny Brandon penned 'Screamin' Ball,' the last of three singles from doo wop quartet The Duponts from New York, New York, was one of the first cash in novelty singles of this type: it also scores extra points for the sheer number of character references jammed into their two and a half minute tune. 

#5 - Transylvania Twist - Baron Daemon and the Vampires - another TV horror host cuts some wax! This guy was actually Mike Price, and he was picked up back in 1963 for WNYS, a Syracuse, New York TV station looking to develop their own horror show after purchasing a load of B horror/sci fi movies. Clearly inspired by Bobby 'Boris' Pickett's 'The Monster Mash,' released the previous year, the station felt like it was time for them to have a novelty single of their own. Taking a line from Pickett's song, with words by Hovey Larrison and music by Mike Riposo, and with musicians borrowed from local band Sam and the Twisters, they set to work, although apparently during recording the song morphed somewhat from the original composition to something more resembling The Twisters' recent single 'Fooba, Wooba John' which they'd had a hit with a couple of months previously. And I think it's this rather rough sound, almost an indie garage version of a novelty song, that I really like. And the B side of the single was called 'Ghost Guitars'!

#4 - House on Haunted Hill - Frank De Vol and His Orchestra - this brilliant mamba version of the theme to William Castle's 1959 terror classic House on Haunted Hill is two minutes of moody organ brilliance with a lush twangy guitar/string section. De Vol was actor Frank Denny (the De Vol name was used for his soundtrack credits, of which there are many). In the 1940s he was a musical arranger for stars like Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and Doris Day, and went on to compose scores for many movies including Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964). This version of the original score, backed by a track called 'Hades,' is rather different to the original theme by Castle regular composer Von Dexter. Incidentally there was a surf version of the theme in 1963 by 'Kenny & The Fiends' (also in some releases 'Kenny and the Beach Fiends') which is also a DIY gas, but not as much of a gas as their surf adaptation of Poe's poem 'The Raven' (parts 1 and 2) the following year.

#3 - Vampira - Bobby Bare - many people assume Bare's 1959 rock and roll non hit is a tribute to the TV horror hostess. I'm not sure, but it's a very cool song. Bare heralded from Ohio, USA and throughout the 1950s tried to break into the rock and roll scene with songs like this (you could tell he wasn't hardcore - the B side of the single was a soppy ballad called 'Tender Years' with a distinct country and western feel that would herald the genre in which he became most successful). Along with the singer of #8, Bare and Butch are the only ones still with us - indeed Bare bco-wrote Norway's entry in the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest! I love the ad libbed line in this, "done scared me to death." We've all been there Bobby.

#2 - Graveyard - The Phantom Five - in true indie style this was the only record made by this great surf band, all the way from 1964, with a great sax break. The B side was 'Cool it!' so I think the 'Graveyard' reference might be more slang than horror. Anyway this Indiana quintet were Lani Allen, John Bolling, Thomas Davis, Richard Fortin & William Johanson. If anyone knows any more about the group let me know. But this is 2 minutes 37 seconds of cool surf fun, and not a raucous laugh in sight.

#1 - Do The Know It's Halloween? - North American Hallowe'en Prevention Initiative - we're bang up to date with our last entry (well 2005, so positively modern): this was a charity record inspired by 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' put together by an amazing array of artists, including Beck, Feist, Peaches, Russell Mael, Thurston Moore, Karen O and a heap of others. It reached number four on the Canadian pop chart, and all proceeds were donated to UNICEF - it also has an ace video, albeit rather low res (144, really!). According to the official press release, the song stemmed 'from a frustration with other benefit songs' misguided, somewhat patronising attitude, and Western-centric worldview.' Well done to them. And Happy Halloween readers!

Dark Eyes Retrovision #20 - Eye of the Devil (UK 1967: Dir J. Lee Thompson)

Phillippe de Montfaucon (David Niven), a wealthy French vineyard owner, is called home because his wine crop has been threatened by drought. Against his wishes his wife Catherine (Deborah Kerr) and children Jacques (Robert Duncan) and Antoinette (Suky Appleby) join him. Back in Bellenac, the country home of the de Montfaucons, Catherine becomes concerned at the behaviour of the son and daughter of another of the area's rich and well established families, the de Carays, in the shape of the beguiling Odile (Sharon Tate) and her brother, the strange Christian (David Hemmings). Little by little Catherine understands what is needed to restore the vines to production, and the likely cost to the de Montfaucon family.

Eye of the Devil was based on a 1964 book of murder and the occult, 'Day of the Arrow' by Robin Estridge (which was popularly reckoned to have been inspired by Sir James George Frazer's 1890 study of esoteric religions, 'The Golden Bough').  Estridge was also involved with co-scripting the film along with the little known Dennis Murphy and also an uncredited Terry Southern, writer of Dr Strangelove (1964) and Barbarella (1967). The latter was drafted in to modernise the feel of the script (he was probably asked to make it more 'with it'), maybe in response to the casting of David Hemmings and Sharon Tate. Hemmings was about to land the role of Thomas in Antonioni's Blow-up (1966) which would cement his position as one of the leading faces in the 1960s London based pop culture movement. And Tate, the model and poster girl who was at the time very much a 'now' face, would be starring in her first feature, having been signed to producer Martin Ransohoff's Filmways company - who bankrolled this movie - back in 1963. 

Kim Novak was originally signed to play the part of Catherine. Unfortunately two weeks into shooting she injured her back in a riding accident. After some deliberation about Novak's recovery the actress, who can still be seen in long shots in some scenes, was replaced with Deborah Kerr, whose previous genre credit had been as Miss Giddens in Jack Clayton's 1961 movie The Innocents. Kerr being ten years older that Novak slightly strains credibility that she's the mother of two young children, but she nevertheless turns in a suitably anguished performance.

Eye of the Devil's original director was Sidney J. Furie, who had signed a three-picture deal with Ransohoff. However shortly before filming was to begin, Furie, who went on to direct The Ipcress Files (1965) instead, was replaced by action movie director Michael Anderson. Anderson then fell ill and J. Lee Thompson was appointed in his place: Thompson was more used to epic filmmaking like The Guns of Navarone (1961), Cape Fear and Taras Bulba (both 1962) - so for the experienced director this was a far more modestly budgeted affair.  

The original shooting title for the film was '13' (the title appears in the credits at the end of the movie's US DVD release): apparently the initial cut was much longer, but a lot of the content was trimmed prior to its release. This makes sense as much of the film feels rather disjointed, particularly towards the end - although this adds to the disorientation felt by cast and audience. Eye of the Devil has a languid, European feel - it was shot in the Dordogne - and the black and white photography by Erwin Hiller (a talent discovered by Murnau) has many woozy touches reminiscent of Freddie Francis' work, particularly on The Innocents, and the abstraction and montage effects give the thing a narcotic feel. But the script is a little stiff, and a largely UK cast - also including Donald Pleasence, Flora Robson and John Le Mesurier - play it very slowly. Tate's first 'starring' role is a great enigmatic debut (there's a story that she met Alexandrian Wiccan High Priest and Priestess Alex and Maxine Sanders to perfect her role), but it's a shame that Hemmings has little to do but stand in the background and practise his archery skills (although he's pivotal to one of the film's final scenes).

The finale of the film, particularly as it's spelled out about half way through, seems a little laboured, and the whole thing may be rather uneven, but Eye of the Devil is a genuine curio which helped herald a rash of witchcraft movies into cinemas through the rest of the 1960s and into the next decade. 

Hunting for Skinner - the Writer of Skinner, Paul Hart Wilden, on the search for his lost horror movie.

I reviewed 101 Films' recent release of 1993 horror movie Skinner recently. The following interview with Paul Hart Wilden describes the laborious process of identifying and reconstructing the film.

How did you first get involved with the project?

I’d written a movie called Living Doll. I’d managed to get the script into the hands of infamous film producer Dick Randall who was living and working in London. He was quite taken with the script and within half an hour of meeting him had agreed to buy it and make it into a movie. Living Doll had been a ‘study of the problems of unrequited love in teenage youth’ as I used to explain it to people or, as other people had said, it’s a necrophilia movie. Which meant that for movie #2 I needed a new angle to pursue. We’d been through the serial killer boom of the 1980s, the world was changing as was the world of the horror movie. I’d read about Ed Gein, H. H. Holmes, real life cannibals and all sorts… so I had my idea, I wrote the script. Now, like with the previous stack of papers, all I needed to do was go out, meet someone, have them buy it and another notch on the filmmaking bedpost would be mine.

Can you tell us a little about how Skinner was first released? Did it go into cinemas or onto home video?

Skinner was made back in the days when there was only one medium for film - 35mm. So, the hope (at least in my head) had been that at some point the movie would be finished and released upon the world via various movie theatres. But the path out into the world wasn’t smooth. For various reasons the movie got mired in the ‘straight-to-video’ world of the 90s a couple years after it was produced, so any real attention the movie had was cold by the time it hit the streets.

This was Ted Raimi’s first or second movie as a leading man and even his brother’s Evil Dead wasn’t enough to generate the kind of interest you’d probably get today in similar circumstances. Traci Lords' move to ‘respectable’ acting was still very much direct-to-video fare that wasn’t mainstream. Even Ricki Lake’s daytime TV show and the John Waters connection weren’t enough to bring in either an audience or notoriety – especially as even to this day I think she pretty much has refused to acknowledge or speak about the movie. Richard Schiff was just beginning his career. Why it never really caught the eye of 'Fangoria' (the one real outlet for horror movie publicity in those days) is still a mystery to this day. It really is one of life’s great mysteries as to why it never seemed to gain any kind of traction at all. To add to the weight of disadvantage, by the time the various parties involved managed to get the movie out to the public, a movie called The Silence of the Lambs had been released to worldwide acclaim, so Skinner was seen by most people as just a shameless attempt to
ride someone else’s coat tails. 

Paul Hart Wilden

But come out it did… on good old VHS tapes. The original US distributor seemed to consider the 10,000 or so units they shipped a decent amount for a movie ‘of this type’. It then made its way to Laserdisc and then onto DVD. The people then responsible for putting the movie out into the world on the new-fangled DVD format either didn’t care or didn’t seem to notice that the version they put out was not only heavily censored but also of such atrocious technical quality that it rendered the movie almost unwatchable. Then it appeared on a weird two movie DVD with another under-performing project called The Surgeon. There was the initial US release, then it appeared in a French language version, South American iterations in both Spanish and Portuguese, a version from somewhere in the Czech Republic, a Japanese release, a version in Hong Kong under the title of 'Skin Person Devil' (still my favourite) and a seemingly bootlegged PAL version in Australia that I still can’t find the origin of.

At what point did Skinner become a 'lost film'?

I guess in some ways it became a ‘lost film’ pretty much from the moment I signed a contract and turned over the rights for my script to be made into a movie. Not wishing to sound trite or flippant, whatever confluence of circumstances that lead to the creation of the film and its subsequent journey out into the world, everything just came together in a perfect storm of events that meant it disappeared from the zeitgeist.

I realised pretty quickly that it wasn’t going to be the ‘next big step’ on my career path and was more of a big fucking stumble… so the fact that barely anyone saw it or new about it was in some ways a bit of a relief as I could retreat with my ego a little battered and hope to regroup and try again (hopefully) without too much residual damage.

But time moves on and as we get older things take on a different aspect as we look back at them. I watched a documentary series on TCM (Turner Classic Movies) about the restoration and preservation of movies and how many of the classics no longer existed in any physical form. I read a newspaper article about some scenes from King Kong turning up in a garbage dumpster in New Zealand... and one of my favourite movies The Wicker Man is legendary in forever being incomplete because scenes were cut out and the negatives dumped in a freeway construction site… and then it suddenly struck me... what if Skinner just disappeared off the face of the earth. Would anyone notice? Would anyone care?

And at that point I had to re-evaluate my own relationship to the movie. What I had turned my back on was a part of my growth as a writer, it was a part of my personal history in the movie industry and whether the end result had turned out to be a pile of garbage or a misunderstood classic or just a noble experiment that hadn’t come out as intended… it had begun from an honest place. I had wanted to write a horror movie that would be part of what we all know and love as part of the history of horror and the end result deserved at least someone caring enough about it to make sure it didn’t just disappear from existence.

Suppose that shitty DVD transfer or the unwatched Laserdisc in my closet were the only remaining evidence that this film ever existed and the only (apart from a VHS copy that the dog used as a chew toy) physical copies of the movie?

So, all of this made me realize... there had to be a 35mm negative of this movie and at least one 35mm print somewhere. The only real question was… where?

When was the film re-discovered and how?

I’d maintained a vague social media/email type friendship with the film’s producer and his assistant from the time and so figured they’d be the best place to start with any inquiries. The producer, Brad Wyman, had nothing to add regarding the current ownership or whereabouts of the movie other than the company name that appeared on the IMDB listing.

I contacted Image Entertainment who had produced the Laserdisc version of Skinner but their only response was that they didn’t keep track of where the rights reverted to once they lapsed. Cinequanon were the original sales company but they were no longer in existence and the owner, Daniel Sales, had died some years ago - but I was able to track down one of the former associates who advised me to contact a certain ‘FD’ who was responsible for handling the affairs of Daniel Sales and so might be able to shed some light on where ‘things’ might have gone after the passing of the owner and the company. I contacted him and although he initially said he did not know of the whereabouts of any elements or ownership – subsequent pestering on my part got him to admit there was a storage unit that might have something inside and that the next time he visited it, he would report back about what he might find. Subsequent ‘pestering’ only brought up that he was ‘still looking into the matter’.

I then got a response from JK (one of the editing assistants). He suggested I contact a company called Crest Digital where he remembered dropping off a work print at some time in the past. I contacted Crest in Hollywood and would you believe it - they had a copy of the movie - a box containing 10 reels of… something. When I opened the box, inside were the ten white boxes, each containing a reel of 35mm film. But it was a workprint. So after all these years, all I’d come up with was a picture but no sound? Yes, it seemed so. But was it even the complete picture? And did the box of work print reels contain the fully intact version of the movie or a censored and incomplete version?

In 2012 I got a Facebook message from Dave Gregory at Severin Films.‘This is DG, can you give me a call about Skinner? I was out drinking with JK and he told me you were looking for it.’ It turned out that David had been looking for the elements for 4 or 5 years, having been contracted by a company who owned the rights to the movie to put together some BTS stuff. DG gave me the name of a company and a person - and a phone number. I contacted the company and it turned out they owned the rights to Skinner.

So... suddenly my 35mm workprint looked like a highly valuable asset which in conjunction with the sound from an existing video master... might just about be the makings of a newly minted version of Skinner. But when the workprints were examined we heard that, ‘it’s full of grease pencil marks and debris and tape splices. I could have it sonically cleaned and then do a test transfer to better gauge the quality. Otherwise, the colour and condition are very good but it’s an untimed element so grading will take twice as long. I’m not sure if it’s the uncut version either but once I find time to get to the other reels I’ll know more. In the meanwhile, never give up the search for the negative!"

So once again, the curse of Skinner had struck. The 35mm negative had to be out there somewhere, even a 35mm print of the film would be something: it was just a matter of tracking it down before it vanished forever.

Thanks to Facebook page I met a guy called David Austin. It turned out he not only knew the movie but was actually a fan of it, probably not too much of a stretch to say a very big fan. David had been down this road before and had actually been involved in finding elements of movies that had supposedly been lost. So we’d talk about where Skinner might be or how to go find it and I’d talk him through all the efforts I’d made over the years and something kept sticking in the back of my head every time we spoke.

I’ve no idea why, but I just couldn’t shake the notion that a certain person with the initials FD (remember him from earlier?) had more to tell than they would let on. I had no proof. I hadn’t spoken to the man in over a decade and when I had, he’d promised me that if he ever remembered or came across anything, he’d let me know… surely that decade of silence only meant one thing. I couldn’t shake the idea that he was somehow the key to all this, but he’d been as much of a dead end as every other avenue I’d tried.

David said: ‘Just let me speak to him. I’ve done this before. If he has something, I know what it’ll take to make him give it up.’ Like I said, this had been more than ten years of fruitless effort, I wasn’t even sure if I could or should ever find what I was looking for… but why not take the easy option and let someone else do some lifting at least to see? I dug out the contact phone number I had for FD, not knowing it if even worked or to be honest if he was even still alive, and handed it off to David.

David called back. ‘I spoke to him. He’s got it and we’ll have it next week.'

Me: ‘Excuse me?’

David: ‘It’s done. He’ll ship it to where you want it to go.’

Me: ‘Are you serious? What did you do? What did you say?’

David: ‘I’ve dealt with people like this before. I know what he wanted.’

Me: ‘And what might that be?’

David: ‘Money.’

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we’re now sitting here with a beautiful 4k restoration of Skinner. That’s honestly all it took, one of the earliest connections I tried turned out to be the key all along. To this day, I have no idea what was said in that phone call or how much David actually handed over – but whatever it was and however much it took, it worked. I never even got to see what was in the discovery. It was shipped directly from wherever FD had it to the company in Illinois who ‘owned’ the distribution rights.

We found Skinner, managed to dig up the original camera negative and got it into the hands of the people who needed it and they put together a beautiful 4k restoration of the movie that became available to one and all. It was a long journey, but the work is done: over 25 years since the movie was originally made and over 10 years since I first began efforts to try and track it down and bring it back from the dead.

So now we’re here, I want to give my immense thanks to all the people I met in the course of this journey and who contributed to tracking it down and ensuring that what at one time looked like a lost cause turned out to be anything but.

How do you feel now that fans can now see Dennis Skinner's horrendous crimes in this 4K restoration?

Time and distance lend an entirely different perspective to all aspects of life – and so it is with my relationship with Skinner. All my disappointment and resentment at dreams dashed, ambition unfulfilled has gone away and I have a much more mature perspective on things. It was quite something to sit in a movie theatre in Hollywood, beside Ted Raimi, with a sold-out audience to watch the movie.

The work that went into producing the 4K release is quite something. The movie looks great and more importantly it sounds great. That was the biggest revelation to me when watching it again for the first time in a quarter century… you can actually hear the music and get a whole new appreciation for the work that Keith Arem (Contagion) put into the movie which adds a great depth to the film and is something I wish we’d all been able to appreciate way back in the day.

I’m grateful for the people I’ve met along the way as part of the rediscovery of the film, the friendships and connections that have been born out of the journey.

So yeah, it’s all good.

101 Films presents Skinner on dual format Blu-ray and DVD now

3 From Hell (USA 2019: Dir Rob Zombie)

At the end of Rob Zombie's 2005 movie The Devil's Rejects, the second to feature the trio of bad ass mofos who encapsulated the swagger and moral vacancy of the Manson 'family' with the wit and wisdom of wise cracking Tarantino henchmen, the 'Rejects' were gunned down in a hail of bullets to the tune of Lynrd Skynrd's 'Freebird.' Whether to pay his rent, bills from previous movies, or just because he can, Zombie has decided to resurrect the trio for one more movie.

And the word 'resurrected' is accurate here because, in the grand tradition of cliffhanger serials from the 1940s, Zombie has altered history so that the 'Rejects' are miraculously revived from their fatal bullet strewn wipeout, in a faux TV news reporting sequence which is a clever bit of sleight of hand but explains nothing about how they collectively dodged the bullet - pun very much intended. 

The back from the deadness of the trio, as most genre fans will now know, was somewhat thwarted by the ill health of one third of the 'Rejects': Sid Haig, who played the killer clown/gas station manager Captain Spaulding in the first two movies, had not disclosed to Zombie the extent of his medical problems before shooting commenced, necessitating his absence from most of the the film except for a couple of short sequences near the beginning. As the other 'Rejects' Otis (Bill Moseley) and Baby (Sheri Moon Zombie) languish in prison, Zombie writes out Haig with the news that Spaulding has been executed: sadly ironic as Haig died a few weeks ago. His loss from the movie makes it a rather different beast than the previous 'Rejects' movies, compounded by Haig's replacement - albeit in a different role - by Otis's brother Winslow Coltrane (Richard Brake).

Otis springs his escape while working on a chain gang, in the process offing fellow inmate Rondo (a cameo role for Danny Trejo), an act that will have repercussions later in the movie. Otis and Winslow then free Baby and the trio are back on the road, eventually ending up in Mexico, where in amongst the whoring, drinking and occasional killing, they discover that Rondo's friends and relatives have tracked them down.

3 From Hell is indebted to sweaty Italian westerns far more than the horror genre, and for this reason many fans have disliked its rather langorous approach, when compared with earlier Zombie fare. And it's true that at two hours the movie does kind of overstay its welcome, but Zombie's three amoral, ruthless but still funny characters sustain interest. It's Baby who gets most screen time here, Otis remarking that her spell in prison has changed her, made her slightly more crazy. Sheri Moon Zombie's toss of a coin transition from whimsical cutie to psychopath on occasion treads a thin line between credibility and ham, but her scenes with fellow scream queen Dee Wallace as sadistic prison warden Greta are a hoot. An ok film then, not great but not the travesty some have made it out to be.

3 From Hell is available on digital download, Blu-Ray and DVD from 14 October. 

LFF 2019: Fanny Lye Deliver'd (UK/Germany 2019: Dir Thomas Clay)

Here's a short questionnaire: do you prefer historical dramas/films with strong women characters/spaghetti westerns/gore movies? If you answered 'yes' to any or all of these, there's something in Clay's latest film for you. But is this a good thing? Read on.

Fanny Lye (Maxine Peake) is a young woman growing up in Shropshire in 1657. It's six years after the end of the Civil War, Oliver Cromwell is still Protector, but the country remains lawless. Lye's husband John (Charles Dance), a vicious Puritan and ex-soldier, rules the household, keeping Fanny and their son Arthur subdued by fear, literally the master of all on which they depend.

But into their regimented lives come two strangers, both naked when we first see them, who steal into the Lye's house then barn, borrowing clothes and sheltering from pursuers. The couple are Thomas Ashbury (Freddie Fox) and Rebecca Henshaw (Tanya Reynolds) and we learn that they have been chased out of their previous accommodation for inciting orgies and arguing for the rights of women. Thomas and Rebecca are an eloquent and subversive pair, and John's decision to let them stay is the commencement of the breakdown of his family, as Thomas's honeyed words and unbridled sexuality awaken something in Fanny that years of romantically arid life with her husband have denied.  

Clay's film, as my opening comments suggest, fires off in many different directions, showing a restlessness of directorial vision that would have benefitted from something a little more subtle. Its violent conclusion, a perhaps obvious culmination of the pent up sexual and moral states of the lead characters, is still shocking, but perhaps less so when one recalls that Clay also directed the 2005 movie The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael, which pulled the same last reel trick. Underneath the rather awkward tonal shifts of the film there is an interesting story trying to be told, but any attempts at subtlety are removed by a combination of unwanted humour and a soundtrack which drowns everything in an almost constant wash of mostly unwelcome instrumentation. 

On the plus side, Peake and Dance are outstanding as the subjugated wife and devilish husband: the former, looking much younger than her true age, shows persuasively the tensions wrought by struggling against the yoke of her marriage; and Dance is at his tight lipped best, his eyes conveying the mixture of anger and fear as the world he has constructed starts to unravel. Fox and Reynolds are sadly less convincing, at times feeling like their characters have strayed in from a late 1960s 'free love' movie. Some stunning footage of the Shropshire countryside renders the film more watchable than it otherwise might be, but the final result is a frustrating film in which less of everything could have been so much more. 

The Village in the Woods (UK 2019: Dir Raine McCormack)

Jason and Rebecca drive out into the woods to claim their rightful inheritance: a rundown pub called 'the Harbour Inn' (although nowhere near water) left to Rebecca by her deceased aunt. Except that's not quite true: 'Rebecca' is actually Nikki: she and Jason have managed to acquire the documentation for the property by means of a shady woman from Jason's past, and Nikki has switched identities, hoping the others in the village won't notice. Nice try.

Once there, and with their car out of petrol, forcing them to stay the night, they encounter a rum group of locals, among them oversexed Maddy, fruity old Charles, and a strange ancient guy, Arthur, who seems to be occupying part of the pub they thought was all theirs, who is keen for them to leave immediately.

But the villagers want them to stay, as they have plans for the couple, particularly virginal Nikki.

There seems to be a bit of a trend for young-people-facing-older-people-who-look-nice-but-have-a-dark-side movies recently, and it's brave for first time feature director McCormack to add to the canon with only a few quid and some game actors at his disposal. The Village in the Woods starts off rather shakily but becomes more interesting the loonier it gets. The standout performances here are the older members of the cast, principally Therese Bradley as Maddy, who when she's not getting it on with Charles (established character actor Richard Hope) is trying it on with Jason (Robert Vernon).

You don't need to have watched many such movies to know exactly how this is going to turn out and both Jason and Nikki/Rebecca (a rather wooden Beth Park) are clearly just lambs to the satanic slaughter. We get some shots of a large beast like figure - and a nifty transformation scene that sort of explains who he is - and the predictable final reel coven stuff. But it's neither as saucy or as gory as it signposted, and ends incredibly abruptly.

Where it does score points is in overall atmosphere, helped by a moody score which avoids string synthesising the thing to death and is confident in its use of quiet moments (very rare in low budget movies these days): there are also some nicely done woozy sequences where you're not really sure what's real or not (the 'seduction' scene in Rosemary's Baby (1968) came to mind) which bring a rather good folk-horrorish feel to things.

The director has mentioned that his intention with The Village in the Woods was to make a return to slowburn horror films: he's only really half succeeded. But, without wishing to damn by faint praise, I've seen a lot worse, and there are enough little details and flourishes here to make me want to look out for McCormack's next movie. And someone should really give Maddy a spin off film of her own, she's such good value.

The Village in the Woods is available on demand and download across all major digital platforms from 14th October including iTunes, Sky Store, Amazon and Google Play

Dark Eyes Retrovision #19 - Skinner (USA 1993: Dir Ivan Nagy)

Twenty eight years old this year, the 101 Films Blu Ray/DVD re-issue of the previously hard to see Skinner reminds both back in the day viewers and those new to the flick that it is decidedly, but sadly rather soporifically, batshit bonkers. Here's why.

Dennis Skinner (no, not the Beast of Bolsover, politics fans, but actually Sam Raimi's brother Ted) is a drifter with a manbag full of knives, who rocks up at a house run by Kerry Tate (Ricki Lake, a year before her role in John Waters' Serial Mom and just prior to her successful talk show series). Kerry's partner is a sour-faced long haul truck driver who's home only occasionally, so renting out her spare room to Dennis promises to provide both income and company. Sadly Skinner is a) not a huge stay at home guy and - linked to a) - b) is a serial killer, who skins his victims' bodies and then wears the epidermis himself: most shockingly, and in a scene that every single reviewer is duty bound to mention, Skinner kills and skins a black co-worker, and as well as wearing his skin also exaggeratedly adopts the dead guy's accent and mannerisms, in what is arguably cinema's least comfortable 'black up' scene. Most of the movie is devoted to watching Ted at work, leading us to conclude that in all things familiarity breeds contempt.

But Skinner also has his own stalker, in the form of Heidi (one time adult movie star Traci Lords), a near catatonic junkie who presumably was one of the killer's previous - and unfinished - victims. Left with a scarred body she's out for revenge and, judging by her walking pace, is in no hurry to achieve her goal.

Ivan Nagy, who died back in 2015, is of course is better known as one time boyfriend of Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss, and I'm sure it's no coincidence that screenwriter Paul Hart-Wilden (who is to be, er, thanked for rescuing his work from the vaults for this release) gave Skinner's nemesis in the movie the same name. While the movie certainly has its gory moments, it's generally pretty inconsequential, although Raimi, in a rare lead role, brings something quietly sinister to the character of Dennis. On the plus side Skinner has a sleazy atmosphere (his victims are nearly all prostitutes) and its lethargic pace works well in establishing mood.

Ted Raimi as Dennis Skinner, in, er, Skinner

Following this Nagy, one assumes, had scratched the itch of making a horror movie, and decided that for future projects there was more money in skin than the skinned (ouch), devoting his time to alliterative cinematic outings such as All Nude Nikki (1998) and Izzy Sleeze's Casting Couch Cuties (1999). Skinner is a one off, for sure, and for that we should probably be grateful.

101 Films have done their usual sterling work on the extras package for the 4K scan Blu Ray/DVD release. As well as a booklet, extras include:

 • A Touch of Scandal - Interview with Director Ivan Nagy

• Under His Skin - Interview with Star Ted Raimi

• Bargain Bin VHS For A Buck - Interview with Screenwriter Paul Hart-Wilden. Probably the best of the extras; Hart-Wilden documents the bizarre search for an original print of the movie.

• Cutting Skinner - Interview with Editor Jeremy Kasten

• Flaying sequence out-takes and extended takes

Skinner is released by 101 Films on 14 October 2019

LFF 2019: Color Out of Space (Portugal/USA 2019: Dir Richard Stanley)

The Gardner family live in a house in the middle of a dense area of New England woods (the fictional Arkham, Massachusetts, but actually shot in Portugal), an hour from the nearest anything. Dad Nathan (Nicolas Cage) is a slacker guy with a taste for bourbon, mum Theresa (Joely Richardson) is recovering from breast cancer and, it is strongly suggested, a double mastectomy. Daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), whose name is none more Lovecraftian, has goth tendencies and a copy of 'Necronomicon' is never far from her side. Her stoner brother Benny (Brendan Meyer) and younger sibling Jack (Julian Hilliard) complete the family, who are all clearly struggling in the wake of mum's illness.

Lavinia meets hydrologist Ward Philips (Elliott Kinght), completete with Miskatonic University T shirt - one of a number of none too subtle Lovecraft nods in the film - who's in town to check out the local water supply, which he thinks may have become contaminated. The arrival of a pink, glowing meteorite crash landing in their garden triggers a series of events which, to put it mildly, further destabilise a family that were just holding it together in the first place. The colour exuding from the fallen rock slowly transforms everything in the vicinity, from the increasingly otherworldly flora to the fauna: starting with bizarre insect life (which reminded me of the weird flying things in Frank Darabont's Lovecraftesque adaptation of the Stephen King story, 2007's The Mist), the meteorite's colour activates full on mutations while also distorting space and time. And through it all the Gardners struggle to hold it together as an alien presence uses their back garden as a potential centre for world domination and monster curation.

Color Out of Space was created by Elijah Wood's SpectreVision production team, who previously brought you 2018's Mandy. The movie shares some similarities with the company's last outing, not least the purple/vermillion tonal palette and of course Mr Cage, who - and this is a relative term obviously - dials down his performance as troubled family man Nathan. He still acts like he's strayed in from another film, exacerbated by the rest of the cast playing it rather straight (if a mum and son Thing like flesh-hybrid could be considered 'straight'). Whether sensuously hand milking his family of alpacas, or cosying up to yet another glass of bourbon when the going gets tough, it's hard to imagine anyone else taking on the role of Nathan.

But let's hear it for the effects here, which complement the general WTFery of the piece with some of the best practical makeup and set pieces I've seen since John Carpenter's The Thing reboot back in 1982. There's a definite celebration of 1980s animatronics going on, with some staggeringly well done set pieces; and a scene in the family's barn lovingly and horrifyingly homages the same setup in Daniel Haller's 1965 'The Colour out of Space' adaptation Die Monster Die! (aka Monster of Terror).

As an exercise in woozy terror Color Out of Space works in places. As a piece about the breakdown of the family I'm not so sure: and as a Lovecraft adaptation it's best seen as a sort of misfiring labour of love. In the Q&A after the movie the director mentioned that the introduction of younger people and indeed a person of colour (the Ward Phillips character) into the story was deliberately done because these were types not to be found in Lovecraft's writing. But this type of attempt to bring the author's work up to date just made me think that he remains pretty much unfilmable. So much of Color Out of Space is jumbled and uneven - what was that whole Lavinia witchcraft subplot about? - and some great special effects can't disguise a general air of cheesiness which renders the movie rather unsatisfactory. There's no doubting Stanley's intentions here, and there are moments in the film which remind you that he can be a very creative director, but ultimately it's just a bigger budget and way too long B movie.

LFF 2019: White Riot (UK 2019: Dir Rubika Shah)

The viewing audience at the London Film Festival screening of White Riot was collectively asked who had been present at the now legendary Rock Against Racism/Anti-Nazi League march to Victoria Park, in London’s East End, in April 1978, an event featured prominently in Rubika Shah's new documentary. I proudly raised my hand, along with about a quarter of those present. The problem was that it was a punter who asked the question during the post screening Q&A, not the people who had made the film. Why was that a problem? I'll come to that later.

The Rock Against Racism movement shone briefly from 1976 to 1982, its momentum boosted by affiliation to the Social Workers Party sidearm the Anti-Nazi League. RAR was created at a time when racist attacks were on the rise, the National Front were marching on London's streets and the police, some of whose senior officers were also NF members, were unwilling to tackle the problem. RAR's focus on racism in music was specifically a response to Eric Clapton's infamous address to a 1976 concert audience, in which he drunkenly endorsed the views of Tory Minister Enoch ('Rivers of Blood') Powell. RAR's gigs were unprecedented in their support of the movement's aims to achieve “a rank and file movement against the racist poison in rock music,” underscoring their explicitly political message with bold scheduling of punk and reggae bands on the same bills.

White Riot charts the formation of RAR by Red Saunders, a photographer and Agitprop performer, who had been a fan of Clapton's in the 1960s and was shocked and outraged by his 'send them back' comments. RAR's growth as a movement, mainly achieved through the gigs, its cut and paste magazine 'Temporary Hoarding' which aped fanzine culture of the period, and sheer bloody hard work by a small number of people, mirrored the corresponding rise of the recruitment of disaffected youths - largely working class skinheads - by the NF, headed by John Tyndall.

Talking heads in the documentary are fairly thin on the ground. Apart from Saunders, contributions from the RAR workers are a little on the anodyne side (and the DIYness of their recollections, delivered rather laconically, often feels quaint rather than passionate). And of those musicians interviewed - Clash drummer 'Topper' Headon, Matumbi's Dennis Bovell and Pauline Black from the Selecter (who to be fair didn't come on the scene until the second wave of RAR with Two Tone records, technically outside the scope of this doc) - are very much of the 'we helped out' variety, rather than offering any significant cultural perspective.

So it’s largely left to the images to do the work, many of which are admittedly incredibly powerful. Anyone who has watched the opening scenes of Jack Hazan and David Mingay's 1980 docudrama Rude Boy (which provides a lot of the archival material for this film), particularly after a gap of many years, will not fail to be shocked at the tribal, anarchic footage of late 1970s London, with police, skinheads and political agitators engaged in angry, vicious and sustained street fighting. Viewed through the prism of history this footage remains troubling, in the same way as, for example, the ongoing conflict on the streets of Northern Ireland around the same time. But the problem is that such footage also becomes redactive if not accompanied by any attempt at contextualising it in terms of present day political considerations. What was the lasting impact of RAR? Did anything change? This aspect, sadly, is totally missing from the documentary.

And herein lies the problem with White Riot: by accident or design the filmmakers have created a historic artifact whose contemporary relevance is left for an audience to deduce. The post screening Q&A, with Shah and co-writer/producer Ed Gibbs in attendance, attested to this. Asked by one audience member whether their non contextualised, archival approach to documenting the events on screen could potentially 'fossilise' them, rather than rendering them powerful and still relevant, Shah simply did not understand the question. In a later response regarding the choices about when to end the RAR history - the film culminates with footage from the 1978 Victoria Park gig, again extensively borrowed from Rude Boy, and TV news shots (much of which was not subsequently broadcast - another fact not followed up within the film) - Shah responded that she wanted to offer audiences 'a happy ending.' It seemed that the filmmakers were happy for White Riot to be received as an exercise in curating archival footage into a linear story, the achievement of this being the single criterion of success for their film (Shah and Gibbs were more passionate – and confident - in talking about the mechanics of making the film, such as rights clearances, than the theories behind it).

Perhaps it's wrong of me to include the filmmakers' Q&A responses in a review of the documentary, but I refer to my opening comment by way of a conclusion. Shah clearly wanted White Riot to portray an important and historically pivotal collection of events (and call me cynical but I’m not sure about this: I don't recall any significant political or police based policy shifts arising from RAR’s work, and indeed any happy ending looked for would have been seriously compromised by one fact - the election of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1979). But should it really have taken someone in the audience to ask the question that finally connected the events on film with lived experience? Not every picture tells a story.