Supermarket Sweep #15 - Reviews of Break (Russia 2019), Nefarious (UK 2019) NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2020, Doll House (UK 2020), School of the Damned (UK 2019), Prey (Netherlands 2016) and Scare Attraction (UK 2019)

Break (Russia 2019: Dir Tigran Sahakyan) En route to a New Year's eve party in the mountains, a group of young people are in a race against time to catch the last cable car to their destination. Bribing the miserable car operative (Vladimir Grusev), whose shift has just ended, to take the car themselves - it's automated, so they should be able to stop when they arrive - the group set off. They are Katya (Irina Antonenko), who is secretly pregnant by boyfriend Kirill (Andrey Nazimov) and is looking to break things off with him; in your face Roma (Mikhail Fillipov, whose name and character have vanished from the imdb listing for some reason); and loved up couple Denis (Denis Kosyakov) and Vik (Ingrid Olerinskaya).

Kirill mislays his bag and ducks out of the car ride at the last minute - this will be important later, in one of the movie's heavy handed plot progressions. The cable car driver gets strangled by tension wires in a freak accident and, before karking it, manages to sever a cable, cutting off the power to the line and plunging the car into darkness. Inside the occupants make merry, at least in the short term; it's nearly midnight, and Kirill's bag has been found - it was there all along: it contains champagne, provisions and, annoyingly for Katya, an engagement ring. But the morning after the night before, when the power still hasn't been turned on (more witless staff arrive for the day shift but can't be arsed to check anything), things start getting ugly among the occupants. Meanwhile Karill, oblivious to what's happened except that he thinks his gf has given him the cold shoulder, goes about his business, unaware that he's the only person who knows where his friends are.

Break is occasionally visually impressive, although that's probably down to the stealthy use of mountainous stock footage, as most of the close up stuff in the cabin, particularly a fight on the roof, Where Eagles Dare (1968) style, looks rather fake. The key problem with the movie is that, unlike a similarly themed film Frozen (2010) which kept its focus on the plight of a young couple trapped on a chairlift, Break throws in too many on the ground scenarios and characters and as such dilutes any tension within the stalled cable car. Everyone in this movie, apart from Katya, is either poorly developed or just plain awful. Russian service personnel don't come out of it very well (it would be hard to imagine a US movie like this where part of the 'perfect storm' of disaster hinged on the sheer incompetence of employees) and Roma goes from amiable tubby guy to resident psycho in about twenty minutes. Sadly Katya, who is clearly being lined up as final girl, oscillates between vague resourcefulness and just clinging on for dear life, only for her salvation to take the form of a bloke, who gets to do all of the heroic stuff. "The mountains take theirs," one of the cast pontificates before all the trouble starts: they're welcome to it.

Nefarious (UK 2019: Dir Richard Rowntree) NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2020 You have to hand it to Mr Rowntree; the day job green screener's micro budget follow up to 2017's Dogged chucks it all in, giving us two movies in one.

Potty mouthed angry young man Darren (Buck Braithwaite) is not in a good place: owing £2000 to Jack, a local heavy with no chance of repayment, and being sacked from his job for trying to make off with the petty cash tin. A houseful of slacker, druggy friends doesn't help either. Marcus, the boss of Darren's on/off girlfriend Jo (Abbey Gillett) is loaded and lives in isolation in the country. Marcus's learning disability brother Clive (Gregory A. Smith) lives in a separate building on his sibling's large estate, and Darren reasons that he'll be able to find the money he needs by breaking in with his dopey mates. But the robbery goes wrong - as in loss of fingers wrong - and the group end up in Clive's flat, where they discover a metal door behind a bookcase, and a nasty surprise within.

Other reviewers have been less that kind to Rowntree's movie, but the director and cast both give it their all, and any shortcomings in the acting department are soon forgotten in the movie's bloody final act. It's also one of the sweariest films I've seen for a while; Darren effs and jeffs like it's about to be banned, even keeping up the meanness after he's lost his digits to a booby trapped safe.

But what really impressed me was the stylishness of the thing, both in look and execution. The whole movie is framed by an after the event police investigation, which is a clever way of introducing us to the characters, and presages nasty things to come, even if the movie's first half is little more than a bunch of losers getting shirty with each other. There are some really great individual scenes, too, particularly a short sequence with the gang being taken out to Marcus's house by taxi; their collective anxieties reflected in the hallucinatory passing of roads and streets out of the cab window. And I'm not sure what budget was set for the film, but I was pretty much convinced that the filmmakers had gone down the Herschell Gordon Lewis route for some of the gore scenes. Pretty nasty stuff!

 Doll House (UK 2020: Dir Steven M. Smith) NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2020 The first of two films in this SS by the prolific Mr Smith, a man keen to make Essex the horror capital of the UK. Previously he'd tried to make Essex the thug capital of the UK (not sure anybody would disagree) with output like Essex Boys: Law of Survival (2015) and I Am Hooligan (2016). Smith seems to have moved firmly into horror these days - although I'm sure there's room for a horror/boot boy hybrid - and I've seen most of his scary movies, like 2019's The Haunting of Borley Rectory, Doll Cemetery (the latter of which was cheekily re-released a couple of months ago as The House on Cemetery Hill) and the dreadful Scare Attraction, which you can read about below...and then avoid.

Anyway...Doll House is the story of Emma (Jennifer Leahey), a care worker at a children's home rendered mute due to a recent traumatic incident. The institution, whose present rather slender intake comprises sulky Noah (Connor Starling) and less sulky Steph (Saskia Sheridan), welcomes Ava (Saffia Larter-Green), a little girl whose only possessions seem to be a doll and a mahoosive dolls' house which she installs in her room (an increasingly common indie horror prop, presumably spawned by a lot of directors watching Hereditary and taking notes). On advice Emma has been to see a travelling psychic, Layla - we later learn the source of the trauma was Emma's daughter's death - which is a less than successful afternoon out. Layla (a nice day's work for Toyah Willcox, the first of two 'names' in the cast) gets a bit possessed during the session, an unintentionally hilarious scene which has Ms Willcox revisiting some moves last used in one of her 1980s music videos, and scaring the audience of about six people.

Back home Ava is showing that she's a bit weird too. She's also silent, whispers to her doll a lot and likes to stare at herself in the mirror. Emma was followed home from Layla's seance by Heather, a vlogger researching the paranormal, who takes an interest in the increasingly weird goings on at the home. A psychologist, James (Mark Wingett, you know, off of The Bill) turns up to interview Ava and has visions of being stabbed in the eye with some scissors. Soon enough, Ava is wreaking psychic havoc, and various members of the cast meet their untimely ends at the hands of the possessed little girl. But is this demonic young 'un really Ava, or a satanic interloper? And who can possibly stop her?

The Care Quality Commission would have a field day identifying the many and various ways in which the children's home is spectacularly mismanaged, but this is a movie, don't forget, and a Steven M. Smith one, so accuracy isn't key here. Nor is good acting, although as Ava Ms Larter-Green manages to be vaguely menacing. As you'd expect both Willcox and Wingett give competent performances, and while the former just seems to have a good time on these projects, the latter has a look that suggests he's well aware that The Bill finished thirteen years previously.

Doll House is very silly and parts of it stretch the patience, but it's quite good to see a 'moppet-from-hell' flick which harks back to demonic kiddie movies of the 1970s for its reference point, and it is a step up production wise from Smith's previous offerings, particularly in the final scenes of mayhem. Emma's one and only line of dialogue is "I'm completely fucking sick of this," and while I wouldn't go that far, this is still very much a Steven M. Smith film...and there's more to come, with at least seven more movies in post production. Eek!

School of the Damned (UK 2019: Dir Peter Vincent) The title might give you a clue to the inspiration for Vincent's debut feature. Yes, it's a modern update of the Village of the Damned/Children of the Damned movies (1960 and 1965 respectively - I'll put to one side John Carpenter's 1995 re-boot) with a touch of David Cronenberg's 1981 movie Scanners.

Tony Middleton (James Groom) leaves his London school under circumstances only slightly alluded to but clearly traumatic, and arrives in the rather less urban Herbert West (ouch!) Grammar School and Sixth Form College. Once there he fairly quickly detects that the pupils are somewhat better behaved than in his previous establishment. There's also a class, Year 8, comprising kids with problematic family backgrounds, who seem different to the others, and it becomes apparent that one of their number, a little girl called Sarah, is very different, communicating telepathically with her teacher and creating a hive mind with her fellow pupils to control the school.

The school head, Mr Abbot (Michael Geary) seems on the surface to be congenial and rather laid back, although Middleton's suspicions are aroused when he witnesses Abbot getting a severe talking to from an anonymous guy who clearly has some authority. Something's definitely afoot here, and when Sarah (Amelie Willis) gets the better of the school bully Georgie (Max Mistry), a kid at least eight years older than her, Middleton suspects that Year 8, with Sarah at their centre, might be more lethal than even he suspected.

Vincent's movie doesn't offer many explanations so it's not clear whether there's a scientific reason for the altered kids, or whether it's something more supernatural. This runs in the movie's favour, and some effective casting and credible acting also make School of the Damned a cut above most micro budget genre efforts. Some of the kids seem way too young to be attending a grammar school - would a teacher really be reading them 'Jack and the Beanstalk'? - but I liked the frequent references to Huxley's 'Brave New World,' the book that Middleton teaches in his class, as a metaphor for the hive mind's wider purpose. Sure Vincent isn't ashamed to plunder from his influences to put his story together, but as a debut feature this was very watchable, and I really liked Brad Watson's creepy theme tune as well.

Prey aka Uncaged aka Prooi (Netherlands 2016: Dir Dick Maas) Maas is probably best known for his 1988 thriller Amsterdamned; more recently he made the rather fun Christmas horror movie Sint (2010) and although his output has never been prolific, at nearly 70 he's to be admired for still directing, producing, writing and even composing the music for his movies. Even more impressive is that they, and Prey in particular, are usually very good.

A man eating lion (is there any other kind? Maybe a brie eating lion?) is loose in the beautiful city of Amsterdam. Local veterinarian surgeon Lizzy (Sophie van Winden) is called in to help when mangled bodies start turning up. The Chief of Police doesn't want to raise a panic - you don't say? - so ropes in his big game hunting cousin to take the lion out. Except of course the lion takes him out, so as a last resort Lizzy's adventuring ex, the one legged Jack (Mark Frost), is flown over from England, much to the annoyance of Lizzy's on/off beau Dave (Julian Looman). And so the stage is set for a no holds barred encounter between beast and, well, English dandy show off.

Prey is obviously in thrall to Jaws, wasting no time exposing the audience to the furry threat, but revealed gradually before bringing the thing out into the daylight. The beaches of Amity Island are here replaced by one of Amsterdam's main public spaces, the Vondelpark; there's the 'pretend-nothing's-happening' law enforcer and the usual 'is it or isn't it? feints: and the part of the maverick expert Quint in this movie is Jack, wounded in a previous big cat encounter and equipped with a supercharged tractor wheelchair which means that stairs don't phase him; Frost is good value here playing in the great spirit of eccentric experts; van Winden also turns in a fine action hero performance.

It's also cheerfully gory and Maas, a schlocky thorn in the side of serious Dutch filmmaking for much of his life, isn't afraid to show children falling victim as much as adults. Effects wise the lion is a combination of ok(ish) CGI and some practical stuff for the close ups; there's also a tram smash amidst the carnage of the streets of Amsterdam which was surprisingly effective for what must have been a modestly budgeted film. What's surprising is that among the horror and tension the movie often falls back on comedy, and that the movie is actually pretty funny - a mix that usually doesn't work. Yep, I liked this - Prey zips along, and it's a treat to see a director in full command of his movie.

Scare Attraction (UK 2019: Dir Steven M. Smith) Oh dear. The second of this post's SMS movies, and by far the weakest thing he's made to date. Scare Attraction is some sort of cash in on Halloween haunt movies like Hell Fest (2018) and Haunt (2019), but seems to have been constructed without a real story, and filmed on the hoof (in four days apparently - I wonder what they did for the other two).

So a group of chancers set up a Scare Attraction in some sprawling dump in the country (actually Poltimore House in Devon, a Grade II listed Tudor mansion ravaged by fire and general dereliction, which would have made a great location if the crew had moved the re-building materials out of shot). A group of reality TV stars are given an advance tour of the place before it officially opens to generate a bit of publicity (you know they are famous as there are literally nine fans waiting to meet them when they arrive).

The whiny reality TV group and their entourage are shown round the attraction, their guide being JP (Jon-Paul Gates, a Smith regular, but I don't recall him ever being this annoying) and spend some time in each of the themed rooms, which include a clown room, a mafia room (?) and a boxing room (??). Oh and there's also an escape room. Meanwhile a real killer prowls around, randomly offing people, and the whole group end up strapped to chairs in the escape room, while an unseen Jigsaw like character asks them to reveal their secrets before creatively killing them. And that's about it. There's a recurrent scene where visitors to the attraction walk into the clown room (filmed in night vision) and are scared by the sight of a greasepainted urchin. This happens again and again to pad out the running time, and on the same subject, there are no less than 11 minutes of beginning and end credits to perform the same function - not bad for a 71 minute film. If I'd seen this before any of Smith's other films, well let's just say that I would never have seen any of his other films. Truly putrid.

Trick (USA 2019: Dir Patrick Lussier)

Back in 2015, it's Halloween in Benton, NY, a small town close to the river. A group of co-eds are playing 'truth or dare'; one of their number is Patrick Weaver  - whose name is often shortened to  'Trick' (Thom Niemann) - a super intelligent all round nice guy who helps kids with their homework. But when goaded to participate in the game, Trick knifes five of the partygoers to death in a frenzied attack. One of the group manages to stab him, after which he's also shot, falling out of an upper floor window onto the pavement below. He's almost certainly dead, but, Michael Myers style, disappears from the spot where he fell when no-one is looking; it's assumed that he jumped in the river to escape.

Over the next few Halloweens, every year a different town in the area is subject to the same vicious killing sprees. Detective Mike Denver (Omar Epps) suspects that it's Trick every time, returning to seek revenge. He doesn't rule out supernatural forces at work, particularly when attempts to identify him via social media and school photos fail: "He could be anybody," the detective concludes.

Over the years Trick's massacres make him notorious; he even inspires fan websites, an aspect of the story which is touched upon but not developed. The authorities remain unconvinced in Denver's theories that the killer is one person, rather than copycat killings; "The only thing keeping this guy alive is you" he's told. Trick's murder setups become ever more complex: a cop is beheaded by wires attached to heavy weights; and a rookie policeman is crushed to death when a gravestone, suspended from a crane, crashes through a car window. Denver is eventually forced into early retirement through a mistake which costs a fed her life, but his crime busting partner, Sheriff Lisa Jayne (Ellen Adair), brings him back to work: it's 2019 and Halloween is fast approaching.

On the surface, Trick is a slick, fast paced but all over the place thriller with enough WTF moments to last a lifetime. The over the top acting, Saw style impossible death set ups, abundant gore, as well as multiple plot twists that seemed to exist merely to unseat the viewer as to their understanding of what was going on, left me feeling a little underwhelmed.

But wait a minute - Patrick Lussier was the director of 2011's batshit crazy but incredibly enjoyable Drive Angry, wasn't he? This made me re-evaluate what I was watching, and the conclusion? I'm not sure that we're meant to take any of this hugely seriously. And when you approach Trick from that perspective it suddenly becomes massively enjoyable. Granted, I'm not sure that someone told Mr Epps about this, as he seems vaguely uncomfortable throughout with the dialogue he has to utter; House this isn't. But, and I could be wrong here, the references to John Carpenter's Halloween make this feel like a knowing update of the Myers myth, and some scenes - a showing of Night of the Living Dead for example, used in every low budget horror movie because it's public domain and there are no rights costs, screens with an alternative soundtrack - suggest in-jokery; hell, genre stalwart Tom Atkins is in it!

I admit: I'm confused. Actually I can do better: Trick left me feeling whelmed. And you can't say fairer than that.

Trick will be available on Digital download from 30th March.

Vivarium (Ireland/Denmark/Belgium 2019: Dir Lorcan Finnegan)

A 'vivarium' is defined as a structure adapted for keeping animals under semi-natural conditions for observation or study. And the appositeness of that title is gradually revealed in Lorcan Finnegan's sophomore feature, as strange and compelling a film as I've seen for quite some time.

Gemma (Imogen Poots), a teacher, and her gardener boyfriend Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) are looking for a home in which to settle down and eventually raise a family. As we meet them Tom is making a shallow grave for a dead newly hatched chick that has fallen out of a birds nest."Nature is only horrific sometimes," he observes. Against their better judgement Gemma and Tom visit a robotic estate agent (Jonathan Aris), dressed in rather Mormonesque clothes, who is marketing homes on a new estate called Yonder - the model homes on elegant display in the office are reminiscent of the products in a certain mobile phone shop. A sign at the entrance to the development reads "You're home right now" which in its offness is emblematic of the whole movie.

If, like me, you've ever expressed dismay at swathes of identically styled houses springing up across the UK, the endless stretches of Yonder, with street after street of green hued anonymous detached buildings, will leave you open mouthed (Yonder's arid layout was apparently based on a real Irish housing estate). Following the agent to the estate by car, the couple are invited to view the development's show home at Number 9 (an almost certain nod to the TV show, of which Vivarium's plot could be an extended episode), an impersonal affair with the second bedroom decorated as a nursery in blue (for a boy, natch). Before they can make their excuses, the estate agent vanishes, leaving them alone in the house. Their attempts to drive away are futile, as they always end up back where they started, eventually running out of petrol (rather like Mervyn Johns in the 1945 Ealing film Dead of Night, or the young couple endlessly circling the Irish back roads in Jeremy Lovering's In Fear (2013).

Stranded, and with deliveries of food and supplies arriving as if by magic, Gemma and Tom settle into an odd, trapped existence (an imposed isolation which is rather pertinent in these current locked down times). But when a box arrives outside the house containing a baby boy with a tag reading "raise the boy and be released," (a child which grows at a rather fantastic rate, his development measured on a door frame in a bizarre take on the traditional family ritual), the couple begin to think that they're part of a wider plan.

Vivarium's twists and turns cannot be revealed in this review beyond what I've already disclosed, suffice to add that it's a very disquieting film, which conjures up a kind of Buñuelean nightmare, with the mis en scene of Being John Malkowich (1999) and the skewed humour of 1998's The Truman Show or Pleasantville. A lot of Vivarium is about routine and family life, or rather a grotesque parody of it, as Gemma and Tom make the best of things, because they have no other option. But the growing sense of unease between the couple and their new son ratchets up the tension - quite stunning considering the movie's simple set up - and if the conclusion becomes rather expected, it's no less satisfying. Poots and Eisenberg are excellent as the sweet young couple struggling to make sense of a situation which always seems one step ahead of them; this is a quirky, assured but alienating film which you absolutely have to accept on its own terms.

Vivarium will be released in the UK and Ireland on digital 27th March 2020 courtesy of Vertigo Releasing and Wildcard Distribution.

The Wolf Hour (UK/USA 2019: Dir Alistair Banks Griffin)

Self isolation may become the new trend in movies, with art reflecting life. The Wolf Hour was made way in advance of the present pandemic, and the self isolation in this case is psychologically, rather than virus driven.

Naomi Watts is June Leigh, a counterculture novelist whose first book, 'The Patriarch,' brought her fame and notoriety. With its central character a thinly veiled version of her own father, a man investigated by the police for criminal activities, the book caused June to be disowned by her family - a fact we learn from a video taped interview with the author which she re-watches. As a result she's holed up in her late grandmother's apartment in South Bronx, imprisoned within those four walls due to crippling agoraphobia which may or may not have been brought on by the post novel trauma. "After everything that happened, I figured this was a safe place," she reasons.

But just in case you were thinking that the Bronx isn't so bad these days, The Wolf Hour is set in July 1977, during the sweltering heatwave and amidst the panic caused by the the David Berkowitz 'Son of Sam' murders. And it's within this setting of brawls - and eventual looting - on the streets, menacing landlords demanding rent payment, and relentless heat, that we watch June mentally unravel as she desperately tries to overcome her writers' block to deliver a follow up novel to her publisher. 'Safe' is definitely not the word to use.

Not since Catherine Deneuve prowled her Kensington flat in Roman Polanski's 1965 movie Repulsion has there been such an intense study of closeted mania as Watts shows here. June lives surrounded by chaos, her life a pit of inertia. Her friend Margot (Jennifer Ehle) visits and tries to get order in her life - " I keep expecting to find a dead body, " she says of the state of the apartment - and, because of where she lives, also gives her a gun for protection - but June is having none of it, burning a draft of the new book and even snatching out of Margot's bag a first edition of June's novel which she was taking for safe keeping. Apart from occasional calls to people to lend her money or to order groceries, her only contact is Freddie the delivery boy (Kelvin Harrison Jr) and, later in the movie, Billy (Emory Cohen), a 'midnight cowboy' who June pays for sex: interestingly the closest she comes to having a functioning relationship, albeit briefly, is with him.

Griffin's movie succeeds because it offers no easy answers or handy explanations (a comment equally applicable to his last feature, the langurous Two Gates of Sleep from 2010). Leigh is an extremely damaged person but the nature of that damage is only hinted at in the psychological impact of the publication of her first novel. Her search for herself with the confines of her flat and the pain involved in that - it is, for example, a major feat for her to take out the typewriter she's locked away in her wardrobe and simply put it on the table - mirrors the increasing anxiety of the city, although its concerns are merely a supporting player here unlike, say, Spike Lee's 1999 movie Summer of Sam.

Watts is sensational as June; every drag of her cigarette and twitch of her lips conveys the depth of her condition; visitors to her apartment constantly question why she would choose to live there, and Billy also asks why she needs to pay for sex, but the audience has enough information at this point not to need to ask the same thing; "If I stay in here I won't do any more damage out there," confirms June. There is perhaps a question mark over the rather excitable last reel, coming as it does after the slowburn intrigue of the rest of the film, but it's a powerful and only partly redemptive finale, and Griffin, who also wrote the piece, should be praised for not going for the obvious and deploying the weapon given to June by Margot.

The Wolf Hour won't be for everybody. It's a moody and somewhat coolly observed character study that avoids flashiness at every turn. But I found it gripping and oddly hypnotic, and strongly recommend it.

The Wolf Hour is available on Digital HD from 23rd March.

Dark Eyes Retrovision #21 - Dracula A.D. 1972 (UK 1972: Dir Alan Gibson) plus (sort of) interview with Caroline Munro

You don't get to see films from the Hammer House of Horror on the big screen that often, so a one off showing of the first of the two 'modern' Dracula movies, directed for the company by Alan Gibson, together with a Q&A with the great Caroline Munro, was a no brainer.

As the years roll on I become more and more disposed to this Hammer 'oddity' and its follow up The Satanic Rites of Dracula. For the few of you who may not have seen this, D A.D. 1972 takes place, as the title suggests, in (then) modern day London. Following an 1872 prologue in which Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) and Dracula (Christopher Lee) slug it out in a fight to the death; firstly Dracula's death, courtesy of a carriage wheel spoke in the heart, and then Van Helsing's due to wounds sustained. But handily one of Drac's disciples is there to harvest the ring and the dust for safe keeping and eventual revival.

Forward one hundred years, and the great-grandson of the disciple, Johnny Alucard (Christopher Neame, who was in both roles) encourages a group of trendy young things to take part in a black mass at the nearby church. Among their number are Van Helsing's great great (I think) granddaughter Jessica (Stephanie Beacham) and with-it Laura Bellows (Munro). At the mass Laura is sacrificed and Dracula returns, eventually to square off with Jessica's grandfather Lorrimer (Cushing again) and die at the vampire hunter's hands...again. That's a very rushed synopsis - if you've not seen it, you're better off pausing this read and coming back afterwards.

Caroline was interviewed by Robin Osmani - here's a transcript of excerpts from the interview:

RO: This was your first film for Hammer I think, and you were a model beforehand. How did you get the part in the film?

CM: We shot it in 1971 and I'd just started the Lamb's Navy Rum campaign, and Sir James Carreras used to travel by train between London and Brighton and saw all the posters up. Much to my father's dismay...he worked in the City as a solicitor and the first time he saw a 30 foot poster of his daughter in a very unzipped wetsuit it gave him quite a shock.

RO: So you were spotted through that poster?

CM: I'd done several things before and they'd seen some of my work, so then I went to meet Sir James and Michael Carreras - I think I was screen tested, and got the part, and had a contract with them for a year, which was unusual for the time. I was lucky to do two films for Hammer.

RO: This film is about a group of young people. Now you were a young person at the time, living the swinging London life...did you do much dancing on tabletops in silver hotpants?

CM: Not really. I didn't swing a lot. I was there, and worked with Twiggy etc. I didn't swing at all actually. The lady in the silver hotpants, (Maureen) Flanagan (uncredited in the movie) was a girlfriend of the Krays, or hung around with them, and Glenda Allen (another uncredited girl in the film) was my stand in for several other films after that. They looked splendid in hotpants.

RO: I believe this film was loosely based on a true story that had happened a few years before - the story of the Highgate Vampire?

CM: Do you know what, I didn't know that!

RO: I'm going to throw this open to the audience now.

Audience: The opening scene, where you crash the posh boy's party, looked like a lot of fun. Was it?

CM: It was a lot of fun. I was very nervous to work with all these amazing actors, it was quite overwhelming but they made me feel so welcome, all the young Britpack. That opening scene was down to Alan Gibson, an extraordinary director who left us far too young. He knew exactly what he wanted and he was wonderful to work with. He made that scene very loose and I think it has that feeling - they had the cameras roaming round and it was very much ad libbed. We danced to 'Stoneground' who were playing live and you can get the atmosphere of that. I feel having looked at it again that all that came across. It had a very vital feel to it.

RO: Were 'Stoneground' last minute replacements for 'The Faces'?

CM: When I arrived on set 'Stoneground' were already the band, but I heard quite a bit later that 'The Faces' were meant to do it. It would have been interesting to see 'The Faces' as they had a very different music. But I thought 'Stoneground' looked perfect for the time because that's the way they dressed - it had a rawness.

Caroline Munro (left) and Robin Osmani in conversation

Audience: My name's Sarah Gibson - Alan Gibson was my dad! I saw this event on Facebook at lunchtime today on 'Quirky Days Out,' my workshift was swapped by accident so I was free. I just thought this was amazing and we had to get here and see it (audience applauds). I think my dad worked this whole thing out so I could come  and see his movie!

RO: Didn't he do an amazing job?

SG: Well it's had mixed reviews, both this and SRoD, but Hammer paid my school fees! I've seen it before, but not for a long time and as a daughter you think 'oh it's a bit bad, really' but it was amazing to see it tonight. I was there (on set) at 10 years old, and my big story was that Dracula offered us chewing gum and I was the only one that took it.

Audience: I've got a question about Marsha Hunt (Gaynor in the movie, and ex of Mick Jagger) - did you ever meet Mick Jagger?

CM: Yes I did. I did a film before this called G.G. Passion in the 1960s, shot by David Bailey, his girlfriend at the time was Chrissie Shrimpton who was the lead in the film - I was an extra. He used to come to the set quite a bit with the others. I'm very shy by nature but they were charming. I love their music.

Audience: Could you tell us about what it was like working with Hammer as opposed to, say, Amicus?

CM: Working with Hammer was an extraordinary experience because you only had four weeks to shoot, so not a lot of preparation there, and the budgets were tiny, so you had to get everything on screen, maybe £200,000 for a 4 week shoot? It was not a lot of money, but it was like working with a family, because the director and producers tended to use the same crew, so they were very much in alignment as to how they worked together and got on. It worked like clockwork and they were so friendly. To me filmmaking has always been about teamwork - I'm a team player, and I love the feeling of being on set and your dad (Alan Gibson) was fantastic with that, he worked so hard with the crew. Amicus was different. Again it was small budgets and I worked with Peter (Cushing) in At the Earth's Core and I loved that. Again a small budget but everything was on the screen - you didn't get paid a huge amount - the money was not flowing like people imagine.

Audience: What was it like working with Christopher Lee?

CM: Quite extraordinary. I was very nervous and young and I hadn't done a lot, and at my request I didn't want to see Christopher - we'd been chatting and I was doing my knitting, which I used to do between takes - but I hadn't seen him in his full regalia and wanted that surprise, to give that reaction, because that's the way I like to work. I found him wonderful to work with and his stories were extraordinary. They were like chalk and cheese, Peter and Christopher, they were so different as men but it just blended, it really worked when they got together - there was a kind of electricity, a chemistry on screen that was indefinable.

RO: You've worked with Christopher Lee, Vincent Price etc. Of all the people in that genre, horror wise, who did you like working with the most?

CM: It's tricky because they were all so different. I worked with Peter twice but I was also lucky enough to work with Paul Naschy and also Jess Franco. Again they were all different and all masters of their craft. I loved working with Vincent although I would have liked to have actually spoken to him in the film rather than just lie beside him, which was actually very nice - he was just charming. It's very difficult to choose. I suppose I got to know Peter the best, because I spent five weeks with him on AtEC, so I got to know him really well and he was so sweet. If we got a ten minute break between takes we used to sit and have tea - he used to have a little table which he set out, with china cups, and I'd join him for tea - and he'd wear his little white gloves.

Audience: Lee made it no secret that he wasn't very happy about the modernisation of the Dracula character - did you get a sense that he was unhapppy when filming D A.D. 1972?

CM: I didn't get a sense at all and I didn't hear anything about it on the set, because he was a consummate professional. I don't think he would bring that to the set - whether he did to the producer and with the director I don't know, but he just got on with it. He was sweet with me; he told me "Caroline, I think yours are the nicest legs I've ever had to work with." I thought, what a compliment - he probably said that to all the ladies!

Audience: There's a certain amount of revisionism that goes on around Hammer films. Some people think that the youth slang used in the film was rather 'past it' by the time the film was in production. Was there a sense among the cast that that was felt or did you just go with it? (Good question, mainly because it was asked by me. Ed)

CM: Quite honestly we just went with it. I'd never said words in my life like "that'll be a giggle" - we just got on with it and did it the best we could. Obviously it's quite a kitsch film now when you look back on it but having said that it had a vital feel about it - it felt alive, and with Peter and Christopher they added a kind of gravitas, and then we came along (the younger cast) and the music came along and the dialogue was 'wacky.' The film has gained legs in its longevity - I look back on it now with such fondness.

(To Sarah Gibson in the audience) Did your dad ever talk about that?

SG: No not much about it.  I know some people (directors) like to 'forget' because you move on to something else, but I do know the two Dracula films were something he enjoyed. It was the Hammer family. He did Crescendo as well.

CM: Yes, you always looked forward to seeing them again - it was the same crew.

SG: Yes, my mum always said that she knew the (crew) names from the phone messages.

CM: It was of its time - there was such a lot of heart and joy in those films - but I so wish it was here today. Well it (Hammer) is here today but in a very different way.

Audience: Everyone tonight has been talking about the past. What is in the future for you?

CM: I've been quite busy actually. We showed The House of the Gorgon here last year, which also included my daughter (Georgina Dugdale) - that was a small budget film with a lot of heart made by a young director, and we're doing another one at the beginning of July. It's to be set in Whitby, again with Joshua (Kennedy) at the helm. I did another one called The Haunting of Margam Castle (directed by Andrew Jones) and that was shot in Wales with a good crew and Derren Nesbitt and Jane Merrow (and Judy Matheson). That'll be coming out later in the year (probably to a supermarket near you if Jones's past product is anything to go by. Ed). I love working with new young directors.

Audience: Was the scene at the church (in D A.D. 1972) shot in the studio or on location? And secondly did you enjoy the blood soaking scene?

CM: (re the blood soaking scene) Messy! I kind of didn't notice as I was so caught up with doing what I was doing, but I do remember it was Kensington Gore and I remember in the evening I was meant to be hosting a dinner, so I had a bit of a shower, but it's tricky stuff to get off. So I jumped in my Mini, headed out from Pinewood and then (Caroline makes the sound of a police siren) I was being flashed because I was speeding. They pulled me over and they looked at me and they said "What is wrong with you? You've got blood all over you!" I said "I've just been working with Dracula, I'm sorry I'm in a bit of a hurry and have to get home and cook the dinner." After a bit of umming and arring they let me go.

The church was a studio set, but what an amazing set - very spooky.

RO: Caroline, you've had quite a musical string to your bow. You've worked with Steve Howe, Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and that's to name just a few. Didn't you used to speed down Pall Mall with Mr Baker?

CM: We only did it once. We'd been in the studio and we were rushing to get to a press conference. We were in his Jag. He said "I'll give you a lift Caroline" to wherever we were going and we didn't have seatbelts in those days - it was the 1960s. So I jumped in the car and we went at 90 miles per hour in his lovely silver blue Jag (Caroline is referring to a single she made in 1967 called 'Tar and Cement' and the backing band on the single comprised Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and Steve Howe - you can hear it here). (The singing) was only by default: my dad used to travel up from Rottingdean to London with Sidney Beecher-Stevens, head of Decca. Sidney knew I could sing a bit in the church choir and asked "would Caroline like to come in? I've got a new producer caller Mark Wirtz and a song she might like to do." So I found myself in Abbey Road studio. The B side of the single is interesting. It's called 'This Sporting Life.' So I was a 16 year old girl from a convent and I was singing a raunchy, blues song, and the boys sound great on it.

RO: (back to D A.D. 1972) Did you get on with Stephanie Beacham and Marsha Hunt?

CM: we got on so well. I saw Stephanie fairly recently - just before Christmas. I used to pick Marsha up in my car and give her a lift to the studio.

RO: I believe that the same year the film was made Stephanie Beacham posed for Playboy magazine. For research purposes only I had a look! Were you ever approached by Playboy?

CM: I was actually. It was after Bond (1977 and The Spy Who Loved Me). I was asked if I'd like to do it and I thought about it. I think I met the photographer and they said it would be done very nicely and I told my granny, who would have been almost 90 at that point. I asked her what she thought and she said "Oh yes. How much money are they offering?" I told her that it was quite a lot of money and she said "Oh, definitely do it!" But I said no. I just didn't want to do it.

A Centenary of Fantastic Films - 1920 #1 - The Penalty (USA: Dir Wallace Worsley)

The first of an intermittent series of posts about 'fantastic' films reaching their centenary. DEoL takes a look at The Penalty one hundred years after its original release. There's a link to the movie at the bottom of the page.

Born in 1878 in New York, Wallace Ashley Worsley was a stage turned screen actor, who after appearing in front of the camera in four movies turned his attention to directing. The Penalty was his sixth credit; sadly most of his preceding films, like so many silent movies, are now lost.

Based on a 1913 serialised novel by the US author Gouverneur Morris (the great grandson of the American Founding Father of the same name), The Penalty was adapted - and fundamentally changed - for the screen by Charles Kenyon.

A year previously Leonidis (Lon) Chaney, a former stage actor, had landed the role as a contortionist who passes himself off as a man with a disability, calling himself 'The Frog', in George Loane Tucker's The Miracle Man, a movie now lost save for a few fragments. This was the first time that Chaney had experimented with manipulations of his body for film roles, and was to be a hallmark of his on screen appearances from here on in, but one should not forget that he was an actor first; in fact The Miracle Man was designed as a showcase for its lead actor Thomas Meighan, but it was Chaney that audiences remembered.

Watching Chaney in The Penalty leaves you full of admiration for his sacrifice and astonishment at the depth of his very natural acting (not something many silent movie actors could be accused of). He plays Blizzard, king of the underworld (we later learn that this is a name he gave himself to obliterate the person who he used to be). As a boy, he suffered a terrible medical error when a surgeon, Dr Ferris (Charles Clary) amputated both of his legs following an accident, a mistake for which, shockingly, he was not struck off, because his colleague covered up for him; an interaction which the boy witnesses, and unsuccessfully tries to warn his parents about.

27 years later, Blizzard's home is San Francisco, and specifically the Barbary Coast area, a den of iniquity which sprung up during the Californian gold rush of 1849. A prostitute named Barbary Nell (Doris Pawn) has been stabbed by Frisco Pete (James Mason), whom Blizzard protects, having given the order for her death. The police are in Blizzard's pay and therefore don't investigate the death.

Lon Chaney strapping himself in for his
role as 'Blizzard' in The Penalty

Lichtenstein of the Federal Secret Service (Milton Ross), who tracks Blizzard's every move, wants to know why he has pulled all of his working girls off the streets and got them making hats. He suggests that one of his operatives, Rose (Ethel Grey Terry) should go undercover and infiltrate Blizzard's setup. He warns her that she risks a fate worse than death in so doing but she says it's all in a day’s work.

Dr. Ferris now has a daughter, Barbara (Claire Adams) who wants to pursue a career as a sculptress, much to the annoyance of her father and Ferris's colleague Dr Wilmot Allen (Kenneth Harlan) who is in love with her. She is working on a piece called 'After the Fall of Satan' and places an ad in the paper for Satan lookie likies. Guess who applies? Yep, you're right. And guess who uses their henchmen to scare off all the other possibles so that Blizzard gets the gig? Right again. For this is part one of the plan: for Blizzard to seek revenge on Dr Ferris via his daughter whom he plans to marry!

Meanwhile Rose, trusted by Blizzard because she's really good at moving the pedals on his piano while he plays, is left to her own devices in his home while he's off standing in for Satan; she starts snooping around and discovers, behind a secret panel, steps leading down to a fully equipped operating room and a well stocked arsenal. And herein lies the second part of the plan: to mobilise his forces to attack and loot the City (having diverted all of the police to carefully arranged skirmishes in the suburbs) and, while getting rich quick, to con Dr Ferris into grafting Wilmot's legs on to him! "They will be very becoming!" he cackles.

Ultimately none of these things come to pass. Barbara does sort of fall for Blizzard (as does Rose, in a very bad example of Stockholm syndrome at work) - "You've made him what he is" Barbara accuses her father. Our legless fried does manage to blackmail Dr Ferris to operate on him, but the operation is not the expected one. It seems that Ferris finds a contusion on Blizzard's brain - the result of the accident all those years ago - and removes it: this has the effect of removing all traces of evil from him, and making him pledge to undo his evil handiwork. United in love, Rose and Blizzard sit at the piano, only to have one of Blizzard's henchmen shoot him through an open window for fear he will betray them. And the finished sculpture is observed to have a face which combines "an evil mask of a great soul."

Worsley uses different techniques to tell this story; there's flashbacks to Blizzard's past, future dreams (the looting of the City), cross cutting and tracking shots on vehicles. Kenyon's adaptation wisely discards many characters from the source material and concentrates on Blizzard.

There are some big themes at work in The Penalty, not least of which is the capacity for people to choose whether they direct all their energies into being a force for good or evil; the Satan sculpture represents this, and Blizzard's love of music, which at one point is the only thing that stops him killing with his bare hands - his playing is the only time in the film when he needs the assistance of another person. Blizzard's obsession with regaining his legs to restore his place as a fully functioning human is also fascinating, on one occasion referring to himself as a "cripple." His dialogue is littered with his need to be whole again: "And I shall walk a new walk," he declares at one point, "and for my mangled years the City shall pay me with the pleasures of a Nero and the powers of a Caesar!" Also; "What an adorable pair of legs. I gave mine to science!"

Chaney’s performance is nothing short of astonishing, combining nuance with physical abnormality and sometimes almost superhuman strength (as in the scene where he uses his hands to climb some rungs in the wall in order to spy on people unobserved). For the role Chaney's legs were bent completely back and tied in place: his knees were covered with buckets and leather straps, and adjustments were made to the size of his costume to compensate for the arrangement of his limbs. It's an amazing piece of acting, his intensity surely heightened by the pain endured - by all accounts he could only act for ten minutes at a time in the position, and sustained permanent injuries to his knees as a result.

Although now lost, the original release of the film included footage of Chaney without makeup, walking around, to remind the audience that Blizzard was not real. What a great testament to an actor, and what a great film, which would act as Chaney's calling card for bigger and better roles, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1923 (which Worsley also directed, and Rupert Julian's The Phantom of the Opera (1925).

You can watch The Penalty here!

Supermarket Sweep #14 - Reviews of The Haunting of Alcatraz (UK 2020) NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2020, Bigfoot aka Hoax (USA 2019), The Appearance (USA 2018), The Intruder (USA/Canada 2019), PandaMonium (UK 2020) NEW WAVE OF THE BRITISH FANTASTIC FILM 2020 and Countdown (USA 2019)

The Haunting of Alcatraz (UK 2020: Dir Steve Lawson) Lawson's last two movies, Pentagram (2019) and The Exorcism of Karen Walker (2018) were made jointly with Jonathan Sothcott and I criticised both for being far too ambitious for a director of slender means. Fortunately The Haunting of Alcatraz finds Lawson back under his own steam, and is all the better for a simpler approach.

Set in Alcatraz prison in the 1940s (although actually partly filmed on location at the now abandoned Gloucester Prison, as well as his own Creativ Studios, which from the size of the sets is probably his living room), young, privileged Charlie Schmidt (Tom Hendryk) hopes to secure daddy's trust fund by gainful employment, and signing on as a guard at the infamous Alcatraz prison is an obvious career choice.

Some years previously the deranged killer Ed Wutz (Beau Fowler) killed himself in Cell 13 of the prison and vowed revenge from beyond the grave. Al Bradbury (Chris Lines) and Gerry Rebane (Marcus Langford), the guards who witnessed Wutz's suicide, are still on the payroll; Cell 13 forms part of D-Block - the solitary confinement wing  - and there's been a pattern of deaths when prisoners are transferred into the haunted cell. Schmidt slowly puts the pieces together, aided by prison nurse Sherry Vallens (Helen Crevel), but both of their lives are put in danger when their investigations reveal just how involved are Bradbury and Rebane.

I wasn't expecting Lawson's latest to be quite so stately - it moves at a glacial pace, and the supernatural elements are very slight. This is pretty much a straightforward prison thriller and, despite the fact that it's cobbled together from stock shots, ill matched exteriors and Lawson's usual budget-dictated close shots in lieu of any real sets, it's actually a pretty good film. Hendryk and Crevel, the latter a Lawson regular, make a good couple and Chris Lines is disturbingly nasty as the evil guard Bradbury. The boast of the story being based on 'actual events' seems to emanate from stories that persist about D-Block in Alcatraz actually being haunted. So now you know.

Bigfoot aka Hoax (USA 2019: Dir Matt Allen) The retitling of Allen's debut feature (as director) from Hoax to Bigfoot handily disguises a signposting of some plot twists which throw this rather tepid creature in the woods movie off course into some darker territory.

After a group of students are killed by person or persons unknown in the Colorado woods, slightly past it pushy TV producer Rick Paxton (Ben Browder) convinces the head honcho at the local network to let him put together a team, with a view to making a documentary about the so called 'Bigfoot' that inhabits the forest and is suspected of offing the kids.The crew he assembles are fairly standard B movie types: down on her luck simian-studying scientist Dr Ellen Freese (Cheryl Texiera) who could do with the $10K sweetener offered to her; the father of one of the missing students who knows the hills like the back of his hand (Max Decker); a new-agey cryptozoologist (Schuyler Denham) and a celeb news anchor with a drink problem (Shoshana Bush).

As you would probably expect, the next 45 minutes or so features a lot of walking around in the dark as the crew attempt to secure Bigfoot footage, some PG gore as they're picked off one by one by the shadowy thing, and a lot of chat as Allen, who also scripted the movie, tries to establish character: the only thing we really pick up on is that Rick is one mean mofo who'll stop at nothing to get his show in the can.

While Bigfoot has the decency to leave the old 'guy-caught-in-a-bear-trap' cliche until the 1 hour 18 minute mark, just when you're expecting this rather sorry mess to end - presumably with lots more screaming and running - final girl Freese discovers a house in the woods, containing a (on the surface) kindly French lady, who turns out to be the head of the house of a family of cannibals who've been dressing up as Bigfoot to obtain human main courses! And they have plans for Ellen that involve, well, the continuation of the species. I really didn't see this gory The Texas Chain Saw Massacre style final reel coming, so different is it to the rest of the movie. Doesn't make it good though, just surprising, and leaves the movie feeling like a bit of a mess. And they stole the final shot from the 1961 Adam Faith fake Loch Ness Monster vehicle What a Whopper! 

The Appearance (USA 2018: Dir Kurt Knight) Knight's second feature after his equally languid 2016 post apocalypse movie We All Fall Down is the story of an inquisitor, Mateho (Jake Stormoen) who is called to an abbey, somewhere in Europe in the Middle Ages, at the time of the great plague. He has been summoned to investigate the suicide - or murder - of one of the monks; a young girl, Isabel (Baylee Self) has been held for the crime and is accused of witchcraft. Mateho and his faithful assistant Johnny (the mountainous Kristian Game of Thrones Nairn) are concerned that the girl is to be executed without a fair trial, and set out to establish the facts of the case to reach an independent verdict. But all the time the strange goings on keep occurring, despite Isabel's incarceration, and the monks' attention increasingly turn to Mateho as the culprit.

If you're thinking at this point "hang on, isn't this plot a revisit of Umberto Eco's book 'The Name of the Rose', turned into a successful 1986 movie by Jean-Jacques Annaud?" then you'd be right: hidden symbols; a cabal of furtive monks trying to protect a secret; lots of shadowy goings on with a backdrop of chants emanating from the mouths of invisible singers. Unlike that movie however, there's a less prosaic solution to the mystery facing Mateho, although it becomes difficult towards the end to work out what is supernatural and how much is conjured up by the inquisitor's mind in dealing with his murky guilt-ridden past, in that - we learn by flashback - it's not the first time in his life that he has visited the abbey.

The Appearance, at just under two hours, seriously outstays its welcome in terms of the paucity of content. The movie is all about atmosphere, and to be fair Knight does a good job of convincing to the audience that we are not in Utah, where, like his previous feature, the movie was shot - this plays more like a UK or European feature. He's helped here by the cast, many of whom were also in the Utah located TV series The Outcast (of which Knight directed a number of episodes), so are used to wandering around in robes and speaking in hushed tones. It's a frustrating movie and I wanted to like it more - there are some impressive scenes towards the end bearing in mind the film's low budget - but it could really do with some tightening up and losing a few pounds off the running time.

The Intruder (USA/Canada 2019: Dir Deon Taylor) Every few years someone makes one of those 'nice-guy-goes-loco-and-may-be-hiding-in-the-house' movies: more recent films like Neil LaBute's Lakeview Terrace (2008) play on the audience's fears about security and who your neighbours might be behind the curtains, but there's whole slew of  'em from the 1980s and 90s.

This one, described by the LA Times on the cover as "a reverse Get Out" (whatever that means) has a thirtysomething couple moving out of San Francisco to a big pile in the Napa Valley, in search of solitude and a place to raise a family: he is Scott (Michael Ealy), a successful marketing executive, and she is Annie (Meagan Good), a writer for women's magazines - although we never see her write anything.

The house, which has been on the market for a while (1st alert) is being sold by Charlie Peck (Randy Quaid). When the couple first meet Charlie he's waving a gun in their face after shooting a deer (2nd alert). He shows them around, telling them "you're going to love my home" (3rd alert). For it seems that Charlie, despite selling the house to them for just over $3m and with plans to move to Florida, isn't actually thinking of going anywhere. He's converted the basement into a den, has intentions on Annie and a real need to reclaim the homestead.

This is well made but really stupid, a movie for the Friday night cinema crowd except I'm pretty sure it went straight to VoD and DVD. The basic dumb premise is that Scott smells a rat almost immediately, but Annie is far more accommodating, even when Charlie lets himself into the house unannounced. You can tick the cliched scenes off quite happily: Charlie spying on Annie in the shower - check; disposable support actor not noticing that Charlie has an axe when they're taking a late night walk together - check; people walking around after being stabbed in the back (literally not metaphorically) - check.

The Intruder is pretty poor stuff and about three decades out of date. The only thing to remark is that, although both Ealy and Good are actors of colour, the whole story isn't predicated on a racist motive.

PandaMonium (UK 2020: Dir M.J. Dixon) Someone - well maybe me if I continue to be confined to the house due to Coronavirus fears - should attempt a Pete Frame-style family tree of the cottage industry of UK filmmakers and actors who have been populating each others' films for a few years now. Let's do a little unpicking: PandaMonium's director, MJ Dixon, has made over 50 features, shorts and TV pieces, as well as acting in many of his own movies. Most of the cast have been in other Dixon films, or indeed features by the prolific but deadly dull Welsh director Andrew Jones. Other actors in the movie, like Martin Payne and Pablo Raybould, are also directors in their own right, Raybould most recently with The Snarling.

The hallmark of all of these offerings, as readers of my website will be aware, is that they're shot cheaply, are usually quite irreverent and go for broad laughs. They're not all successful, but I'm pleased that they exist.

PandaMonium (and honestly if ever there was a title thought up in a pub before one shot of the movie was considered, this is it) introduces us to Arielle Walters (Oriana Charles), ex 'entertainer' now wanting a proper job; she's applied to Killmore and Percival solicitors, and lead slimeball Damian Hook (James Hamer-Morton) has decided to hire her based on the quality of her legs. Hook, along with his colleagues on the 6th floor, is in the running to fill the place of his senior partner, vacated following present incumbent Philip Tanterton (Payne) who, in a prologue, is seen killed at the hands of a man wearing a large panda head. Once in her job, Arielle is disgusted at the treatment of women in the firm ("it feels like they've been hired off the sex offenders register," she remarks of her colleagues), who only seem to number her and pervy Carole from HR (Charlie Clarke); newly promoted Daniel Prince (Will Jones) seems about the only other decent soul in the place. Hook decides to hold one of the 6th floor's impromptu after work parties, but, as the booze and cocaine flows and the strippers arrive (one of whom, Jasmine - genre regular Dani Thompson - recognises Arielle from her former line of work), the panda headed killer turns up and starts offing the legal team and anyone else who gets in his way.

Apparently said killer - Jacob Jakushi (David Hon Ma Chu) - returns in Slasher House 2, which confusingly was released in 2016: the references to the same year in PandaMonium suggest that this one was made earlier than suggested, but that could just be Dixon pulling the audience's collective chain (even more confusingly the end of the movie also announces a movie called Slaypril Fools 82 - a short which was made last year); if so there's a real sense of Dixon and his chums creating a kind of home county slasher universe with these things. Whether you like PandaMonium or not will rather depend on how broad you like your humour - not much in my case, although there's a funny 'Talking Heads' gag which made me laugh. The cast clearly had a lot of fun making it, and I'd rather see stuff like this than some portentous turgid supernatural nonsense (mentioning no titles of course). Oh and it's good to see a film that had not one but two post credits sequences.

Countdown (USA 2019: Dir Justin Dec) Move over Final Destination movies, there's a new kid in town. When a group of young students all download an app called 'Countdown' they're kind of thrilled that the software tells them how long they've got until they die. Those who are due to live into their 80s or 90s look relieved but one girl is given three hours. Offered a lift home by her drunk boyfriend, she prefers to walk but gets a message that her user agreement has been broken; she was destined to die in the car, which ends up wrecked, with the seat she would have occupied completely mangled. Back home, a mysterious force finishes the job and her body lies lifeless on the bathroom floor at the exact time the app said she would die.

And so begins this rather tepid but not unappealing update of the FD franchise, which also manages to draw in strained family relationships, a bit of #metoo and a whole load of demonology (basically the force behind the app is a demon who stalks people who have cheated death).

The focus of the movie is on Emily Blunt-a-like Quinn Harris (Elizabeth Lail), a student nurse who when we meet her has just qualified. Treating the boyfriend of the recently deceased girl for injuries sustained in the car crash, Quinn downloads the app and isn't amused to find that she only has 2 days and 22 hours to live. Teaming up with all round nice guy Matt Monroe (Jordan Calloway), who also has a limited existence, she enlists the help of an excitable but knowledgeable priest, Father John (P.J.Byrne), who tells her the origin of the countdown myth and of the demon who tracks down those who seek to escape their designated fate. It seems that the only way to stop the thing is for someone who has accessed the app to die in advance of the allotted time. But who will it be?

Unlike the FD movies, which took more time in unfolding the story behind the events, the characters in Countdown are downloading (and dying) just minutes into the movie. While this sets up the film pretty well it also means that there isn't anywhere to go with the story for much of its running time. Nevertheless it's a fun if totally unoriginal ride, and Lail is good as the troubled nurse having to deal with mythical and real demons, the latter in the shape of the 'rapey' Dr Sullivan (Peter Facinelli). There are a couple of fx moments, include a 'foot' scene in a toilet, that are genuinely weird, plus the old 'whose-hand-am-I-touching?' trick which works really well; and the demon, once glimpsed, is pleasingly old school. There's not much new in Countdown, but part of the fun in watching is the familiar given a slightly new slant.