NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2026 #1: Reviews of Bone Keeper (UK 2025), Daggers Inn (UK 2025), Jitters (UK 2025), Forty Five (UK 2025), Beyond Mamushi (UK 2026) and Wizard of Oz: The Dead Walk (UK 2025)

Bone Keeper (UK 2025: Dir Howard J Ford) Imagine the cast of - and story from - the average Scott Jeffrey Jagged Edge production, beamed down into a movie with ten times that company's budget, and the result is Ford's latest feature.

Olivia (Sarah Alexander Marks, The Killing Tree, Manor of Darkness and a whole load of others) is searching for her mother, who has gone missing while on the hunt for her own father, an adventurer journalist who also vanished in the same place; a cave system on the Welsh border. All have been investigating the legend of the 'Bone Keeper'.

Determined to track mum down using maps in family journals, Olivia teams up with some friends, and arranges a trip. Along for the ride are cocky TA trailed Ethan (Louis James, Bogieville), Olivia's friend Annabelle (Tiffany Hannam-Daniels, The Lockdown Hauntings), Nick (Tyler Winchcombe, Piglet) and science nerds Nadia (Sophie Eleni, Walking Against the Rain) and Ravi (Danny Rahim in his first British 'fantastic' film role). En route to meet Professor Harrison (John Rhys-Davies, G-Loc, those Lord of the Rings films) they pickup a hitchhiking woman, travel blogger Ashley aka 'Bitchhiker' (Sarah T Cohen, Cinderella's Curse, Alien Invasion) whose addition can give the mission a bit of much needed publicity.

Harrison's 'be careful in the caves' entreaties fall on deaf ears as Olivia and the gang tool up for a bit of spelunking; but the tentacular entity they discover deep in the rocks turns out to be nastier than any of them imagined.

Ford's movie is one of two distinct halves. In the first the bickering and emoting amongst friends is very familiar territory (pretty much all of the flicks mentioned above include similar character developing techniques), and for a while David Engellau's score almost manages to drown out the drama. But when the caves loom into view (enigmatically filmed in the Forest of Dean) Ford really finds his feet. The underground scenes carry a real tension and the creature, a mix of CGI and practical effects, is impressive both in production and intent. 

I could have done without the rather silly prologue in which the origin of the creature is established (and a little more detail on how it manages its hybridity would have been welcome), but Bone Keeper manages to shrug off its early scenes and become a thoroughly nasty monster flick. It is perhaps a shame that the next time we'll see this cast will likely be a return to the low budgets - and expectations - of Mr Jeffrey and his ilk. Shame as here they acquit themselves really well.

A version of this review was originally published on the Bloody Flicks site.

Daggers Inn (UK 2025: Dir James Smith) Smith and his creative/life partner Caroline Spence have a reputation for creating credible features from very little at all; Casting Kill, their 2023 movie, was an expansive (not expensive) mini giallo filmed in just a small handful of locations.

Daggers Inn bases its events in a cosy Essex village, passing as the fictional Haxanbury (geddit?). In the manner of all small town murder mysteries Haxanbury is a place you might want to visit but wouldn't want to live in.

Central to Haxanbury's problems is a ruthless local firm nominally run by Stanley Montagu-John (Martin Payne), but subject to internal feuding between company members Lauren (Terry Bamberger, a real American for once, rather than a dubious UK actor adopting a bogus accent) and the supremely odious Toby Vass (James Hamer-Morton). Expansion is on their mind, and they'll do anything in service of it - including murder.

But things are about to change. A stranger, Donna (Anna Danvers), arrives in the village, on a quest to find out what happened to her twin sister Sibyl, and one suspects she knows more than she's letting on. Donna weaves a spell around the villagers, drawing them under her influence, as she infiltrates the company in a quest to find the truth, teaming up with outsider Samron (Gavin Gordon) and put upon company employee Karen (Eve Kathryn Oliver) in the process.

There are so many ways in which Daggers Inn gets it right. Smith ensures that nothing is explained (in a good way). Is Donna a witch, or maybe even Sibyl in returned form? Certainly her arrival prompts some unusual behaviour; company employees become entranced, and Toby's girlfriend Bethany (genre regular Charlie Bond), who may be central to the mystery, is determined to be rid of her. The director, who like previous projects also serves behind the camera, does some wonderful things capturing both the external landscape and the claustrophobic goings on in the medieval village's board rooms and tea shops. Casting is spot on, performances being as generally understated as the movie's sound design (always a blessing in a genre where directors mistakenly feel that a histrionic score can make up for a project's shortcomings). 

One of the reasons that I cover small scale British 'fantastic' cinema is some filmmakers' ability to craft silk purses out of sow's ears, a skill which Smith and Spence have in abundance. Excellent stuff. 

A version of this review was originally published on the Bloody Flicks site.

Jitters (UK 2025: Dir Marc Zammit) Now I quite liked Zammit's co-directed second feature, 2024's Witch, an inventive film that wasn't perfect but remained pretty watchable.

Grizzled Detective Nick Collymore (Fabrizio Santino, adopting a US accent for no reason apart from he's reasonably good at it) has returned to duty after a rather ugly incident and is keen to get back in the policing saddle, by intruding onto a crime scene, namely the death of a gamer, Tiff (Jessica Impiazzi), her body found slumped at a computer.

Meanwhile colleague Detective Sam Harding (Anto Sharp) is also investigating a death - this time filmed online. Tech wiz Dean Holness (Jack Cray) has taken his own life via nailgun in front of his many fans. Further investigations have revealed that he was working alongside Tiff on a new AI game.

Other deaths occur and Nick discovers that the game can be accessed via a USB. A personal test reveals a weird avatar called Jitters (Daniel Jordan) who poses riddles which, if solved, release cash (possibly in bitcoin). But the real power of the game isn't realised until Nick understands that, once downloaded, the avatar's deadly reach extends to anything with internet connectivity.

Jitters is a very different beast to Witch, a combination of police procedural and a modern AI take on A Nightmare on Elm Street and Videodrome. Collymore's character is the hardboiled cop more usually seen on TV screens rather than the movies, with family and health problems to contend with. The 'Jitters' character is a good few years older than a lot of the other cast members, making his odd 'clown-with-a-colander' getup quite distinctive. Jitters could do with tightening up a bit but it's an ambitious pic for the budget, and the final scene's suggestion of a sequel wouldn't be the worst idea in the world.

A version of this review was originally published on the Bloody Flicks site.

Forty-Five (UK 2025: Dir Bazz Hancher) The 'forty five' of the title in Hancher's latest could refer as much to its slender run time (actually it's just a little over 40 minutes) as its true meaning, the sum of an arcane subtraction in the Bible's Book of Daniel, relating to the Antichrist and the end of the world.

Under three quarters of an hour is pushing it to depict such monumental events, so Hancher wisely focuses events on a smaller canvas of torture and damnation.

Three years after the death of his daughter Ariel, in a sickening ritual killing where the girl's corpse and nether regions are re-arranged to form an inverted cross, her distraught father Boyd Fallon (Kemal Yildirim, who does a nice line in troubled characters) is still on the hunt for Ariel's killer.

A hired private investigator swears off the case but directs Fallon to a succession of people who may hold information, namely an agitated priest, Father Vaughn (Andrew Tales from the Great War Elias), cancer ravaged Ruben Blake (Laurence Saunders) and an unhinged, badly beaten woman, Botis (Laura Liptrot). All have have suffered greatly after contact with the obscure, other worldly 'forty five', and as Fallon digs deeper and gets closer to the truth, he is plagued by death dreams and, ultimately, discovers why his daughter died... and who really murdered her.

Hancher's film is compact, beautifully photographed and rich with apocrypha, and in Yildirim's character creates a tragic figure straight out of Aeschylus, a man destined to uncover his own fatal truth. Disturbing images abound, and Hancher is correct in keeping his film lean and mean. I liked this a lot.

Beyond Mamushi (UK 2026: Dir M W Daniels) My last exposure to Daniel's work was his segment of the lockdown movie The Isolation Horrors. 

Here he brings us a 50 minute psychological drama, centring on Kate (newcomer Corina Jayne), a troubled soul, with a violent, controlling partner, Chris (Gary Cross) and the Mamushi of the title (Jemma Thompson), Kate's therapist (Mamushi is her surname) who seems to have forgotten most of her code of ethics.

Chris exhibits classic controlling behaviours; nasty then nice, belittling and flattering in turn, witholding then making her beg for the medication she seems to need.

Ama Mamushi indicates that she's taken a tough love to Kate's progress, but clearly oversteps the mark when she suggests to her client that murder is probably the only way out of her abusive relationship. Kate's horrendous position is made worse when, on a visit to Chris's father, the older man tries to rape her. Kate's response triggers a cycle of violence which she seems helpless to avoid.

I confess that in 2026 the 'bonkers-woman-driven-to-murder' narrative is more than a little unwelcome. There's very little subtlety here in the story of a woman driven to the edge and then over it, and the reason provided for her actions is just a little silly. Jayne does well in her first role and the film's brevity is to its credit; Daniels took on most of the behind the camera roles and it's clearly a passion project for him, but I found it generally uninvolving and, honestly, more than a little unnecessary.

Wizard of Oz: The Dead Walk (UK 2025: Dir Louisa Warren) We love Louisa Warren's films at DEoL towers and here she is with her latest TCU entry, the title of which sounds a little like those classics vs horror mashups that were all the rage some years ago.

When I interviewed Warren back in 2021, she mentioned that she made two types of movies; 'wacky' and 'serious'. Wisely, because of her own rather childlike obsessions, Warren has decided to stick with the first category in recent years, and Wizard of Oz: The Dead Walk might just be her most 'wacky' yet.

Dorothy (the authentically American Alina Desmond) has been rescued from a dying Oz by her Auntie Em (Jodyanne Richardson, who by resemblance is possibly related to the Richardson acting dynasty), in the process getting herself hooked on heroin.

Em has secured her a place at the Emerald rehab centre, a dodgy clinic run by Dr Oscar Diggs (Stephen Samson) and occupied by patients who still seem to be able to access the hard stuff. Kept heavily sedated while withdrawing, Dorothy has vivid dreams involving malevolent versions of the scarecrow and the tinman from Oz, and the good witch Glinda (Yvonne Curwen) who also seems to have transformed into something more evil. Dorothy dreams about an ancient book hidden in a tree; when she wakes she realises that the tree - and the book - are within the clinic grounds. Reading a passage from the book brings the murderous Oz characters into the real world to begin a campaign of mayhem and death.

With a cast list including the daftly named Detective Jack L Antern (Adam Barnett) this is very silly stuff indeed, but actually quite watchable and at times gory, albeit within the constraints of the usual Warren budget. The director manages to include a cursed book - a bit of a Warren signature move - and the absence of the cowardly lion is sort of explained towards the end of a movie which also wins an award for including the opening credit sequence about three minutes before the end titles. It's bonkers, most people won't like it, but I for one am hungry  - well ok peckish - for more.  

Screamboat (USA 2025: Dir Steven LaMorte)

The Staten Island ferry is a New York institution dating back to the 1920s, connecting the island to Manhattan. As a free service it's used by a wide cross section of the population, something Steven LaMorte exploits in his latest fright flick.

Rushing to catch a late night crossing, a disparate group of people board the boat, from sleepy drunks to mothers and kids keen to get home; occupants also include lonesome down on her luck designer Selena (Allison Pittel) and a rowdy group of social media obsessed party girls, out to celebrate the birthday of one of their own.

But there's another less visible occupant of the vessel; a discarded stowaway who wakes from a decades long slumber, his rest disrupted by a ferry maintenance team who become the first victims of an orgy of death; it's Steamboat Willie (David Howard Thornton), a pint size mutated mouse with a very familiar laugh! For Screamboat, if you've not guessed yet, is a sort of reboot of the famous 1928 animated short of the same name, which launched the 'career' of Mickey Mouse.

In order for Willie to carry out his campaign of violence it's essential that the boat be isolated, which LaMorte achieves via a tried and tested disaster movie plot device; the ferry, detained in port because of tricky weather conditions which have cancelled all other services, is ill advisedly given permission to set off due to a combination of an impatient and overtime fatigued captain and a benevolent service operator.

Not done with the disaster movie cliches, grumpy Selena gets a sort of meet cute with ferry employee Pete (Jesse Posey), and practical EMT staffer Amber (Amy Schumacher) is onhand as the slightly older character with medical expertise who keeps a clear head when all around is mayhem; and she's in for a busy night, as is Selena, to whom Willie shows an immediate attachment, his first glimpse of the girl haloed in an imagined ring of human hearts. 

LaMorte takes a little time to offer some wider societal observations as well. As the danger rises, and despite the boat's passengers being a real New York mix of ethnicities and genders, the most espoused view about the reasons behind the mayhem seems to be 'terrorists'. The Statue of Liberty comes in for a bit of a bashing too, One of the ferry passengers, presumably returning from a costume party dressed as Lady Liberty, leaves the head of the ensemble lying discarded on the floor. And in another scene, as the ferry passes the Statue, the view is obscured by a passing boat piled high with trash.

But the star of the show is Willie himself. His backstory, involving uncle Walt and peddling the myth about the supposed disaffection between creator and created, is beautifully delivered via some fine animation work from Christian Cordella and Tahnee Gehm.

Screamboat's shtick is that Willie (who cannot be named as M*ckey for similar copyright reasons as LaMorte encountered in being unable to title the creature of his previous fright flick, The Mean One, as the Gr*nch) may only be waist high, but has all the manic, creatively deadly energy of the Terrifier franchise's Art the Clown, Thornton's previous and arguably most famous role. Personally I found the violence in those movies just a little too over the top (and yes, I'm aware that was the intention), but here Willie's acts of mayhem feel like the more elegant set pieces of 1980s slice 'n' dice movies, complete with superb practical effects (they're also in the spirit of the original shenanigans in Steamboat Willie). Announcing his arrival by whistling 'Steamboat Bill' (from the original short film, but here taking on a more creepy aspect), there's even a scene, recreated from the animated short, where little Willie takes the vessel's helm, but here he's only able to reach it by standing on the body of one of his victims.

The hurried appropriation of newly-in-the-public-domain fictional characters for horror movie subject matter has, admittedly, been a bit of a bumpy road (the 'Steamboat Willie' character entered the public domain on January 1, 2024, just one day before work started on Screamboat) but whereas previous adaptations (Winnie the Pooh, I'm looking at you) have failed through a combination of a lack of budget and, frankly, directorial talent, Screamboat succeeds because it's fast, furious and situationally very funny. As one of the characters in the movie comments, "everything gets recycled", but when it's done this well, all is forgiven.

New Films Round Up #15: Reviews of From the Shadows (USA 2022), The North Witch (USA 2024), The Baby in the Basket (UK 2025), Heretics (USA 2024), Its Name Was Mormo (Cyprus 2024) and The Hangman (USA 2024)

It's been five years since I last did one of these new film round up things, and I'm grateful to the kind folks at High Fliers films for providing the screeners for the movies below.

From the Shadows (USA 2022: Dir Mike Sargent) A lot's happened in the world since Sargent's first feature, Personals, was released back in 1999. The key influencer for the setup of his sophomore movie was clearly the pandemic, which forced film directors to be increasingly resourceful when putting projects together.

Sargent had clearly been taking notes from Rob Savage's 2020 Zoom horror flick Host when considering From the Shadows, and four years on from the filming strictures of COVID, his multi screen approach looks rather quaint now that the movie has finally got a UK release. But hold off lest ye dismiss this one; there's some good stuff to come. 

In the aftermath of a massive explosion at the mansion base of the mysterious Hidden Wisdom cult - a group of people purportedly involved with ancient worship, witchcraft and Satanism - only five of the cult members manage to escape, with their leader Dr Joseph Cawl (Bruce Davison, Suitable Flesh) apparently perishing in the flames. Cawl's sidekick, Dr Leonard Bertram (Keith David, The Thing, They Live) had previously disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Along comes celebrity sceptic and debunker Dr Amara Rowan (Selena Anduze, Doctor Sleep) whose many books have established her as an expert on demystifying the supernatural. Rowan has decided to group the cult survivors together online to try to get to the bottom of Hidden Wisdom and find out how and why they managed to make it out alive, while the Dr's appointed sidekick, Peter (Jim Thalman) provides tech support and visual documentation services.

The five all had a history of some form of anxiety which Cawl successfully treated: there's Tina (Claire Mack), 'comedian' Keith (Max MacKenzie); gothy Denise (Ester Jiron); Henry (Ian Whitt); and star pupil Zoe (Briana Femia) who was Cawl's research coordinator. As the interviews progress they provide more information about the work of the cult and how Cawl, who formerly ran an 'Alternative Archeology' course, discovered ancient symbols on old artefacts, their application being the key to unlocking powerful alpha waves that, in isolation, could alter reality.

Doubtful as ever, Dr Rowan gets a powerful little online demonstration from the five, still in tune with their developed powers, which effectively re-arranges her bookshelves; it also more worryingly, projects something into her world, a force that Peter recognises, courtesy of his Choctaw grandmother, as the 'soul eater' of legend.

On the face of it, From the Shadows is a by the numbers tech supernatural feature which shouldn't have much going for it, the majority of the movie comprising Rowan and the Hidden Wisdom five all appearing on separate screens...talking. But, there's a kind of Nigel Kneale thing going on here, with the gradual amassing of knowledge making things stranger and stranger, as the incredulous Dr's scepticism is increasingly tested. 

Sargent's movie doesn't stint on the bloodshed  - and practical FX - but is wise enough to build up some tension before those scenes are unleashed, and (again like Savage's movie) each of the five has enough time to build their story so you get to care about them more than most films of this ilk. Add to this a brooding electronic score by Alan Howarth and you have a movie which, on the surface, looks like a Syfy channel programmer, but is in reality a well scripted and tense movie with some ingenious twists and turns.

The North Witch (USA 2024: Dir Bruce Wemple) The first of two Wemple directed films in this round up, here we have Madison (Anna Shields, who also wrote this), who's just been kicked out of her houseshare. She calls her friend Gemma (Jessy Holtermann) who can't help as she's about to go on a four day hiking trip with some girlfriends in the Canadian woods. 

Madison tags along, not knowing that the group have a purpose for their jaunt; to track down a missing house in the Barren Lands (an actual Canadian location). Said house vanished in 1963 and has only re-appeared, Brigadoon like, on a handful of occasions. People entering the house have emerged unrecognisable; and crazy.

The girls arrive at the site matching the co-ordinates provided by witnesses, but no house. They decide to camp overnight; a bad idea as a massive storm rips up their tents and causes untold human damage. Seemingly the only survivor, and with her leg badly injured, Madison makes it to a nearby abandoned house. The following day she finds the head of the party Alice (Ameerah Briggs) lying almost dead, her limbs at unnatural angles. Frightened and starving, there's relief when another of the girls, Talia (Kaitlyn Lunardi) also turns up, unscathed. But if Madison thought her troubles were over, they're just beginning.

Most of the rest of the movie becomes a series or self-harm/torture sequences where the viewer becomes increasingly unsure as to what's real and what's in Madison's head. They're disturbing to watch (Wemple goes in for that trick of building noise in a scene and cutting to silence - a lot) but there's a law of diminishing returns when you realise that the whole thing goes nowhere fast and starts to become, well, a bit silly, despite some very committed performances from Shields and Lunardi.

There's an end coda where the filmmakers issue come kind of written apology that anything which has appeared out of focus or glitchy was due to forces unknown, which seems like a rather feeble cover up if you ask me. Ultimately a rather pointless and unnecessarily nasty exercise.

The Baby in the Basket (UK 2024: Dir Andy Crane, Nathan Shepka) British offerings to the altar of the 'Nunsploitation' movie are few and far between. 2023's ok Consecration and Scott Jeffreys' Bad Nun movies are recent examples, not to mention Aislinn Clarke's excellent 2018 movie The Devil's Doorway, but now along comes Crane and Shepka to give us a good old four-to-the-floor convent based horror flick.

Set in a Scottish nunnery, St Augustine's, in 1944, a small group of novices, presided over by the eccentric Mother Superior (Maryam d’Abo), quietly go about their business (apart from the threat of a local wolf). They comprise sisters Valerie (Elle O’Hara), prone to the bottle, Eleanor (Michaela Longden), Lucy (Lisa Riesner) and Agnes (Amber Doig-Thorne). Their practical needs are supported by two caretakers, war scarred Amos (Paul Barber) and lusty Daniel (co-director and writer Shepka), a young man for whom employment among a group of young women yields constant temptation. 

Their devotions are disturbed by the arrival of, as the title explains, a baby left at the door of the nunnery in a basket. But this is no innocent foundling; rather it's the devil himself in childlike form. The Mother Superior forms a protective bond around the infant, while Agnes divines its demonic nature and is incarcerated for her beliefs. As the evil one casts its net within the nunnery, no-one is safe.

TBitB takes a little time to get going, but when at full steam it's a great low budget exploitation movie, with a cast giving it their all. There's naked nuns dancing in the moonlight (ok just one, but still...), a rather fetching demonic baby rendered, pleasingly, without CGI, and a superb location in which to film the devilish shenanigans (St. Conan's Kirk in Loch Awe, Scotland). I could have done without the relentless soundtrack - honestly sometimes silence is equally effective - but this is very entertaining stuff. Also interesting to know that both 'Flickering Myth' and 'Nerdly' film sites were involved in the production. 

Heretics (USA 2024: Dir Jose Prendes) Amazingly although The Asylum - the bargain basement company behind this found footage feature - have been banging them out for nearly thirty years now, this is only their second FF movie.

A group of rather generic people who claim to be students but are far older head out to the woods for an end of term beer and frolics bash. They all get to announce themselves on camera but despite this they quickly become forgettable, perhaps with the exception of religious Eva (Neeley Dayan), whose pastor father John (Eric Roberts) is seen in an opening shot giving a present to his daughter; so we already have a challenge to the FF format in that we don't know who is filming this sequence.

Anyway, manipulative Mary (Anna DeRusso), who has already engineered some gossip suggesting that group member Gregg (Scott Mazzapica) is cheating on his girlfriend Sarah (Sara Kamine) with Jessica (Shelby Wright), suggests lightening the mood she created by the whole bunch spending the night in the reputedly haunted Simmons House. Various stories of murder and mayhem are attached to the now empty residence, and previous attempts at overnight occupation have resulted in, well, death.

After accessing the house there's the usual amount of walking around (of course now everybody has smart phones which means that there is multiple filming happening) before the 'teens' gradually get offed by shadowy figures who reveal themselves as cultists in thrall to an ancient demon called Lilith.

Unlike many of the found footage offerings in recent years, Heretics is slightly different in that a) the threat is seen and explained and b) there is no context to the footage we see, apart from a snowy screen at the start and end and written messages about praising Lilith. It might be a load of old hokum, but Heretics does at least deliver on its mayhem, even if you can guess the 'why' almost from the outset.

Its Name Was Mormo (Cyprus 2024: Dir Mark Andrew Bowers) Bowers sort of plays himself in this 'family affair' found footage movie. Along with his real life Colombian partner Marcela Cardenas (as Marcela) and their daughter Mia, also playing herself (not forgetting their puppy Romeo), the family are shown in their Cyprus villa going about their business (things kick off with Marcela discovering she's pregnant). 

A visit to a local abandoned building seems to be the start of the bad things, when they discover what looks like a mass of human bones and a box containing skulls, which they rather unwisely bring back home. This is tied in with the Greek legend of Mormo, who exacts revenge on the family for stealing the artifacts (something not explained in the film).

Both parents start to feel watched around the home, to the extent that they fit a series of cameras around the villa to record anything that happens. Marcela's paranoia increases in line with the changing feel of their gaff, particularly in that little Mia seems to be a focus for all the weirdness.

Of course we know that the whole thing doesn't end well as the footage we're seeing has been obtained following the family's disappearance. And on the face of it, ITWM is found footage by the numbers, a sub genre that many thought had bitten the dust years ago. But Bowers' movie, featuring his own family, as opposed to a party of annoying twenty somethings, adds a frisson of terror that most examples of this sort of thing just don't have. All the usual FF WTF moments are present and correct, but the terrorised family kind of make you forget that.

Bowers has dressed this one up with a whole backstory, perhaps in homage to the movie that started it all in 1999, and which you can read about here. There's even a book. Well a guy's got to eat.

The Hangman (USA 2024: Dir Bruce Wemple) Wemple's second feature in this round up proves no better than the first. It's a wordy, confusing movie about an ancient, regenerating demon which spends a lot of time going absolutely nowhere (the film, not the demon, although...).

"There are at least seven known gateways to hell across the world. One of them is in the mountains of West Virginia," states the movie's opening blurb. (sidebar: reader, I've been to the mountains of West Virginia and I can attest to this.) Into this gateway arrives Leon (LeJon Woods) and his son Jesse (Mar Cellus, no really) on a camping trip, a bonding exercise to resolve tensions between the two regarding the murder of Jesse's mum and Leon's inability to have prevented it. But the morning after setting up their tents, Jesse has disappeared and dad's car has been tampered with.

Setting out to find the missing boy, Leon encounters backwoods racists, drug addicts and human traffickers; but that's not the meat of the story. Jesse's disappearance is linked to a cult, worshipping the ancient deity of Baal, a group dependent on human sacrifice to prolong their life via a murderous  - and barely glimpsed - entity named 'The Hangman' (I'll leave you to work out the method of killing here). As soon as Leon discovers this fact - which takes a long time - he realises that he and Jesse are in a whole heap of trouble.

The Hangman could have been a good, if generic film, but pacing and plotting are poor and Mr Woods, on whom the whole movie pivots dramatically, doesn't really have the chops to pull it off. This felt like a film that was a goer in the planning but lucked out in the execution.

Good Gourd, it's Pumpkinhead! A look back at the franchise.

As the hallowed month of Spooktober approaches, and as I'll be spending those 31 days reviewing 2024 movies that I've not yet caught up with, I thought I'd get a bit ahead of myself with a look back at the four films that comprise the Pumpkinhead franchise.

Pumpkinhead (USA 1988: Dir Stan Winston) Winston’s directorial debut acquired a reputation as a bit of an exercise of style over substance; it's actually one of the best creature features of the 1980s. Originally titled ‘Vengeance: The Demon’, it was inspired by a poem written by Ed Justin which can be heard chanted by a group of country kids during the movie. You can read the full poem here.

Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen, enjoying one of many genre roles post being cast in 1986’s Aliens) is a simple chap, scratching a living, widowed with a young son Billy (Matthew Hurley). When a group of young people rock up, intent on partying and biking, Ed is wary. Leaving Billy alone while he runs an errand, the little boy is fatally injured in a motorcycle accident, the rider being a wrong ‘un who, with a previous charge hanging over him, is keen not to hand himself over to the authorities.

Ed, riven with grief, visits an old woman, Haggis (Florence Schauffler) who has knowledge of the dark forces; namely the ability to conjure up a vengeance demon (the ‘Pumpkinhead’ of the title). Ed has prior knowledge of the beast’s power; as a young boy he witnessed the demon tearing apart a victim.

While the partying bikers hole up in a house, scared out of their wits, Ed carries out the old woman’s request; an exchange of blood between him, his dead son and a strange dirt covered homunculus he digs up, on request, in a pumpkin patch. The spell cast, the dug up body assumes the size of a horned creature; but the price of vengeance is pain, as Ed, psychically connected to Pumpkinhead, acutely feels the impact of each of the demon’s kills, as it seeks out and despatches all those responsible for Billy’s death, directly or indirectly. The creature is basically a riff on the legend of the Golem, a revenge being from Jewish folklore.

Pumpkinhead revels in its backwoods setting, all dappled moonlight and moody reds and oranges. And the demon itself is, for the time, an impressive feat of prosthetics, hydraulics and, in the shape of Tom Woodruff Jr, a big guy in a suit (the movie would open the doors for Woodruff’s subsequent career both in front of and behind the camera).

For a film based on a rather brief poem, it’s perhaps no surprise that Pumpkinhead isn’t plot or character heavy (although Henriksen’s haunted Ed is suitably tortured and believable). As pointed out by others, the psychic link between Ed and the creature is never fully explored, and this would have given the film an added level of involvement. But overall Pumpkinhead succeeds because of its general sketchiness of vision, and an open ended final shot made it more susceptible for a sequel (or series of sequels; read on).

In 1993 Pumpkinhead appeared in two issues of the comic book series "Pumpkinhead: The Rites of Exorcism" published by Dark Horse Comics. A third issue was originally going to include the appearance of a winged version of the creature, but it was never officially released.

Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (USA 1994: Dir Jeff Burr) It took six years to recognise the potential of a Pumpkinhead franchise but sadly the first one was the only instalment that got theatrical distribution. PII was a direct to video effort and while its budget was obviously a fraction of the original, storywise the first sequel made an effort to give audiences something to grab onto, however odd.

A 1950s flashback (in B&W obvs) shows a deformed young boy, Tommy (J.P. Manoux), looked after by an old woman, being harassed and then killed by a group of nasty college boys. We move to the present day, now in full colour, with a policeman, Sean Braddock (Andrew Hellraiser Robinson) and his wife returning to a job in his home town of Ferren Woods, handily relocating his daughter Jenny (Amy Dolenz, Micky’s daughter) away from a heap of trouble in their previous city.

No sooner has he arrived than Jenny falls in with the town bad boys, all of them children of the group of guys that murdered Tommy, some of whom now, somewhat predictably, have positions of power in Ferren Woods. Looking for kicks, Danny and the gang come across the cottage where Tommy’s guardian, Miss Osie (French actress Lilyan Chauvin, no Haggis character in this one) lives and discover she’s been planning to bring back the dead. Stealing the witchy accoutrements the kids dig up a patch of land and pour stolen blood on it, but bottle it before they can see that the spell has been successful: Pumpkinhead has risen again! However this time it’s actually a monster/human hybrid, half Tommy, half Pumpkinhead (PumpkinTommy then), the result of a union between the monster and a human.

PumpkinTommy stalks the land, first despatching those who caused Tommy’s death, then their kids, to complete his vengeance; only Braddock, whose connection with Tommy reaches back into their childhoods, has the ability to put an end to the mayhem.

Silly though it clearly is, PII moves at a pretty good pace and doesn’t stint on the gore once PumpkinTommy comes back to life. As a guy in a suit, Mark McCracken as the monster lacks the sheer heft of Stan Winston’s original, but judicious upshooting and editing covers the deficiencies pretty well. In keeping with the times, PumpkinTommy’s POV shots have a distinctly Predator feel about them, and there are cameos from scream queen Linnea Quigley and, taking a break from being Jason Vorhees, Kane Hodder, to keep things interesting. Dumb but fun.

One year after the release of the movie, a first person shooter computer game 'Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge' was developed by American studio BAP Interactive. With a storyline loosely based on the film, the game was poorly received and has been criticised as a "Doom rip-off".

Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes (United Kingdom/Romania 2006: Dir Jake West) If one detected a tonal shift between the first Pumpkinhead movie and PII, then this one goes all the way. Filmed in Romania, with Romanian technical staff and actors, mixed with UK cast members with American accents and some authentic US ones, directed by a British guy; yep, it’s a right old mix.

Filmed for the Sci Fi channel (hence Pumpkinhead turning up in the first five minutes of the movie, a company requirement) this feels like one of the later 'Hellraiser' sequels, with its tentative nod to the original (in fact one of the effects team on this one, British born Gary J Tunnicliffe, wrote and directed the most recent addition to that franchise, Hellraiser: Judgment). 

So here we have the town’s doctor, Doc Fraser (Doug Bradley, another Hellraiser connection) who, in addition to his usual services, offers a lucrative organ harvesting sideline. The resulting dumped bodies, deposited by Bunt (Douglas Roberts), a survivor character from the first movie, are chucked into the local swamp. This activity is witnessed by a passing hiker who also ends up dead but not before being picked up by Molly Sue Allen (Tess Panzer) who alerts the police. Sadly the uncovering of the bodies also reveals the corpse of Molly Sue’s own child; she swears vengeance on all those involved in the deaths, and visits local witch Haggis (the character, not the actor, returning from the first movie; here she's played by Lynne Verrall) who resurrects Pumpkinhead.

The creature isn’t much different from the suited chap in PII – here played by two actors; well three if you include Lance Henriksen, persuaded to return to the role of Ed Harley and who turns out to be the beast in human form. It’s a relatively bloodless affair, befitting its made for TV status, rather heavy on the expository chat; it probably shouldn’t have included some flashbacks from the first two movies as they look much better than this one. I’ve always been of the opinion that Jake West is a far better documentary maker than feature film director, and sadly this film didn’t change my mind. A bit of a slog, then.

Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud (United Kingdom/Romania 2007: Dir Michael Hurst) Filmed in Romania back to back with the last entry in the franchise, this is in all ways a much better movie than the last one.

A long term feud has taken place between two families, the McCoys and the Hatfields, which often spills over into brawls, in true Montague and Capulet style. Our Romeo and Juliet here are Jodie Hartfield (Scottish actor Amy Manson), who is secretly seeing Ricky McCoy (English actor Bradley Taylor); on one of their evening trysts Ricky’s sister Sara (US actor Maria Roman) plays lookout, but to little effect: two of the McCoy clan intervene, and in the process Sara hits her head and dies. Ricky finds Sara’s body and, furious for vengeance, visits the witch Haggis (Lynne Verrall, reprising her role). Warning Ricky about the consequences, Haggis summons Pumpkinhead from his grave, and the slaughter of the Hatfields begins. As the bodies pile high, Jodie is powerless to stop the slaughter; until she realises that the creature and her boyfriend are connected.

Despite the fact that half the cast are either Romanians playing mid Westerners, or UK actors with southern accents, P4 hangs together pretty well. For a made for TV movie it’s pretty gory; entrails spill, heads are detached, a guy saws off his own leg, and the claret flows. This time the CGI has largely been ditched, so while P-head is just a guy in a suit (well guys – Bob Gunter and Mike J. Regan again – who also donned the suit in the last movie), he’s sufficiently vicious and flexible; a long way from the creature vision in the original. 

Best of all, Lance Henriksen returns, a sort of ghostlike figure floating around the set, dispensing Hallmark card style advice like “we are what we do”, causing cast members to consider their actions even if they don’t ultimately listen to him. P4 is probably the best of the three sequels; the Romanian woods don’t really convince as American ones and the buildings feel very un-townlike, but it’s quite tense and unhampered by an unnecessarily complicated story. 

However, the fact that there have been no P-head sequels since 2007 indicate that this vegetable may have exceeded its sell by date. The last I heard was a 2021 story regarding Paramount Players (who had recently rejuvenated the Paranormal Activity franchise and were behind Orphan: First Kill), in which Pumpkinhead was one of a number of intellectual properties being worked up by the company. Nothing has been heard of this since though. 

The Silent Night, Deadly Night Franchise - Naughty or Nice?

I love seasonal horror films, particularly those set at Christmas. Ever since, as an 11 year old, I saw Joan Collins being menaced by Oliver MacGreevy (as an escaped lunatic in a Father Christmas outfit) on TV - in the 'And All Through the House' segment of Freddie Francis's 1972 movie Tales from the Crypt -  I've had a soft spot for darker cinematic holiday offerings.

In the same year - 1984 - that English actor Edmund Purdom unleashed his sole directorial offering, the splendid, grubby Don't Open Till Christmas, to a generally indifferent UK public, over on the other side of the pond a Santa slasher that caused more of a rumpus was hitting cinemas, attracting big audiences, and courting some controversy. Here's a look at all five movies in this increasingly bonkers 'franchise'.

Silent Night, Deadly Night (USA 1984: Dir Charles E. Sellier Jr) The genesis of the film was a script which fell into the hands of producer Scott Schneid; written by Paul Caimi, 'He Sees You When You're Sleeping' saw a killer jn a Santa Claus outfit on the loose in a small town. This was the heyday of the slasher movie and Schneid saw some potential. Dennis Whitehead, co-producer, thought the script was pretty bad but that a Santa killer idea could be developed. Dennis knew Michael Hickey, a Stanley Kubrick obsessed screenwriter who knew nothing about slasher movies but who nevertheless took the work, writing a screenplay under the name 'Slayride' (which subsequently couldn't be used because other projects of the same title were in the pipeline at the time). Hickey's advantage in not being intimate with the genre - and one of the strengths of the first SN, DN - was the creation of an extensive backstory for the Santa killer, Billy.

Billy is a character who is, in his early years - to quote Shakespeare - "more sinned against than sinning". As a child he witnesses the rape and murder of his mother and the death of his father following a roadside holdup; the family stop to help a stranded guy in a Santa Claus outfit who promptly pulls a gun on them. The only survivors of the attack are Billy and his baby brother Ricky. As if that trauma isn't bad enough, the family have just travelled back from visiting Billy's grandfather (Will Hare): G-dad is seemingly comatose and confined to a wheelchair, but when he's alone with the young boy he suddenly springs to life and delivers a fabulous (and Tarantino endorsed) monologue concluding with the devastating outburst that "Christmas Eve is the scariest damn night of the year!"

Protesters at an early SN, DN screening

Billy (and Ricky - of which much more later) is farmed out to an orphanage run by a fierce Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin). While there he's subject to more ill treatment which builds on his trauma and cements his conflation of being naughty (via voyeurism) with direct punishment. 

As an 18 year old, a now strapping Billy, played by Robert Brian Wilson, is released from the 'care' of the nuns, landing himself a job in a department store, which is preparing for Christmas. After store closure the booze comes out and the workers get a bit frisky. Billy, ill advisedly kitted out in a Santa Claus outfit,  becomes triggered by the sight of one worker coming on to a female assistant, sees red (literally) and starts his reign of terror and revenge, declaring his victims to be "naughty"; his trail of death takes in a youthful Linnea Quigley, who ends up impaled on the antlers of a mounted deer's head. His killing spree culminates in a trip back to the orphanage and a face off with the evil Mother. After his death, shot by the police, the camera travels to little Ricky, who has witnessed everything, and whose utterance of the word 'Naughty' suggests a likely sequel to the murder and mayhem.

On a budget of about $750,000 this is a slasher movie made by a first time feature director who didn't really like the genre and whose previous production CV included a wealth of family friendly fare, including 1981's The Boogens. Therefore it's perhaps surprising that SN, DN is such a nasty film, full of mean characters, sleazy gore and the ultimate no no, a killer Santa Claus. What's equally unusual, for a slasher movie anyway, is the time taken to establish both the character and reason for the psychosis; Billy is seen at three different ages; a little boy of 5 (Jonathan Best), a youth of 8 (Danny Wagner), and his late teenage incarnation.

This was Wilson's first role; he wasn't thinking of being an actor until someone noticed him in a restaurant. Apparently at audition the actor impressed because he didn't portray the role as a crazed killer, but instead played him as a vulnerable and confused young adult. And this is one of the great aspects of the movie; Billy wants to be good, despite being exposed to events which confuse concepts of good and evil within his psyche.

But whatever the intentions of the filmmakers (presumably to make a throwaway drive in movie which would make a reasonable profit for all involved) things took an odd turn when, shortly after the release of the film, the protests started. A group calling themselves Mothers Against Movie Madness took issue with the corruption of Santa Claus, protesting with placards containing slogans like 'Santa Ain't No Hit Man!'; their cause was taken up by others who, like the MAMM members, probably hadn't seen the movie, but were riled up by promoters running the movie's trailer during daytime TV. The result: two weeks after opening the film was pulled from cinemas (another story runs that Coca Cola, who owned Columbia, who in turn owned the movie's distributors Tri-Star, didn't like the approach to Santa, a character closely associated with their product, and asked for it to be removed from distribution).

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (USA 1987: Dir Lee Harry) The early removal of SN, DN from cinemas presented the production companies with a problem; it had a very lucrative first two weeks (apparently it grossed more than A Nightmare on Elm Street which opened on the same weekend). So a couple of years later the suggestion was made to revisit the film, now that the fuss had died down, and recut it, possibly in a different order, retitled, with new music...and a different director. The producer behind this genius idea was Lawrence Applebaum.

According to Sellier Jr he was approached to do the sequel but, perhaps unsurprisingly, turned it down. There was very little money available for the project, so the person chosen to direct was the little known Lee Harry, who had previously worked with Applebaum rescuing one of the producer's previous offerings.

Harry's brief meant that he was obliged to recut and tighten up the original movie; this resulted in over 40 minutes of SN, DNP2 comprising footage from the first film. The sequel's director was also not a fan of slasher movies (but the regular wage was an attraction); so after editing, when he realised that he needed another 45 minutes of footage to turn the project into a proper feature, he developed the character of Billy's younger brother Ricky into a killer with a similar MO to his bro. Harry also sought to lighten the mood of the sequel, feeling that the original was too mean; this results in a movie of two halves, interwoven rather strangely. It's a hoot.

When we first meet Ricky as a grown up (Eric Freeman) he's in a long stay hospital, being interviewed by a psychiatrist (James Newman) who encourages Ricky to recount his story. This is the cue to re-run the digest version of SN, DN with a couple of new scenes added to establish Ricky's presence in the story. If this footage is meant to represent Billy's brother's recollections, it fails in that half the footage depicts events that Ricky could not have known about. 

After his eventual discharge from the orphanage a 10 year old Billy (Brian Michael Henley) is housed with a Jewish household; a safety move as they don't celebrate Christmas. But he's a problem kid alright, and the sight of nuns - and the colour red - is still triggering for him. 

Some years later Ricky, now 15 (Darrel Guilbeau), mourning the death of his stepfather, spies a couple getting fresh in the middle of a field. The woman however is not keen to put out, which upsets the guy who turns nasty; the scene is witnessed by Ricky who has a flashback to the killing of his own mother (remember in the first film Ricky was only a few months old and would not have been able to remember this trauma) and the switch is activated; Ricky, like his brother - singling out his victims and sealing their fate with the word "Naughty!" - mows the guy down in his own car (the grateful woman thanks him for this!) and then, after liberating a gun from a cop, proceeds to walk to the nearest town and embark on a shooting spree. 

Adult Ricky (Eric Freeman) wreaking havoc in SN, DN 2

After Ricky is arrested at the scene of the crime - or crimes - he's incarcerated in the facility we saw at the film's opening. But the lad has only been feigning sanity to the psychiatrist, who he kills. He then makes his escape, donning a Santa Claus suit along the way and heading to the home address of the now confusingly scarred Mother Superior (Jean Miller) to avenge his brother's treatment. He's shot by the police only after he beheads the Mother Superior, but in the last scene Ricky's eyes open. He's not dead then!

Harry is as good as his word, in that a lot of his shot scenes include a certain levity within the violence: on his shooting spree, Ricky spies a guy taking out the trash and shouts "Garbage day!" (a line which has helped propel this movie to cult status via social media outlets) before firing his gun; in another scene the lad kills a mean mob bloke by ramming him through with an umbrella, and then opening it once the thing has exited the dude's body. Oh and Ricky gets his revenge on a cocky young 'un, Chip (Kenneth Brian James) who was a previous lover of his girlfriend Jennifer (Elizabeth Cayton), by ramming a battery charger into his mouth, turning the dials to max and making his eyes explode. He also kills Jennifer for the crime of having sex with a previous partner after Jennifer tells Ricky she hates him for killing her former beau.

And the bizarre scenes continue. Ricky and Jennifer go to the cinema, a scene which is mainly put together so that our hero can take out a rowdy customer throwing popcorn in the back row. Jennifer is slightly amazed as Ricky soaks up the violent trailers he sees on screen (surely this is Harry's comment on then current concerns about the influence of violent films). But what triggers Ricky inside the cinema? Why it's the film on screen; it's actually SN, DN, a meta moment if ever there was one. 

Ricky is played by Eric Freeman, who wasn't the first choice for the role; he'd originally auditioned for a bit part. The director chose him because, like Robert Brian Wilson before him, he wasn't a typical psychopath. He isn't a conventional actor either; he sort of gurns through the role and does a lot of emoting using his eyebrows.

With its bright LA setting (Sierra Madre, specifically, also a favourite with John Carpenter; Harry had neither the time nor inclination to shoot at the previous movie's locations) there's little that's Christmassy about this first sequel (to compensate Ricky's triggers are expanded to nuns and the colour red - Harry's Marnie moment possibly) apart from the scenes lifted from the first film. Contrary what the director intended (and Appelbaum wanted) SN, DN 2 remains a film of two halves. It's enjoyable in its daftness; a very watchable misfire, aided by some terrific stunt work by Spiro Rizotas and F/X and makeup by the very talented Chris Biggs.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! (USA 1989 (video): Dir Monte Hellman) Yes, that is the same Monte Hellman - of Beast from Haunted Cave (1959) and Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) fame - on the credits of this second SN, DN sequel.

SN, DN3 was the first in house production project from IVE (later LIVE Entertainment) who had previously only distributed movies, but were keen to cash in on the burgeoning direct to video film market: Better Watch Out! is the first of the franchise not to have had a theatrical release. Richard Gladstein from LIVE (who cameos in this and all subsequent SN, DN films) made the wise decision to pay for the franchise rights rather than license them, which would bear fruit in terms of the narrative direction of subsequent entries. 

At the end of SN, DN2 although Ricky had been taken down in a hail of gunfire after beheading the Mother Superior, he survived the attack (Bill Moseley); his body was taken back to a research facility where, after surgery, he was kept alive in a vegetative state, a transparent dome fixed to his head, exposing his brain. 

Dr. Newbury (Richard Beymer) has managed to establish a neural link between Ricky and a psychically gifted outpatient, Laura (Samantha Scully), blind as the result of a plane crash which also killed her parents. Laura's gifts include the ability to predict the future - a narrative idea only briefly explored - and in experiments Laura gets to experience Ricky's memories; a rather dangerous undertaking in that she is also undergoing therapy to deal with her blindness and grief issues.

Bill Moseley is Ricky in SN, DN 3

An understandably taciturn Laura is off to spend Christmas at her grandmother's (Elizabeth Hoffman) along with brother Chris (Eric Da Re) and his new girlfriend, perky Jerri (Laura Harring, birth name Laura Elena Gräfin von Bismarck-Schönhausen, trivia fans). However Ricky has managed to 'hear' where Laura is going, and after killing a hospital Santa, a receptionist (wearing a large red poinsettia, natch), a truck driver and a gas station owner he makes his way to granny's house; he's obviously got there first, as when Chris, Jerri and Laura arrive there's no trace of their relative. Following up on the string of murders is Lt. Connely (Robert Culp, the movie's big star) who, aided by Dr Newbury, realises that he has a very specific brand of criminal on his hands.

Apparently Hellman had to be asked a few times to take on the project, only acquiescing when he needed the money; he also junked the first script for the film (which, sources say, became  the initial draft of the story for SN, DN4). There is a dark humour to Better Watch Out! which critics at the time misread. The 'comedy' is largely in the setup; a killer wearing a hospital gown with a half fishbowl on his head searches for a blind woman with whom he has formed a connection. With very little to establish the Christmas atmosphere - the film was shot in California, not known for its snowy holiday season - and a very tenuous connection with the previous two films, the cast nevertheless give it their all and Moseley, an intelligent and quirky actor, manages to convey pathos rather than fear as Ricky.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation (USA 1990 (video); Dir Brian Yuzna) LIVE made a wise to choice to appoint maverick director Yuzna - fresh from Bride of Re-Animator the same year - if their intention was to take a sharp left turn in the continuation of the Ricky/Billy story contained - albeit increasingly loosely - within the previous three SN, DN movies.

By this time LIVE boss Richard Gladstein had decided that the only common link between all the SN, DN films would be 'murders at Christmas'. Narratively this pretty much left the field open; and Yuzna's story for Initiation was very 'open' indeed.

Frustrated magazine staffer Kim Levitt (a very game Neith Hunter, an ex model and actress who had done a little TV and film, but for whom this was a first lead role) has just seen footage of a woman jumping to her death on the news; the corpse shows signs of spontaneous combustion. Kim wants to cover the story but her boyfriend, writer at the same organ, reminds her that she runs the classifieds and as such isn't likely to get to write the copy.

Kim decides to investigate the death herself, travelling to the site of the supposed suicide where she encounters the mysterious Fima (Maud Adams, the 'name' ticket on the movie), owner of a bookshop and leader of a very small cult dedicated to the worship of Lilith, together with her creepy slave Ricky (the as ever excellent Clint Howard) and her serving maidens. Kim is drawn into the cult, who initially provide a refreshing change to the day to day sexism she experiences via her work and her boyfriend, only to find that Fima is equally controlling and has an ulterior use for the wannabe journalist; well her womb at least.

Maud Adams as Fima in SN, DN 4

"Sometimes I take a look at the movies I made, and I'm kinda shocked" confessed Yuzna on the director's commentary for the Blu Ray of this film, and Initiation is, in current parlance, 'a lot'. At its heart the movie is a fairly standard tale of witchcraft in downtown LA, but Yuzna's choice to employ F/X genius Screaming Mad George (aka Japanese legend Jôji Tani), who he'd used on his previous features BoR and Society) took his film to a different, and far more surreal level. 

Mr George had previously devised the cockroach death sequence in Renny Harlin's fourth instalment of the 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' franchise, and these beasts are very prevalent in Initiation, whether in their natural form (the movie needed the help of a roach wrangler) or as outsize models, c/o SMG (the plot has something to do with curse of Lilith taking the form of a reborn roach type beast). They guy's outrageous creations give rise to a series of nightmarish scenes which were probably added into the script just because everybody thought they'd be cool, rather than for narrative cohesion; this has the effect of putting Hunter through the wringer in turns of gloop and having to vomit out George created roach creatures. She also has several scenes of frankly gratuitous nudity because Yuzna (and presumably Gladstein) wanted to spice things up for the home rental crowd; Initiation went straight to video and, like its franchise predecessors, did very well in this format. In fact well enough to fund a fifth movie.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker (USA 1991: Dir Martin Kitrosser) SN, DN 5 marked Kitrosser's debut as a director and is also, sadly, the weakest of the franchise's five entries.

Yuzna, who co-produced this along with Gladstein, has gone on record as regretting the lack of Christmassy elements to Initiation. The Toy Maker certainly makes up for this. 

Little Derek (William Thorne) is stunned into selective mutism after witnessing the death of his father, after dad opens a killer Christmas present intended for his son. Said gift is a cylinder with tentacles which reach out to strangle him.

Derek's mum Sarah (Jane Higginson) despairs at her son's condition, and tries to cheer him up by taking him to his favourite toy shop, Petto's, run by kindly old Joe (Mickey Rooney) and his weird son Pino (Brian Bremner). A shifty guy called Noah (Tracy Fraim) shows a keen interest in Derek and Sarah, and also in buying lots of Joe's toys, including one, Larry the Larvae, that comes to life and kills a motel owner. Another anonymous gift meant for Derek  - but which is chucked out before he can open it - is a pair of rocket powered roller blades which, when worn, cause the wearer to lose control and end up dead. What is going on?

Well the weird upshot of all this is that Noah is actually an old flame of Sarah's and the real father of Derek; he quit the scene before realising his girlfriend was pregnant. He's also been keeping tabs on Petto's, buying the toys as a way of checking up on the proprietor. Joe may seem like just a kindly old store owner but he also happens to have a side trade as a crazy inventor; and his creations include his own son Pino, in what is this whole franchise's weirdest reveal.

Pino (Brian Bremner) in SN, DN 5: The Toy Maker

With its scenes of advancing toys and mechanics gone wrong, it's clear that Kitrosser may have seen the first two films in the 'Puppet Master' franchise. After the sex and gore excesses of Initiation, The Toy Maker is much tamer stuff. Screaming Mad George is back on F/X duties but he seems to have had his wings clipped here, certainly compared with the last movie; a disembodied robot hand acting as an assistant in a couple's lovemaking and Larry the Larvae entering a guy's mouth and exiting from his eye socket are the closest he gets to his former weirdness. Rooney, still a jobbing actor at the end of the 20th century, gives the material more class than it deserves (and as everybody notes his casting is a bit rich as he was one of the voices calling out against the first SN, DN movie but hey, everyone has to eat). Neith Hunter is in this one, clothes definitely on this time, as a mum friend of Susan's, and there are also cameos from Clint Howard, Gladstein and Brian's Yuzna's son Conan. All in all not a great end to the franchise.

I should mention that I have not included the US movie Silent Night, released in 2012 and directed by Stephen C Miller, in this article. While the film makes some references to the franchise it's not a remake as such.

Halloween 2023 Round Up Part 1: Reviews of The Wendigo (USA 2022), All Fun and Games (USA/UK/Canada 2023), There's Something Wrong with the Children (USA 2023), When Evil Lurks (Argentina/USA 2023), Beneath Us All (USA 2023), Spirit of Fear (USA 2023), Sammy Slick: Vampire Slayer (USA 2023), Run Rabbit Run (Australia 2023), Birth/Rebirth (USA 2023), Allensworth (USA 2022) and 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 (UK 2023)

For the month of October 2023 – culminating in Halloween, of course - I decided to do capsule reviews of 31 horror movies released this year which I’d not previously seen. There aren’t 31 entries in this post (there are actually 22) as some are UK films and as such are included in various BHFF2023 posts; others appeared on the Bloody Flicks site. Here are the rest, split over two posts.

The Wendigo (USA 2022: Dir Jake Robinson) The Wendigo is a mythical creature whose origins date back to stories told by American First Nation people. Popularised as a result of the creepy 1910 novella by Algernon Blackwood, the Wendigo has enjoyed a fitful career on the big screen, mostly notably in Larry Fessenden’s low budget creepathon Wendigo back in 2001.

Director Jake Robinson’s first feature is a good example of a new generation of filmmakers embracing the hoary old ‘found footage’ format, now entering its third decade. Logan (Tyler Gene) is a social media star who live streams his exploration of a section of Appalachian trails and, on camera, is whisked away by a horned beast. Logan’s social media comrades launch an expedition to find him, only to find that some rival Youtubers have had the same idea; needless to say it doesn’t end well for any of them.

The ’new wave’ of found footage here weaves in the complexity of vacuous social media personalities treating each other like shit and trying to max their likes, before it becomes a Costco The Evil Dead; suffice to say that the legend of the Wendigo becomes rather an afterthought. The woods look great but this is poor stuff; mercifully the whole thing is over in just over an hour.

All Fun and Games (USA/UK/Canada 2023: Dir Eren Celeboglu, Ari Costa) Grim (but not in a good way), this PG-13 horror has a dysfunctional family – three kids, distracted mum and her feckless brother - living in Salem, Mass. Popular belief maintains that the horrific and satanic history of the town can be entirely explained away as the persecution and death of many innocent young women at the hands of awful men.

But apparently there are actual supernatural histories of the area too – one of these concerns a knife that possesses its owners and drives them to do awful things. Passed on through history the knife finds its way into the hands of the youngest child of the family, Jo (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) and thence to oldest boy Marcus (Asa Butterfield, surely fulfilling some contractual obligation here). The knife possesses, children and (real) witches from the 17th Century return, and it’s all a terrible mess, clocking in at a still regularly watch checking 75 minutes.

There’s a lush score by Alex Belcher to heighten the drama, but it has to do all the work as there’s precious little among the largely teeny cast. Dull.

There’s Something Wrong With the Children (USA 2023: Dir Roxanne Benjamin) Sometimes the viewing palate cries out for a good old-fashioned bit of filmmaking, competently produced and directed, well played, with a story that remains satisfying while not going anywhere new. Roxanne Benjamin’s first ‘fantastic’ feature delivers all of this.

Two couples, one childless - Ben (Zach Gilford) and Margaret (Alisha Wainright) - and the other, Ellie (Amanda Crew) and Thomas (Carlos Santos) with two kids, Lucy (Briella Guiza) and younger brother Spencer (David Mattle), rent cabins in the woods for a vacation together. The parents have been through a few things, and the childless pair have too, but they’ve clearly known each other a while and so time away seems like a good idea.

While out for a walk, the group come across a strange building filled with corridors and steep, lethal drops. Lucy and Spencer seem transfixed with the place. Later Ben and Margaret offer to put the kids up overnight at their cabin to give Ellie and Thomas some much needed alone time, but the morning after the children have disappeared from their beds. On searching for them Ben tracks the pair to the building visited the previous day, only to see them jump to their deaths into one of the site’s deep holes. But when he returns to the cabins, unsure how to break the news of the fatalities, Ben is surprised to see Lucy and Spencer, full of beans, but subtly changed into something monstrous – and murderous.

TSWwtC looks back to two evil moppet movies for its influence; Tom Shankland’s 2008 UK movie The Children, and the classic 1976 Spanish film Who Can Kill a Child? aka ¿Quién puede matar a un niño? And rather like those movies, Benjamin doesn’t disclose precisely who (or what) has taken over the kids (apart from a shadowy glimpse of something insect like and the children’s obsession with beetles). There are the usual present and correct narrative moments – Ben’s previous mental health issues mean that his suspicions about the kids go unbelieved by the adults, and nobody except Ben sees the children at their worst – and Benjamin builds the tension well, teasingly holding off the mayhem until the last possible moment. The film is also good at skewering that awkward thing of childless couples having to deal with friends’ kids with no experience of childrearing themselves. Good stuff.

When Evil Lurks aka Cuando acecha la maldad (Argentina/USA 2023: Dir Demián Rugna) Don’t expect Señor Rugna to give you any easy answers in this very strange, and occasionally incredibly disturbing Argentinian fright flick.

Brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriguez) and Jimmy (Demian Salomon) are concerned. In a farmhouse on the edge of their village a large, decaying man called Uriel – alive but with all the hallmarks of a bloated corpse – lies on a bed; they refer to him as ‘a rotten’. Precisely what this means is never really explained, but the infected man can only be despatched by a specialist – called a cleaner – provided by the Ministry.

The only problem is that the cleaner appointed lies in bloody pieces, attacked en route to his task; so it’s left for non qualifieds Pedro and Jimmy to load the body onto a truck and drive it hundreds of kilometres away from civilisation. But they manage to lose the body on the way, which spells trouble for the brothers and the local community; the ‘rotten’ is highly contagious and this disease spread has all the hallmarks of zombie cannibalism.

Pedro visits his estranged wife and child, with a view to abducting his offspring and getting as far away as possible as quickly as possible. But that plan fails, and Pedro and Jimmy find themselves enmeshed in an increasingly deadly situation.

Honestly it’s kind of difficult to get a handle on the nature of the threat in When Evil Lurks; all the audience knows is that it’s a sly and very bloody one. Therefore there’s no neat cause/effect narrative, and the advice provided to stave off a ‘rotten’ infestation by one of the cast – something about no light, no shooting, not calling it by its name – is intriguing but baffling.

But the effectiveness of the movie lies, and is saved by, its horrid details: a dog savaging a little girl, who appears unharmed in the next scene; a mother chewing on the brains of her offspring, strobed in a car’s headlights; and a wife killing her husband, and then herself – with an axe – to stop the spread of infection. When Evil Lurks may not equal the sum of its parts, but some of those parts are incredibly effective.

Beneath Us All (USA 2023: Dir Harley Wallen) I couldn’t work out whether the title of this film was a nod to the evil that lurks at the heart of humans, or some more general comment on the worth of the film. Turns out both are right.

Wallen, this movie’s director and a former martial artist, apparently has a bit of a fanbase, people seeing him as a powerhouse filmmaker who’s churned out a number of horror movies in quick succession; now I haven’t seen his last two efforts, 2022’s Ash and Bone and this year’s The Devil’s Left Hand, but based on Beneath Us All I’m good thanks.

Evil foster parents Todd (Sean Whalen) and Janelle (Maria Olsen) have a gaggle of kids at their house, but they’re wrong’uns; they both day drink and Todd supplements their income through gambling. Among their brood is 17 year old Julie (Angelina Danielle Cama) who, being a late teenager, is wise to Todd and Janelle’s dodginess, and is keen to flee the nest.

Meanwhile social worker Rebecca (Kaiti Wallen, the director’s wife, who appears in all of her husband’s movies) has relocated to the area in which Todd and Janelle live and has got her beady eye on the unsavoury couple and the harm they might be causing to the kids. But Julie has found her own salvation, courtesy of a 1000 year old Scandinavian vampire who she has been psychically drawn to and has dug up; and after being woken from his slumber he is desirous of blood.

This, my friends, is pretty much all there is to the movie, which is fairly bloodless, literally and narratively. It reminded me of one of those movies put out by Charles Band’s Full Moon Features, but without any of the campy fun. This is very much a locally produced flick too; product placement for, among other things, a neighbourhood IPA suggests where some of the finance may have come from.

Keeping it in the family Wallen also includes his two little kids in the cast (I suppose it saved on babysitting fees) and the director also pops up as a detective. It’s not a bad movie, just a dull one, but if it has its fans, well good luck to them.

Spirit of Fear (USA 2023: Dir Alex Davidson) More indie US fare, low low budget but some decent ideas at work here. Chris (Christopher Lee Page) wakes up in a house he doesn’t recognise. There’s blood all over one of his arms but it doesn’t look like he cut himself. Walking around the house he sees various post it notes, including one on the front door advising him not to go out and a similar one on the entrance to the basement. There’s also one advising him not to spend too long in the bathroom; wise words, apparently, as there’s something demonic lurking behind the shower curtain. Oh and he works out that the notes are in his writing.

Chris finds an old 8mm projector, initially unloaded with film, which later shows footage of him with a woman and child – his wife and daughter? A later descent into the forbidden basement will show him further visions which may be echoes from a past life.

The almost dialogue free depiction of one person’s search for the reason he’s in the house, revealed through small clues which he must piece together, reminded me of those old first person walk around observation games like ‘Myst’. Unfortunately unlike that game it’s Chris in control and everything is revealed very slowly, and we have to deal with a lot of emoting on the way.

Thankfully the whole thing is explained – well sort of – with a last scene that’s pretty clever and provides a different spin on a classic genre setup. It still doesn’t add up, although I’m sure the director, Alex Davidson, would be keen to explain it to you; it feels like a real labour of love story. Even at 75 minutes Spirit of Fear rather drags, but it’s good to see something different being attempted.

Sammy Slick: Vampire Slayer (USA 2023: Dir Christopher Leto) Regional indie horror filmmaking courtesy of prolific director Leto. This one comes all the way from Ybor City and Tampa, Florida.

Sammy Slick (Klein Wong) is a private eye come vampire hunter, whose twin skills allow him to do the spade work on the location of the undead and then despatch them, Buffy style. Sammy’s PA Ashley (Ariella Aegen) is, we soon find out, also a slayer, disguising her vampire hunting chops by providing secretarial services.

But the pair realise they need to team up when they’re faced with Sofia (Barbara Sulova), a mean uber vampiress who’s running a nest of bloodsuckers behind the façade of a strip club. To stake out Sofia, Sammy and Ashley must face a whole heap of befanged henchmen and strippers.

SS:VS is cheap, cheap, cheap and really shouldn’t work; but it does. A lot of this is down to Wong and Aegen who make a great pair, wisecracking and will-they-won’t-they flirting through the movie, but both able to throw some moves when they need to. The supporting cast of vampires is also good value and everyone looks like they had great fun making the thing; no-one is taking this particularly seriously and the movie is all the better for it. I had a great time watching this and – spoiler alert – would love Sammy and Ashley to return for more vampire adventures.

Run Rabbit Run (Australia 2023: Dir Daina Reid) Sarah (Sarah Snook) lives with her young daughter Mia (Lily LaTorre) and leads an emotionally precarious life. Divorced, and dealing with the recent death of her father, she’s also busily ignoring calls from the rest home where her estranged mother (Greta Scacchi) lives.

Mia begins to act strangely, increasingly defying her mother (nothing strange there, I hear you comment); she takes an increasing interest in Sarah’s sister Alice, who went missing at the age of 7, assuming the missing sibling’s name, and being mistaken for her when Mia and Sarah visit her mother. A stay at Sarah’s parents’ house exacerbates Mia’s disassociation and her mother’s poor mental state, and a family secret gradually exposes itself.

This is director Reid’s first feature, but her background in TV means that Run Rabbit Run remains focused on Snook and LaTorre for most of its running time; their performances are consistently powerful, even if the story they’re in feels overstretched and inconclusive. The supernatural elements of the movie only really surface towards its close but remain oblique. But this is still impressive for the most part, just not as gripping as it could have been.

Birth/Rebirth (USA 2023: Dir Laura Moss) I’m slightly staggered that Birth/Rebirth is director Moss’s first feature; it’s an assured, grim but deftly handled piece, centring on a doctor, Rose Casper (a superb performance from Marin Ireland) and her attempts to return the dead to life.

It’s difficult to work out whether Rose is incredibly committed to her calling, nuts, or a combination of both; the lengths to which she uses herself, and others, to achieve her aims, makes it difficult to work out. In one of her first scenes, for example, Rose approaches a random guy in a bar, offers to masturbate him, collects the semen and, when home, artificially inseminates herself. That this act is part of a wider plan only becomes obvious as the movie progresses, when Rose’s life collides with a nurse, Celie (Judy Reyes) with whom she works. Celie is equally committed to her job, so much so that, as a single mother, she sometimes offloads her little daughter Lila (A.J. Lister) onto a neighbour so that she can work. Following Rose’s ‘no phones’ rule on the ward (and thus tying the two women’s fates together), Celie misses calls that Lila has become sick, and is consumed with guilt when the child dies.

But Celie’s attempts to see her daughter’s body are frustrated by the news that it has gone; it’s been taken by Rose who, after a successful experiment bringing a dead pig back to life, has transported Lila back home for her next challenge. Celie’s discovery of this fact leads to the pair entering into a bizarre domestic partnership; she moves in with Rose and together they resurrect and care for the little girl, with perhaps inevitably tragic results.

Perhaps the strangest take on Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus’ you’re ever likely to see, both Reyes and Ireland are superb in their roles, but it’s the latter’s film. Rose is an extraordinary character, played as a combination of Frasier Craine’s ex wife Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth) and Sofia Helin’s on the spectrum Saga character from The Bridge. But the really clever thing going on here is that Moss manages to cut the drama with some mordant humour, making this a difficult but fulfilling watch. It’s definitely one of my films of the year.

Allensworth (USA 2022: Dir James Benning) It may seem a little unusual to include this disturbingly lyrical documentary in my Spooktober lineup (even the title I’ve given the season provides a whiff of discomfort in the context of this film) but bear with me.

Allensworth is a ghost story; of sorts. The town was the first in America to be founded, financed and governed by Black Americans. It was founded in 1908 by Allen Allensworth, a Chaplain of the United States army, who established the land for the purposes of “a colony of orderly and industrious African Americans who could control their own destiny.” The town flourished in the years following its creation but its success was brief; following its founder’s untimely death in 1914, a combination of its location near a railroad that was subsequently redirected (as was the town’s water supply, causing a failure of crops) caused the town to dwindle, leading to its eventual demolition in 1966.

James Benning’s documentary splits itself into twelve months of a year; most of the months ‘shown’ depict a building in the town (most of the buildings are rebuilds of the originals following the creation of the area as a heritage State Park in 1974) shot in a series of static five minute shots. The only signs of life are passing cars and trains and the odd person occasionally seen in the periphery of the picture. The only break in this succession of haunting images occurs when a teenage girl named Faith Johnson, authentically dressed and reading a series of poems written contemporaneously by Lucille Clifton; the poems provide fragments of the struggle felt by the occupants of Allensworth, and thus context for the images we see.

Allensworth is both an exercise in hauntology and a memorial to a pioneering experiment that burned brightly but too quickly. It’s a documentary that requires patience but has a cumulatively powerful impact.

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 (UK 2023: Dir Ali Catterall, Jane Giles) It’s been thirty years since the Scala in Kings Cross closed as a movie house; that’s a whole generation timewise. But this ragged, heartfelt documentary about the Scala’s history as a little bit of 42nd St in London, brings it all back.

Separated into three sections, the doc covers the cinema’s origins in Tottenham St (acknowledging but playing only fleeting attention to the infamous all nighters there, which mixed bands and underground movies), then spends the bulk of its running time looking at the Pentonville Rd site. A third section covers the venue’s forced closure as a cinema and its renaissance as a club.

For anyone who went to the place in either of its incarnations (guilty as charged), Scala!!! (the full title and exclamation marks is a tribute to Ray Dennis Steckler’s most famous film The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies!!?) serves as a fabulous time machine, although a lack of photos and filmed footage means that most of those memories are recalled via interview (we do get some excellent movie clips though); the weird audiences, the deaths on site, and the venue’s two lovely cats are all covered, as is the venue’s cultural – and counter cultural - significance. For anyone who wasn’t born when the place closed its doors as an independent cinema – as the result of a financially crippling court case following an ‘illegal’ screening of A Clockwork Orange, although sources in the film hint that the place was just too ‘other’ for the Government at the time, who were looking for an excuse to strike – I’m not sure that Scala!!! will be anything other than a curio.

But if just one person watches the doc and, as a result, decides to programme independent cinema in their home town, or even asks the question as to when their multiplex will show anything other than the latest big budget compubuster, this documentary will have done its work.