Dark Eyes Retrovision #13: Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (US 1995: Dir Bill Condon)

When it was originally released, I pretty much ignored Bill Condon's sequel to Bernard Rose's 1992 adaptation of the Clive Barker story, Candyman, on the basis that the original was so good I didn't want my memory of it sullied by an inferior second part.

Re-approaching the movie nearly 25 years later, courtesy of the new 88 Films Blu Ray release, those rather prissy concerns are thankfully a thing of the past, and while Farewell to the Flesh is a rather different beast to the original, it stands up as a pretty watchable film in its own right.

The setting is now contemporary New Orleans, a few days before the carnival of Mardi Gras (the literal translation of the word 'carnival' gives rise to the movie's suffix). Annie Tarrant (Kelly Rowan), a schoolteacher whose father was murdered by Candyman, comes to town to take up a teaching job. Her brother Ethan (William O'Leary) stands accused of the murder of dad, but knows the truth about who really dunnit. Annie seeks to debunk references to Candyman in her classroom by saying the name five times. Of course this brings forth the spirit, who proceeds to pick people off while showing an inordinate interest in the summoner.

Rather like Rose's film, Farewell to the Flesh explores issues of race by setting the movie in a black neighbourhood in which a white character must earn the community's trust, although the theme is pretty much squandered here, limited to a you're-not-from-round-here street confrontation and some shots of (probably real) down on their luck locals.

Added to this one is the relationship between Annie and her mother, a Tenesseee Williams styled booze guzzling vamp called Octavia (well played by Veronica Alien Cartwright) - the script also gives Annie a direct connection to Candyman, and a more detailed account of his history. All of this keeps the movie interesting but removes any of the mystique from our hook-wielding spirit (Tony Todd at his menacing best); part of the appeal of the original was the woozy dream state of the characters induced by Candyman's appearance - the sequel simply turns him into a Freddy Krueger style killing machine. In fact overall Farewell to the Flesh is terribly prosaic and straightforward; it was only Condon's second feature and his previous rather workmanlike TV crime drama CV shows through clearly here.

Candyman would return once more, for a 1999 direct to video sequel called Candyman: Day of the Dead, but I prefer to think of the franchise ending with the finale of Part 2, which provides a satisfying conclusion to the story.

Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh is released by 88 Films on Blu Ray from Monday 25th March. Extras on the disc include: a booklet by film journalists Dave Wain and Matty Budrewicz (first print run only); ‘The Candyman Legacy’ - interview with actor Tony Todd: and ‘Down Memory Lane’ - interview with actress Veronica Cartwright.

The Haunting of Sharon Tate (USA 2019: Dir Daniel Farrands)

Since the infamous nighttime attack at 10050 Cielo Drive, Hollywood, back in August 1969 - when followers of Charles Manson broke into the home of Roman Polanski and actress Sharon Tate, brutally murdering the heavily pregnant Tate and a party of friends - cinema has had an on/off obsession with Manson and his followers. 1976's two-part TV movie Helter Skelter had Steve Railsback providing a career best (and career haunting) performance as Manson, Wade Williams' 1971 The Other Side of Midnight combined documentary footage and re-enactments to piece together the murders, the 1997 film The Manson Family was a documentary style deconstruction of Manson and his acolytes, and 2009's Manson, My Name is Evil concentrated on 'family' member Leslie van Houten.

Well it seems as if there's life in the story yet - at least Daniel Farrands thinks so. The director - whose CV shows a predilection for movies about real murder, fictional murder, and murders we haven't made our minds up about (Amityville, basically) - dips in to a particularly dodgy nugget of history as inspiration for The Haunting of Sharon Tate. In the May 1970 edition of 'Fate' magazine, celebrity columnist Dick Kleiner wrote an article about a dream experienced by Tate, two years before the Manson commissioned murders, in which she prophesied her own death and that of her ex-boyfriend Jay Sebring (also killed by the 'family' that night). And it's this piece of Tate trivia which drives most of the movie.

In fact The Haunting of Sharon Tate opens with the actress having the aforementioned dream, in which she 'sees' in some detail the fate that will befall Sharon and her friends. We then flash forward a couple of years, to a point three days before the murders are set to take place. We learn that her husband is in England working on a film - the unmade The Day of the Dolphin - and Tate, despite being accompanied by her friends (ex- boyfriend Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, and Abigail Folger), is lonely and increasingly given to paranoid delusions about being watched. Tate also expresses concerns about the fidelity of her husband, and the discovery of a draft script for Rosemary's Baby and a reel to reel tape of Manson's songs in the house's office (which include strange noises) invites the possibility of the absent director's possible collusion in what's to come.

Only buff handyman/caretaker Steven Parent (another actual character from Tate's story, but given considerably more to do here than his real life counterpart) provides the support that Tate needs; and being a bit of a gadget freak he is able to listen to the weird sounds on the Manson tape and work out that it's a form of 'backmasking' - they're actually the words 'Helter' and 'Skelter' but spoken backwards; "it sounds like some kind of chant or mantra," Parent explains, "or the foretelling of a prophesy."

There is a lot of talk about the fates, and different possible futures, which signposts the movie's big twist and odd denoument, and presumably gives some kind of credibility to Tate's visions - the movie even starts with the massively overused Poe quote "Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?" But actually nothing's credible in this movie, from the pedestrian performance of Hilary Duff as Tate, to the awkward intercutting of actual footage of Tate, Polanski and Manson into the reconstructed bulk of the movie.

The Haunting of Sharon Tate is a poorly thought out and extremely distasteful film, with historical scene setting information clumsily shoehorned into the script to add veritas. There was a possibility of saying something interesting about chance vs causality here, but it was never likely to happen under such ham fisted and lacklustre direction. Just plain embarrassing, but there's worse to come; his next movie is a reconstruction of the last days of OJ Simpson's ex-wife, The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson.

The Haunting of Sharon Tate is available to watch on digital download from 8th April 2019.

Elizabeth Harvest (USA 2018: Dir Sebastian Gutierrez)

Gutierrez's first feature since his 2012 movie Hotel Noir has its roots in a retelling of the Bluebeard myth filtered through a Neon Demon like quasi future of brittle, static characters and glacial if beautifully dressed, brutalist interiors.

Ciarán Hinds is on great form as the suave, sleazy, obviously brilliant but increasingly monstrous Henry, a scientist who has made his fortune from his skills and, as the film opens, brought home his new elfin young bride Elizabeth to enjoy married life at his sprawling, meticulously arranged house.

Elizabeth is baffled why such a clever and, well, mature man has chosen such an ordinary girl for his wife (although as Elizabeth Abbey Lee is far from that)? Henry seems creepily besotted with her: "There's a very corruptible quality about you," he tells Elizabeth at one point while in bed. Whatever's going on gives little pleasure to the staff of the household, general factota Claire (Carla Gugino) and Oliver (Matthew Beard).

Elizabeth is given the run of Henry's stylish pad while he's out, with the one exception of a room which is off limits to all. Unsurprisingly Elizabeth's curiosity gets the better of her and before we know it she's drawn back the curtain, and doesn't like what she finds. The Bluebeard method of dealing with the bride is utilised, and very soon the movie starts over, with another Elizabeth returning to the bridal home and going through the motions again.

For a while I thought that Elizabeth Harvest was going to play out as an esoteric chamber piece that posed some questions and provided few answers. While it certainly takes its time presenting the story's reveals this is, under the chic furnishings, beautiful clothes and gliding, unhurried camera movements, a proper old B movie sci fi/horror.

The spirit of de Palma looms large, not least in the use of split screen, but also the borderline misogynist threat on display. There are also touches of Hitchcock, in the rather old fashioned doomed trapped woman scenario (Rebecca comes to mind), and its themes echo Alex Garland's 2014 movie Ex-Machina. But Elizabeth Harvest eventually acquires an identity of its own as its looping story gradually tightens. Lee is great in her part, her bemusement at her situation gradually giving way to understanding and then resilience. Dylan Baker is on hand as an investigating cop (hardly a stretch for him) but it is the performance of Carla Gugino as Claire that really steals the show here; she's the film's Mrs Danvers, a woman who has seen much and learned to live through it.

My usual moan about film length applies here - this really shouldn't have been one hour and 45 minutes in length - but it's an assured movie with a proper hissable villain that I really recommend.

Elizabeth Harvest is available on VOD from 1 April.   

Hell Fest (USA 2018: Dir Gregory Plotkin)

Natalie (Amy A Christmas Horror Story Forsyth) returns home from college to hook up with her bestie Brooke (Reign Edwards), who is now house sharing with tomboyish, sarcastic Taylor (Bex The Last Witchhunter Taylor-Klaus). As it's Halloween, Brooke has managed to get some hard to find tickets to 'Hell Fest,' a travelling horror theme park of rides, games and mazes. Natalie is reluctant to go - she thinks it will be lame - but is persuaded because old flame Gavin (Roby Attal) is also joining them along with the other girls' boyfriends.

But 'Hell Fest,' under all its theatrical ghost train scares, harbours a darker secret - a masked killer who stalks the corridors of the installation looking for innocent victims. And you don't have to be a genius to work out who's in the frame for a bit of casual slayage.

Director Plotkin's previous feature was Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension, one of the weakest in the PA franchise. So hopes were not high for Hell Fest. But I was pleasantly surprised. True, the characterisation is paper thin, but the cast are all likeable, and Natalie, Brooke and Taylor make for an enjoyable trio; their boyfriends are far more generic, and it was good to see the guys shunted into the background. A cameo for genre stalwart Tony Todd is almost a must for this type of thing, and stuntman Stephen Conroy stalks menacingly as the killer, credited as 'The Other.'

But where the film really scores is in the creation of 'Hell Fest'. On what I'm guessing wasn't a very big budget, production designer Michael Perry (who's clearly been around a while - he worked on some episodes of the TV series Auf Wiedersehen Pet back in the 1980s!) has built a very inventive and believable horror park well utilised by the cast as they attempt to evade the killer. Beautifully lit and photographed (most of the movie takes place at night) it's a great set in which the killer gets to lurk, and the cast of fright themed extras are also great fun; I loved the guy dressed up as Seth Brundle mid transformation into The Fly who sicks gloop onto Natalie at one point.

A robust, pounding soundtrack by Bear McCreary gives the movie a very 1980s slasher feel (McCreary is a bit of a go to composer at the moment, having recently produced scores for Happy Death Day, The Boy, 10 Cloverfield Lane and the soon to be released Godzilla: King of the Monsters) and Hell Fest's slick look, well choreographed action sequences and inventive kills elevate this movie way above most slasher fare. Sure, it's just Halloween without Michael's sister stalking shtick (he wears a mask which disguises his identity, and his missing body at the end of the film suggests the possibility of a sequel) but the combination of manufactured scares and a real life killer worked for me. Hell Fest is definitely worth a look.

Hell Fest is released On Digital HD 8th March and DVD 1st April 2019.

Dr Balden Cross: Beyond the Void (UK 2018: Dir David Fenn and Tom Lee Rutter)

The latest curio from Tom Lee Rutter, director of the excellent 2017 short Bella in the Wych Elm, is an affectionate nod to mystical science programmes of the 1970s and 1980s, and another brilliant exercise in the accumulation of random Fortean facts; it's even got bit of found footage thrown in for good measure - now that's what I call a half hour well spent.

With co-director David Fenn, the pair have lovingly constructed a faux documentary (containing other faux documentaries within it) around the imagined character of Dr Balden Cross - played by Fenn - who is described as "the enigmatic anti-hero of the paranormal investigation community." He's a scholar of the arcane who makes the transition from closeted intellectual to TV host, and whose lifelong pledge is to convey a message from the beyond after his passing.

Fenn and Rutter have a lot of fun creating Cross's world. The first section of the documentary charts the Doctor's life, from his birth in 1919, covering his scholastic career and increasing interest in the occult, leading to the establishment of the PMRI (Paratheological and Metaphysical Research Institute to you) in 1971; PMRI funds his first TV show, 'The Midnight Hour,' a kind of stepping stone to a career in TV and film - Cross was in the 1976 feature 'A Coffin for Lady Dracula' - sadly not a real movie - before his death in 1982. The documentary concludes with a seance held to test whether Cross is as good as his word in terms of returning from beyond the grave.

Like Bella before it, Beyond the Void is lighthearted in delivery but takes its research seriously, seamlessly integrating fact and fiction in reconstructing Cross's life, fake news creeping onto the pages of newspapers and a sly Doris Stokes reference too. Hauntology fans will get a kick out of Rutter and Fenn's spot on recreation of 1970s TV shows, from the idents (the WTV Wessex logo) to the VHS-y look; it's no surprise that VHS artists Cassandra Sechler and Craig Jacobson were involved with the production (you can read my interview with the pair here).

As Dr. Cross Fenn plays the character with more than a whiff of the pomposity of Garth Marenghi, and while he may seem a little sprightly for the character's actual age, I'll put that down to a side effect of his overall strangeness. The rest of the cast - including a very much up for it Norman J Warren - are clearly having a lot of fun, and the final sequence made this viewer jump - an unexpectedly dark finale. Beyond the Void is as enjoyable both as a faux documentary as a story in its own right. Try and see it if you can.

A trailer is here.

Girl (Belgium/Netherlands 2018: Dir Lukas Dhont)

In Girl's opening scene, 15 year old Lara (Viktor Posner) pierces her own ears in front of a mirror (a minor version of the pain she will endure towards the end of the Lukas Dhont's impressive but problematic movie) while her father looks on, horrified but strangely impressed by her daughter's fortitude. Lara's passive face is something we'll grow very used to seeing over the course of the film's running time.

Lara is a biological boy who defines herself as female and is in the slow process of transitioning. She has successfully applied to join a ballet school (the family have moved home to accommodate this), although not having had the training that other girls have received from a young age, she has a lot to make up in terms of poise, footwork and deportment. But Lara badly wants to follow this career, for reasons we do not fully understand. Is it an expression of femininity, or something which channels the same discipline she is exercising in her transition state? This discipline is self-evident in the hatred of her present male state, often causing herself to undergo great pain and discomfort in an effort to disguise it, a constant reminder of a body she is keen to reject.

Lara is hemmed in by two well intentioned men. Her psychiatrist, presumably attached to her to hand hold during the long process of transition, who wants her to feel like a woman despite the fact that apart from puberty inhibitors she is still essentially male (he seems concerned that she wants to be physically defined as female before she's achieved that state emotionally, and when he asks her about physical relationships, she replies "I don't want to do that with this body."). And her father, tolerant, sympathetic, but carrying the burden of a parent having to accept what is happening, and imposing rules of conduct - no showering naked with her classmates for example - that are probably more for his piece of mind than Lara's.

She also shares her home with her little brother Milo, to whom Lara shows consideration and even maternal feelings, taking him to school and generally looking after him - possibly fulfilling a role left by Lara's missing mother. But there are moments where the tension of the household is disclosed - in one scene when Lara and Milo are having a family squabble he calls her by her born name - Victor - and the subsequent silence between them speaks volumes about what Milo has had to accept at such a young age.

Admitted to the all girl dance academy for a trial period of eight weeks. the others seem tolerant, even welcoming of Lara's presence (although in one horrendous scene this is tested by a teacher asking the rest of the class whether they feel comfortable showering with her). And much of the movie is spent showing Lara's resilience, whether remaining passive in hospital when confronted with the graphic description of the procedure she faces, or during her rigorous training, where she is at the mercy of a pushy ballet tutor who can clearly see the potential in Lara but is frustrated her clumsiness, whether due to the puberty inhibiting drugs or her natural physique?

Girl moves almost inexorably to a denouement where, faced with the dilemma of the leading girl pulling out of the school's big ballet production, an intensely trained Lara is asked to step in, 42nd Street style. It's the moment Lara's been waiting for but by now the audience has a thorough understanding of the pressures Lara is under when she finally gets her chance to deploy all her training, exacerbated when a bullying classmate corners her at a party and asks Lara to expose herself, asking Lara "Should we now see you as a boy or a girl?" Her frustrations at not being good enough, of not being woman enough, finally lead to Lara taking matters into her own hands.

Dhont's film is, unbelievably, his debut feature. It's an astonishing movie with a central performance by Viktor Posner that is unlikely to be bettered this year, a triumph of understated resilience and, yes, glamour, that doesn't ever feel like it's a one character film, even though Lara's spirit is the thing about Girl that you'll remember a long time after seeing it. Disturbing and problematic, it's a film that insists on being taken on its own terms.

Everybody Knows (Spain/France/Italy 2018: Dir Asghar Farhadi)

When thinking about the films of Iranian director Farhadi my feelings about his work are summed up by an anecdote about a guy who many years ago asked to hear the new album by US group Galaxie 500 (one of my favourite bands, a group renowned for never varying their sound or song structures) in a record store. The shop owner refused and asked the customer "Did you like their last album? Well then you'll like this one." Like that band Farhadi has a tendency to remake his own films, much in the way Eric Rohmer or Woody Allen do/did. Elements of his storytelling and characterisation re-occur in his work, and nearly all of his films involve a specific incident around which his cast act and react. He's one of my favourite directors and I'm pleased to write that his latest film - thankfully - shows no signs of breaking the thematic mould.

In Everybody Knows, his first film shot in Spain and with a Spanish speaking cast, Penélope Cruz plays Laura, who has travelled from Argentina to a small village outside Madrid for her sister's wedding. Laura is accompanied by her two children, little Diego and also wild child Irene, who before they've even unpacked has hooked up with one of the village boys and is haring off on his motorbike (with her in the driving seat). Only Laura's god fearing husband Alejandro is missing, unable to make the wedding because of work commitments.

The opening scenes are a rush of restless camera movements and the swirl of village life, while our cast are sketched out in the director's usual visual shorthand. Included in the extended party of friends and family gathered for the wedding are Paco (Javier Bardem) a local wine maker, his wife Bea (Bárbara Lennie), and Laura's parents, who still live in the village. The film moves seamlessly on to the wedding celebrations, brilliantly and wittily filmed, lively, joyous and wine fuelled (although as Paco later remarks, it's unusual these days for weddings of outsiders to take place in villages - an observation that gathers importance in terms of what's about to happen).

In the midst of the wedding, and following a power cut (which will also be significant later) it is discovered that Irene - who was put to bed earlier after feeling faint, following an extended bout of dancing - has gone missing. Shortly afterwards Laura, and oddly Paco's wife Bea, receive the same text, stating that Irene has been kidnapped; the ransom is 300,000 Euros. The abduction seems like a well executed and premeditated event.

It's at this moment that the film changes gear as the various members of the family unravel in a sequence of disclosures, accusations and revealed secrets. Farhadi's skill here, which he's done many times before (almost identically in 2009's About Elly), is to take a pivotal moment and then have his actors endlessly revolve around it, giving the audience a deeper understanding of how the characters function simply by their reaction to what has happened. "I'm suffocating," says Paco at one point, and we know just how he feels as the accusations and recriminations escalate.

The wedding, which has been extensively filmed, is re-watched to look for potential kidnappers at the party (it's assumed that it was an inside job and Irene was drugged before being abducted). The constant re-running of the wedding party footage, with its scenes of gay abandon and booze driven merriment, contrasts starkly with the tortured faces of the family as they come to terms with what has happened and attempt to raise the ransom, Irene's life being threatened by the abductors if the family report the kidnapping to the police.

If there is one criticism it's that the events following the wedding scenes seem a little out of balance with the first section of the film, and the suspense is diminished slightly by being too protracted. The performances in the film are so good that this becomes only a minor irritation; Bardem and Cruz dominate and both deliver sensational performances as strong but increasingly vulnerable characters. But the other star here is the country itself. This is Farhadi's first movie in Spain and he has clearly fallen in love with the rhythms of life in the country, which he brings effortlessly to the screen. A slow burner, maybe, but a tense and lovingly photographed one.