NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2024 #1: Reviews of Lord of Misrule (UK/Ireland 2023), The End We Start From (UK 2023), Murder Ballads: How to Make it in Rock 'n' Roll (UK 2023), The Haunting in Rosemary Lane (UK 2023), Swiperight (UK 2021) and The Loch Ness Horror (UK 2023)

Lord of Misrule (UK/Ireland 2023: Dir William Brent Bell) Bell has an impressive CV of smart looking, unadventurous but serviceable genre flicks like The Boy (2016) and its 2020 sequel Brahms, and the sequel to Orphan, 2022’s Orphan: First Kill.

And no change here: Bell has amassed all the trappings of the folk horror movement and parcelled them up in a movie simply dripping with cliche.

Tuppence Middleton is Rebecca Holland, a priest who ten months previously located to a living in a small village, taking with her husband Henry (Matt Stokoe) and their 10 year old daughter Grace (Evie Templeton). 

Rebecca might be bringing the word of the Lord, but the villagers cling to ancient beliefs, their celebration of harvest festival appearing to honour something older than Christianity. Little Grace is invited to be the festival’s ‘Harvest Angel’ but lest this be seen as something benign and charming, the village chief Jocelyn Abney (Ralph Ineson) takes it very seriously in his guise as the Lord of Misrule, going to battle with a horned satanic figure, another guy in dressup called Gallowgog, as part of the festival rituals; this devilish character has a history involving the village bestowing him with gifts in return for good fortune.

Shortly after the festival celebrations, in which the Hollands participate happily, Grace goes missing; number one suspect is the guy in the Gallowgog costume, Derry Nash (Luc Ineson, Ralph’s son), but what looks like an open and shut case gets far darker, as Abney reveals his true colours.

Everything in Lord of Misrule is so thoroughly unsurprising that one could only generate an ounce of fear if unaware of The Wicker Man and every similar film that followed in its wake; certainly Rebecca and Henry aren’t aware of it. Spilt into four chapters, following some murky pagan celebrations involving hair, blood and fire, your folk horror bingo card can be quickly filled as you tick off ‘scary masks’, ‘village locals knowing more than they’re telling’, ‘ancient chanted songs’, ‘satanic history lesson’ and ‘Christian soul hoodwinked by people worshipping older gods’. House!

There’s nothing wrong with Lord of Misrule; it’s elegantly photographed and the performances are all fine. But it isn’t doing anything remotely new, and I wished that the resources had been used for something more original.

(A version of this review originally appeared on the Bloody Flicks site).

The End We Start From (UK 2023: Dir Mahalia Belo) The Brits do dystopian sci fi so well. Based on Megan Hunter's sparse novella (its title a kind of riff on a quote from TS Eliot) Belo's first feature starts with an unnamed, heavily pregnant woman (played by Jodie Comer - no character in this film has a name) sitting in the bath, contemplating her baby bump. Outside it's raining, and has been for an unspecific, but clearly extended period of time, enough for water levels to reach a crisis point. The rain strains at the doors to her home and finally breaks through.

London is deep underwater, triggering chaos, amidst which Comer has her baby in a hospital struggling to cope with demand; she decides to travel to relative safety in the country, staying with the parents of her partner, R (Joel Fry). But things escalate; food supplies run low and households start to starve. A tragedy forces Comer and Fry further away from the city towards groups of people who have organised shelter and provisions; meanwhile Comer struggles to raise her baby, teaming up with an American mother, O (Katherine Waterston) and eventually arriving at an island commune run by a woman (Gina McKee) keen to achieve a post flood 'reset' rather than look back at what came before.

The shadows of climate change and the post Brexit environment haunt The End We Start From, although the film is principally the story of a mother's relationship with her child, a reconciliation of past and present, and a rumination on home. Comer is excellent in an understated role, and while the film is perhaps only peripherally a 'Fantastic' film its homage to survival TV of the 1970s, and convincing - for the budget - scenes of London underwater, warrant its inclusion.

Murder Ballads: How to Make it in Rock 'n' Roll (UK 2023: Dir Mitchell Tolliday) Former child prodigy Keys (Imogen Wilde) auditions for bad boy band Stack of Corpses, whose lack of hits is in danger of getting them booted off their record label. Her rival for the job is pushy Annie (Lauren Cornelius) who, after a struggle with Keys, ends up under a car, thus reducing the competition to one.

Two of the band members hit upon the idea of stealing lyrics from the home of a successful musician, the late Richard O’Keefe (Simon Callow, whose advice to musicians bookmarks the six chapters of the film). The subsequent song goes all the way to number one, mainly because Stack of Corpses’ manager, the excitable Larry (Alyx Nazir), has paid to put it there, and now his creditors want their money back.

The stage is set for chaos as Larry is hunted down by the money men, the band fight among themselves and struggle to conceal their song theft from O’Keefe’s daughter Megan (Nicci Yin), who has turned up to interview them for a magazine piece. 

Murder Ballads is frantic, gory and stuffed with crazy characters to keep the story going. As a comedy though it generally feels very flat, unless your taste is towards the slapstick. There’s a very funny scene where the band’s drinks are spiked by Stack of Corpses’ druggy vocalist Brian (Rhiann Connor) but it’s the exception; separating the film into six chapters was a good idea in principle but actually just makes the whole film feel less cohesive.

Sadly we don’t really get to hear any of the band’s songs, which would have been fun, and the soundtrack, comprising music from pretty much every genre, doesn’t give the film much of an identity (Stack of Corpses look like they should be a hardcore group but we never find out). Not for me then.

(A version of this review originally appeared on the Bloody Flicks site).

The Haunting in Rosemary Lane (UK 2023: Dir Matthew Littlechild) As a break from all the high production value films that usually occupy these 'pages', here's a return to good old DIY filmmaking.

Two lads sitting around drinking home brew (the director and his mate, Sam Eladlani) hit upon the idea of making a documentary about the legend of the witch at Rosemary Lane on the Isle of Wight.

They mange to contact four people, all with some knowledge of the legend, although it's touch and go whether this will come off, as Matt and Sam are, shall we say, 'jazz woodbines' experts.

Rachel tells the story of a woman possessed by a demon in the 1930s who killed some children and then hanged herself; apparently you can still hear the children crying in the night. Mia's story, disbelieved by everyone she tells it to, is about her mum who went looking for their cat and disappeared. Sally tells of a demon in the woods that killed her friend Dave by forcing him to hang himself. The last of the interviewees, Bill, tells of fishing at the local lake when he saw a demon face, resulting in all the fish dying.

Armed with all this evidence, the pair decide to investigate the woods where all the strange stuff occurred; Matt's keen, Sam less so. And before you can say The Blair Witch Project the boys are running into strange twig arrangements, hearing weird sounds, wandering around lost and discovering strange skull faced women. The quality of the filming renders much of the dialogue all but inaudible, so it's left to the rough and ready visuals to do the work. It's all pretty scrappy but at under an hour it's not going to test your patience that much.

You can watch The Haunting in Rosemary Lane on Vimeo here.

Swiperight (UK 2021: Dir Jane Sanger) The one and only feature by seasoned shorts director Sanger, Swiperight has been around since 2021, when it troubled a couple of festivals, but has only now seen the light of day in the UK.

And the reason for the timelag? Yep, it's not very good. A brother and sister, Mark and Jodie, growing up in an imposing Connecticut pile, are having to contend with the arrival of a baby sibling. The boy, Mark, a troubled young chap, deals with the inconvenience by drowning the wean. Adjacent to the house is an asylum where, unsurprisingly, young Mark is incarcerated. The parents hot foot it to the UK to escape the family stain.

Many years later Jodie (Ellie Bindman) is all grown up and has returned to America with a group of girlfriends; they're dancers (pretty poor ones as it happens) about to compete in a big show, and are using Jodie's old house as a base for rehearsals and general hanging out; their number includes Madison (Melissa Sangar/de Winter) who grew up in the asylum, being the daughter of the presiding quack, Dr Bennett (Toyah Willcox). Some of the girls are obsessed with a dating app (you can probably guess how the title comes into its own) and end up inviting some internet dates to a pool party. And then the girls start getting bumped off, all fingers seeming to point to stringy handyman Luke (David Thackeray) with his penchant for, in his words, catching what he can eat.

Swiperight groans under the weight of its own ambition. There are flashbacks galore, an American setting (actually Kent) which seems to serve little purpose narratively and a lot of characters, most of whom don't have a lot to do. The second part, where the killings begin and the killer unmasks himself, is way better than the turgid first half, but the acting is uniformly flat and the US setting just weird, featuring some of the lamest uniformed cops to have graced a screen since Paul Marco and Duke Moore in 1956's Plan 9 from Outer Space (props through to Sanger for putting actors in front of giveaway UK power points in the interior shots).

The Loch Ness Horror (UK 2023: Dir Tyler-James) "Have you ever heard of...the Loch Ness monster?" asks deep sea team member Lara (Becca Hirani) as said beast mounts an attack on the vessel that she and her team have launched to track down a boat that went missing 48 hours previously. Nobody laughs in response at the seemingly stupid question; it's that kind of movie.

Two groups of experienced (it says here) technical personnel join forces to scout the area where the last boat went missing, but have different objectives. One group is simply fact finding, the other, headed by aggressive Ewan (Rob Kirtley), know that a certain water resident monster is responsible and want to...well it's not clear. Capture it? What no one expects is that the LNM, when located, can secrete deadly gunk which has the ability to transfer spore to unsuspecting humans, leading to the hatching of little critters, which apparently grow to great size very quickly.  

The Loch Ness Horror is brought to you courtesy of co-producer Rhys Frake-Waterfield's Dark Abyss company, who have been responsible for a whole slew of recent UK creature features rivalling US counterparts The Asylum for cheap CGI derived thrills. Regular readers of these reviews will recognise the usual suspects at work here: Hirani is the acting name of Rebecca Matthews, producing partner with the ubiquitous Scott Jeffrey (not present on this project), and the cast is packed with names familiar from other Jeffrey/Matthews productions. Some, like Hirani and May Kelly as crew mate Ava, are actually pretty good; others fare less well. 

Utilising the Chatham docks located HMS Cavalier as the set for the film was rather a good idea; the claustrophobic interiors make a good backdrop for the running around. And as a seabound thriller it functions pretty well (although characters remain undeveloped). But the LNM element plunges the movie into familiar murky  - and terribly overfamiliar - CGI territory, which is getting rather tired now. 

Caligula: The Ultimate Cut (USA 1979/2024: Dir Tinto Brass and Bob Guccione, Producer Thomas Negovan)

I first saw Caligula when it was originally released into UK cinemas; I can't recall the exact date, but it would have been around October 1980. A friend had been in New York earlier that year and had seen it (before it came to these shores) and she wrote me a postcard that urged me to go feast my eyes as soon as I could. We'd parted ways in June of that year so I was unable to check with her whether the rather anodyne cut (with interval) that I witnessed at the Prince Charles cinema was the same as the one she'd seen.

Apparently not. The version she would have viewed was 155 minutes long, and by the time it had dragged itself through the British Board of Film Censors (as it was until 1984) Caligula had been reduced by a whopping eleven minutes, the body electing to remove the "...explicit sight of real sex but also scenes of violence and sexual violence that were felt to render the film potentially illegal..." including "... a scene of castration, a disemboweling, the rape of a virgin and sight of Caligula inserting his fist into a man's anus" (quotes taken from the BBFC case study for the film which usefully details its classification history; more is available within the original movie's IMDb entry).

I was underwhelmed by my first exposure to the film. I remember it to be a meandering movie lacking any pace, with an over the top performance from Malcolm McDowell which often made Caligula feel like comedy rather than historical epic.

Full disclosure; I haven't bothered to track down any of the subsequent, more complete releases, and wouldn't be writing this except that, as part of the BFI's celebration of the much missed Scala cinema (commemorated in the documentary Scala!!! Or, the Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits), Caligula: The Ultimate Cut screened to an unsuspecting audience as a surprise film.

The genesis of TUC is fascinating. Thomas Negovan, a film historian who looks young enough not to have been born when Caligula first graced our screens, accessed over 90 hours of footage filmed (and held by the owners of 'Penthouse' who continue to have a stake in the project), but not used in the original movie, and spent three years reassembling it using alternative takes. Why? Supposedly to present a single director cut, re-assembling the film to restore some dignity and maybe recuperate its reputation from the rather tarnished result of squabbles between writer Gore Vidal, Tinto Brass and Bob Guccione?

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the restoration/reimagining/re insert your own word here is the choice of alternative takes for the lead role. Caligula still emerges as batshit but some of the histrionics have been removed by choosing shots which demonstrate a more measured turn by McDowell. The other performance aspect - and one of the biggest changes to the original film - is Helen Mirren as Caligula's wife Caesonia. Rescued from her almost blink and you'll miss it performance in the original movie, Mirren is, thanks to Negovan, now a fully rounded character whose motivations and relationship with her husband add a depth to the character and the events onscreen.

The biggest excisions from the film are, basically, Guccione's. The violence has been reduced and the hardcore elements removed; to be honest the brothel scenes still pack a punch and the rather poorly filmed real sex sequences, filmed after hours by Bob and - some say - Brass, didn't add anything. The wedding rape scene, where Caligula deflowers a young newlywed couple, one after the other, is more explicit in this version, and provoked a few walkouts at the screening I attended. It's pretty shocking stuff, more so perhaps because the overall tone of the movie has become slightly more considered.

It is however (and literally) a film of two halves. The first part, chronicling Caligula's rise to power and culminating in the death of his sister/lover Drusilla (Teresa Ann Savoy) is still uneven and messy. It's in the second part that things improve; there's an overall tightness of plotting and less reliance on shock, making the climactic assassination scene more powerful. Also of note is the photography of Danilo Donati's set design; relegated almost to an afterthought in the original film, Negovan has deployed unused establishing shots of the impressive sets to give the movie more of a sense of scale and grandeur; the replacement of the original soundtrack with a contemporary downtempo score also contributes to the film's arguably more serious feel.

Caligula will never be a great film, and the labour of love that produced 'The Ultimate Cut' - reportedly the result of three years' work - does raise the question 'was it worth it'? I suppose you'll have to see for yourself when it's (re) released in the next few months. Maybe for his next project, and if they still exist, Negovan could poke around the unused - and reputedly calmer - takes of Jack Nicholson playing haunted caretaker Jack Torrance in Kubrick's The Shining which, according to legend, were ditched in favour of those showing the actor's more over the top delivery. See you in 2027 then. 

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2022 #6: Reviews of Amityville Hex (UK 2022), Hounded (UK 2022), The Area 51 Incident (UK 2022), The Beast of Bodmin Moor (UK 2022), Killahurtz (UK 2022) and Reign of Chaos (UK 2022)

Amityville Hex (UK 2021: Dir Tony Newton) "I ask the dead, I call upon thee, let the Amityville Hex consume me; I offer you my soul, please take, Amityville Hex consume me now, make no mistake. I call out the number 666 three times and do so now; 666; 666; 666! May this hex take over me." 

This is the text of a viral curse, a 'creepypasta' that has been taking over the world wide web. The guy to blame seems to be 'Coolduder' (Shawn C Phillips), a perky vlogger who encourages a group of friends to recite the curse via a Zoom call; big mistake. Each of the people on the call and other social media personalities who follow in their footsteps are gradually taken over by the 'Amityville Hex' and go seriously off the rails, leading them to take their own lives, the lives of others or, in one case, die by getting run over by a possessed lawnmower, in successive scenes of cut price gore.

Director Newton appears as one of the haunted vloggers, and who unfortunately seems to have a problem pronouncing the word 'Amityville' correctly. Oh and sidebar; apart from the word, there's nothing to connect this film to the 'Amityville' franchise except from a brief reference via a fake news item (the newsreader being Ouijageist's John R. Walker). Probably the most surprising thing here is Phillips's performance; the normally perky gracer of many a low budget horror flick here presents a different side of himself, ever present baseball cap removed to show thinning hair, his topless rants about horror fans and the niche in which he's become stuck rather unnerving. 

Hounded aka Haunted (UK 2022: Dir Tommy Boulding) Four young people based in London - Leon (Nobuse Junior), his brother, college student Chaz (Malachi Pullar-Latchman), Vix (Hannah Traylen) and immigrant worker Tod (Ross Coles) - are looking to break out of their urban existence by making some money. Courtesy of a bent antiques dealer, the four land tipoffs as to where the posh keep their valuables, break in to their houses and liberate the goods, in return for some hard cash.

The four land their biggest challenge to date; purloin an antique dagger from a huge country pile whose occupants are out for the evening. But their plans go seriously awry when they are caught in the act by the owners, old money rural stock, including Katherine (Samantha Bond), her brother Hugo (James Lance) and old retainer Mallory (Nick Moran) who decide that the London guttersnipes should be hunted down like foxes; but they haven't reckoned on the resourceful foursome.

Boulding's debut rather unsubtly exposes the contrasts between the 'haves' and the 'have nots but are happy to help themselves', but does well to recover the audience's initial antipathy towards a bunch of thieving urchins by having the rich being far more objectionable. Some of the class war lines land better than others, like Vix's "There are more guns on my estate than yours" and "The aristocracy; they fear what they don't understand." But the movie retains a good pace despite its slender elements; at its heart it's a modern rework of The Most Dangerous Game (1932) but an entertaining one nonetheless.

The Area 51 Incident (UK 2022: Dir Rhys Frake-Waterfield) Two young graduate students, hard working Jenny (Megan Purvis) and son of someone in charge Trent (Scott Jeffrey, the movie's producer, taking a rare casting credit using his 'technical' rather than 'acting' name of Scott Chambers) are given a tour round the Area 51 facility courtesy of Trent's dad. Now you and I know that this historic site is located in part of Nevada, USA, so quite what a car with a British license plate is doing there is a puzzle (he wrote, a little sarcastically).

The boffins at the facility have discovered a wormhole connecting to the planet Keppler B, 640 light-years from earth; sensors sent into the portal have largely disappeared, but one has made contact. And now the occupants of the distant world have decided to visit. 

It doesn't take long before all of this exposition is jettisoned to make way for some CGI monsters stalking the cast in a bunker (somewhere in Wales I believe), a cast which now includes two women, previously seen pickpocketing soldiers in the facility's bar (Sian Altman and Heather Jackson, both Chambers/Jeffrey regulars) and some gung ho soldiers. The corridor running is largely kept to a minimum and there's an interesting side story in that the creatures are able to possess the dead, bringing them back to life to do their bidding (scenes which are the movie's most effective sequences).

The Scott Jeffrey house of monsters is getting more impressive in terms of overall production values, but the overall problem of getting everyone into a single (small) location and then having them strategise their way out while crying and shouting is getting a little tired; these films aren't tongue in cheek - the cast take it all very seriously - but in contrast while the CGI seems to be evolving past the 1990s PC game quality  - including an impressive last reel lightshow - the limitations of the budget still show.

The Beast of Bodmin Moor (UK 2022: Dir Adam Starks) The sixth (!) feature from 25 year old director Starks is an ambitious 19th century period adventure. 

Nicholas Felt (Starks) is an "author and investigator of the supernatural" who, with the assistance of ex policeman Jacob Crimsby (Joshua Copeland) has travelled to Bodmin to investigate a series of mysterious disappearances. The only clue to the mystery is the discovery of human bones, and locals believe the cause to be a mythical four footed beast.

Felt and Crimsby, who both have their own secrets, suspect that the truth is less fantastic than described, even after an encounter the seemingly helpful Beedlewood (Richard Linton) who supports the wild animal theory. But Beedlewood knows more than he's saying, and before long our investigators come face to face with the beast and a mysterious ghostly woman. What can it all mean?

TBoBM does extremely well to create a historic atmosphere - including a working steam train - and a nifty creature. Unfortunately the pace of the film is, to put it kindly, sedate, and neither Starks nor Copeland make for particularly engaging leads. The film is crisply photographed with some lovely countryside scenes, but isn't a jot scary; it's closer in tone to a 1970s BBC costume drama, but needs more script work. A valiant effort but not an entirely successful one.

Killahurtz (UK 2022: Dir Al Carretta) "How do you OD on headphones?" Pretty odd question, huh? Well when you watch Killahurtz it's probably the least odd thing in the movie.

The brainchild of Al Carretta (who pretty much does everything behind the scenes on this, including the soundtrack, and casts himself as a beat poet style DJ), this is clearly a lockdown influenced movie which makes sense if you know that it was originally planned back in 2020 under the title 'Earwigger'. The story, as far as I can make out, is that kids in the USA, in a bid to find new ways to ingest the popular drug Fentanyl, have started putting it in their headphones so that they get high when the beats release it.

Somehow a trial supply of a new type of headphones, sent to the UK and sent out to various influencers, has become infected; whether it's because they were manufactured with the COVID virus mistakenly packaged inside, or something more sinister, isn't made clear. Around this 'drama' a number of characters circulate, whose brains may already have been altered by exposure to the narcotic. 

Killahurtz received its first screening at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe, and it's most likely in an arts setting that this film would be most effective. It looks slick but narratively it's willfully confusing, as if Carretta's aim was to unseat its audience. Well it worked; at an hour and a quarter it's still a slog to get through and its opaque approach, coupled with a rather flimsy central idea, alienates rather than absorbs.

Reign of Chaos (UK 2022: Dir Rebecca Matthews) Another from the 'all-quantity-and-sometimes-quality' team of Matthews, producer Scott Jeffrey and writer Tom Jolliffe, this bargain basement fantasy film knows its limits and doesn't take itself too seriously.

In a mumbled prologue we learn that an ancient force, Chaos (embodied here by Mark Sears), has caused the world as we know it to break down via a virus or plague, which has turned many into ravening zombies. But hope is at hand; the descendants of a race of goddesses have acted as a balance to Chaos and his minions, although their numbers have dwindled. One remains, and her name is Nicole (Rebecca Finch). 

Nicole is unaware of her powers until she meets a kind of hero wrangler, Rhodri (Peter Cosgrove) who introduces her to two toughnut fighting women, Alina (Rita Di Tuccio) and Lindsay (Georgia Wood). Rhodri puts the women through their paces, leading to the final confrontation with Chaos, which Nicole must win, to stop the world collapsing into total darkness,

Reign of Chaos was filmed on the mean London streets of Redbridge and Camden; the budget didn't provide for zombie hordes - or indeed any extras - so the places the trio of avengers walk are strangely empty. The script would suggest some kind of superhero extravaganza but with resources being tight there's a quite a lot of chat instead, interspersed between the occasional bouts of chop socky. Some light relief is provided by a pub landlord (Du’aine Samuels) and his wife, and there's an extended montage of Rocky style training scenes as the women toughen up. There's also a really good electronic score by Rachel Shuttleworth to add a gloss to the proceedings. Short and sweet, I kind of like this, and a sequel is hinted at.

NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2021 #17: Reviews of Toy Box Killers (UK 2021), Blood House (UK 2021), Manhunt (UK 2021), Plague of the Dead (UK 2021), Afterlyfe (UK 2021) and Carnal Monsters (UK 2021)

Toy Box Killers (UK 2021: Dir Mark Denham) In Denham's debut feature we're on the mean streets of what looks like east London. Two American killers, Samantha (Elin-Margareta Nordin) and Daniel (Joshua Neil) have come to town and are embarking on a random killing spree, despatching anyone they either don't like the look of or see as easy pickings.

On their trail is Detective Sergeant Teri Logan (Sharon Hendry) with her forensic sidekick. 

Sam, who occasionally dresses up in Mexican 'day of the dead' makeup as part of their murderous rituals, befriends a couple of American girls, Monica (Emma Johannesson) and Jess (Toni Valerie). They all go out to a club, which looks like someone's living room; Sam spikes their drinks and takes them back home, with Daniel's assistance. Sam kills Jess with a hammer and they dump her body in the woods, but Monica is kept alive.

Detective Logan organises a press conference at which Monica's parents, mum and crime lord dad (Gengiz Hasim) plead for her return, with pop threatening to bring in his heavies if the police don't find his daughter quickly. But Sam and Daniel continue to evade the law, even as their own relationship undergoes its own difficulties.

Despite, or perhaps because of the rather rudimentary way in which Toy Box Killers has been put together - crudely added London stock footage, bits of slowed down action, choppy editing and terrible sound - the film attains a kind of 'fly on the wall' docudrama feel; it's too polite to be really grungy and the inexplicable, possibly tongue in cheek adoption of American accents by various members of the cast is just annoying, but there is something rather grim about the movie.

On his Film Freeway page, Denham tells us that "I'm currently writing a screenplay which I hope to pique the interest of the creators of American Horror Story with a script about a supernatural killer called Mr Piggy. I dream of a life in Hollywood."

Blood House (UK 2021: Dir Tony Manders) En route home from a school reunion, the car in which a group of ex classmates are travelling breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Ben (John Fisher), his girlfriend Sarah (Maria Hiscock), Jade (Gemma Harlow Dean) her boyfriend Josh (Richard Wilde), Harry (Matthew Hemmings) and his sort of partner Alice (Meg Owlett) make their way to a seemingly abandoned house for shelter. 

After doing a quick recce of the vacant property they are surprised to find that a cupboard, thought empty, mysteriously contains fresh bedding. This is followed by the appearance of breakfast items and later clean clothing from the same place (well, a number of white hazmat suits). One of the party, investigating another part of the house, strangely finds himself teleported back into the bedroom where they've shacked up. 

Of course we the audience know better; this is the house of a witch, one Elizabeth Blood, burned at the stake in the 17th century and who swore a curse both on her ancestors and anyone living nearby. And it's not long before the witch is back, possessing the house's occupants, leading to their grisly deaths.

Blood House runs for a bum numbing 110 minutes; it's a mix of a small cast ad libbing to each other about their predicament, punctuated with some odd bits of horror and gore (and with a 17th century prologue). Like his previous genre film Death Follows Manders's movie is hard work but not without merit, with a decent payoff and some nice witchy touches along the way. The fact that almost the whole thing is suffused with a blue filter makes it rather difficult to work out what's going on, but also imbues the piece with a weird, slightly otherworldly quality. It's not great by any means but the director's films are always interesting, provided that you adjust your expectations.

Manhunt (UK 2021: Dir Charles Solly) Solly's first feature, although clocking in at just 45 minutes, is an incredibly effective story about the revenge of a bullied student on his classmates.

Rodger Flank (Ashley Clarredge, excellent) is an overweight young man with some personal freshness issues who has a habit of going commando under his tracksuit bottoms. He's the subject of constant bullying by his fellow students, but that's not the end of his problems; at home his mother (Lauren Garner), alcoholic and confined to a wheelchair, constantly puts him down.

When Rodger receives an invitation from his classmates to an end of term 'illegal' party in a local park (the movie was filmed in lockdown, so the gathering is presumably against COVID rules) he's excited; but it's a mistake. Rodger was added to their WhatsApp group in error, and despite attempts of two of the gang to stop him and avoid further taunting, Flank flips out, rocks up to the park and starts his reign of terror. But he has a plan to deflect responsibility for his crimes.

Although this may initially come across as filmed youth theatre, Solly tells his story well, gradually uncovering Flank's plight, providing justification for his anger, if not perhaps the end result. It's also rather disturbing stuff, which surprised me; Clarredge's portrayal of the damaged youth is satisfyingly convincing.

There is a slightly sour note to this work; the cast were recruited from the National Youth Film Academy, a subscription based service established, as the name suggests, to assist young people in accessing movie roles. NYFA closed down in 2023, with some sources suggesting problems with opportunities presented to students and delays in processing course refunds. This is a shame, as most of the cast here are extremely credible (and talented) and I wish them well in the future.

Plague of the Dead (UK 2021: Dir Tony Newton) The connection between the COVID-19 pandemic and zombie outbreak has, perhaps surprisingly, not been overused by indie filmmakers. Newton's film however has no shame in conflating both. Filmed in lockdown in 2020 but not released until a year later (it came out on DVD in the US in 2022) PotD acts as a kind of 'notes from the frontline' zombie flick, comprising stand alone vignettes filmed separately then patched together by Newton.

Most of the to camera pieces emanate from the US which gives the film a distinctly non UK feel (although it does count as a British Fantastic Film, and includes a turn from the director). Split into two halves, the first section is made up of individual survivor reports; towards the end we witness those same people after zombie interaction, some bitten, others choosing to take their own life rather than face an uncertain future existence.

So yes the parallels between lockdown and staying out of the way of infected zombies are exploited to the max. "The news said to stay indoors" informs one of the talking heads, and that's just what they do. The audience doesn't get to see much zombie action (the first infected rears its ugly head 45 minutes into the film's rather trying hour and three quarters) and the gore is restricted to random (and rather rubbery) body parts, infected wounds and a zombie who feasts on its own entrails. The omnipresent Shawn C Phillips gets to do one of his meltdowns (although - spoiler alert - he makes a pretty convincing zombie without the need for much makeup) and there's a scene where a couple, getting it on, experience coitus zombicus interruptus; possibly a first. This is all quite bleak stuff and a real chore to sit through; a bit like the pandemic then.

Afterlyfe (UK 2021: Dir David A. Roberts) This 21 minute short (it's over the 20 min threshold and thus qualifies for inclusion in the BFF project) was made by the director of the very good 2023 movie Older Gods.

Andrew (Rory Wilson) wakes up in a medical facility with no knowledge of why he's there. He comes across a man, alive and mumbling, zipped up in a body suit, and is attacked by a soldier. A voice informs Andrew that he was in a car crash together with his husband, which he didn't survive. But technology, and a few random body parts, have saved the day.

Afterlyfe is a bit of a tease; it just starts getting going at the end point, after which there's a 'To Be Continued' message. But based on this I want it to continue! 

Roberts suffuses his film with a palette of shades of red, and provides his own lush score to heighten the drama onscreen. Afterlyfe is powerful and well made stuff, with a payoff which explains and anticipates. Not sure why we haven't seen the director develop this one into a feature yet.

You can watch Afterlyfe here. 

Carnal Monsters (UK 2021: Dir Joe Cash) Cash's film was released by the infamous Troma films (studio boss Lloyd Kaufman appears at the beginning, treating us to an oboe rendition of the English national anthem) and you only have to sit through the first ten of its scant 65 minutes to understand why,

Featuring a nearly all female cast, chosen principally for their willingness to appear in not much at all - or nothing -  the 'story' revolves around a scientist, Dr Dilf (Ian Sen) who dies after creating a gas which prevents death, only for his killer acolytes to chase down a group of women who just seem to want a bit of R&R. Oh and it's set on the outskirts of Tromaville. And there are no monsters. There is some monstrous acting, if that counts?

I understand that this was, at one point, the most streamed Troma movie ever. I can't help feeling that, for most people paying to see this, they would feel rather sort changed; and talking of short change this was apparently made for about £500 (some of which must have comprised payments for cameo artistes like Stan Lee and the original 'Jason Vorhees', Ari Lehman).

Things get slightly more exciting towards the end with the goryish despatch of the two killers, but overall this is pretty awful, although I was too old for Troma films in their heyday so I'm probably way off the target audience age for this one. The film was re-released in Italy a year later under the title Le Vendicatrici Tossiche ('The Toxic Avenger' to you).

Shaken and Stirred: Bond, John Barry and the BFI

Some of you may have noticed that the BFI are programming a series of James Bond films in February. Correction; it's a season of movies scored by John Barry, which includes some of his Bond movies. Of which more later.

The organisation have caused some feather ruffling by providing a disclaimer for the whole season (comprising ten very varied movies, all from the 1960s) which states that "...many of these films contain language, images or other content that reflect views prevalent in its time, but will cause offence today (as they did then). The titles are included here for historical, cultural or aesthetic reasons and these views are in no way endorsed by the BFI or its partners" (my italics).

I'll leave that there and turn instead to another season, taking place in January, around the new documentary Scala!!! Or, the Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits; a film about the legendary and much missed independent Scala cinema in King's Cross (and you can read my review of the doc here). The BFI was one of the funders of the film and also secured distribution rights; this has been celebrated by a number of screenings of the doc in the first month of the new year, together with some Scala 'friendly' related programming, with screenings of movies including Basket Case (1982), Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), The Evil Dead (1981) and Thundercrack! (1975)

So the BFI, who have backed the documentary and embraced the screening principles of the Scala in its choice of accompanying programming, find themselves in a bit of a dilemma. Because many of the films to be screened were somewhat shocking - and in the case of Thundercrack! notorious - in their day, the BFI is required to issue audience warnings in terms of content. I'm not going to debate the principles of warning audiences (I understand why it is done and its usefulness for audiences is underlined by research), but the irony that the BFI should do this while at the same time celebrating a cinema that prided itself on 'out there' programming is not lost on me. 

But what they haven't done is distanced themselves from the season itself.

Which takes us back to the John Barry movies. Like those programmed in the January Scala season the February programme carries trigger warnings for some of the season's films; for example Richard Lester's Petulia (1968) informs audiences that the film contains '...scenes of domestic violence', and You Only Live Twice (1967) '...outdated racial stereotypes'. 

So far so good. But just read that disclaimer reproduced above in the second paragraph again; we're in rather different territory here. The BFI has felt it necessary to offer up an additional disclaimer to the trigger warnings, which goes beyond the comments appended to some of the films in the season. My first italicised word, 'will', is an emphatic update to the more commonly deployed 'may' in a sentence like this. The (paying) audiences viewing these films will be offended, it more than suggests. And further adds 'as they did then'. Based on what precisely? Stentorian contemporaneous reviews in the 'Monthly Film Bulletin'? 

To remove doubt further, the BFI then goes on to explain that these titles are only included in the programme - ie shown at all - for 'historic, cultural or aesthetic reasons'. They cannot in any way be considered as worthwhile, enjoyable or of any artistic merit because they are riddled with outdated attitudes and references which have soured them not only for new audiences but any audiences. So what does that mean for people who list Midnight Cowboy (1969), Goldfinger (1964) or Bryan Forbes's The Whisperers (1967) among their favourite films (also included in the Barry season)? Does that mean they are no longer welcome at the BFI?

Turning to the Scala season, this contains films from roughly the same period that include scenes of, for example, a woman being sexually assaulted by a tree, a character eating dog shit off the pavement, bestiality, forced home entry and rape, and explicit sex. Will audiences be offended by these films? Arguably yes; in most cases this was the intention of the filmmakers. So if a film sets out to - and thus may - offend it receives a different BFI reception to one which - according to the programmers - will cause offence because the times in which it was filmed have rubbed off on the movies' themes and content.

To return to my first comment; this is not a James Bond season; it's a John Barry one. The BFI's relationship with Bond films - particularly the 'less rounded' (their words) early filmic incarnations of the agent - has always been rather tricky. So one could argue that hiding a few Bond movies under the cover of a season about their composer, John Barry, is rather handy. But just to apply a 'belt and braces' distancing approach to screening them, not only does the BFI apply individual trigger warnings, but there's an overall disclaimer that they're unreconstructed rubbish which no-one in their right minds would ever watch as 'entertainment'.

In a recent statement provided to The Guardian, who covered the same subject, the BFI stated: "Whilst we have a responsibility to preserve films as close to their contemporaneous accuracy as possible, even where they contain language or depiction which we categorically reject, we also have a responsibility in how we present them to our audiences. The trigger warnings/content warnings that we provide in all of our exhibition spaces and online platforms act as guidance that a film or work reflects views of the time in which they were made and which may cause offence". Where then does that leave the subscription based BFI in their wholesale rejection of a group of films?