Report from 2018 Mayhem Film Festival, Nottingham

They're queuing up to write for DEoL it seems - and I'm not complaining. So here's guest reviewer Satu Sarkas-Bosman's report on the delights of Nottingham's Mayhem Film Festival, which ran from 11 to 14 October this year.

Mayhem Film Festival was founded in 2005 by film makers Steven Sheil and Chris Cooke; it has evolved into a marvellous mixture of horror, science fiction and cult cinema.

This year we enjoyed 16 new films. Three of those were UK premieres, and the programme also included a rare showing of White Reindeer (a 1952 Finnish supernatural folk tale) and a raucous outing of Lamberto Bava’s Demons. The selection of films came from the UK, USA, Canada, Finland, Japan, South Africa, Italy and Brazil. The short film showcase is still one of the most acclaimed segments and always attracts a large audience.

The Festival is well known, not only for its selection of films, but also the extremely friendly and welcoming atmosphere. This is where cinema goers, movie aficionados, film makers, sound engineers and individuals from many walks of life get together and talk cinema. Steven Sheil wants Mayhem attendees to ‘have an experience of watching films together and talk about them.’ Mayhem certainly achieves this.

So what about this year’s Mayhem offerings? I have a few that I can heartily recommend. The top spot was a tight battle between Marc Price’s Nightshooters and Andy Mitton’s The Witch in the Window.

Marc Price delighted us in 2008 with his zombie movie Colin which was created on an unbelievable budget of £40.00. Nightshooters was shot in three weeks, in a building marked for demolition, and follows the fortunes of a film crew witnessing a gangland killing. Price provides snappy dialogue, real laughs and incredible martial arts sequences showcasing Jean-Paul Ly’s skills. The pace of the film never lets up and you find yourself caring what happens to the characters. This movie was a firm favourite of many attending Mayhem.

The Witch in the Window is a beautifully shot and slow burning story of a haunted house. Hang on, before you groan, there was something rather special about this one. My son, whose least favourite genre is the haunted house movie, absolutely loved this. Simon, played by Alex Draper, takes his 12-year old son Finn (Charlie Tacker) to rural Vermont where he has purchased a property to fix up and sell on. However it seems that they are not the only ones occupying the house...

The strength of this film comes from the storytelling and the relationship between father and son. The interaction and the dialogue between these two characters is so natural and believable, delivered by solid acting from both actors. The director, Andy Mitton, does not rush the delivery and allows it to unravel in its own pace.

A wonderful addition to anyone’s Christmas movie list would be Anna and the Apocalypse from John McPhail (director of 2015's Where Do We Go From Here?). I am not a fan of musicals and the idea of zombies, combined with musical tunes, did not fill me joy. Well, I was very wrong! It appears that you can create a zombie musical full of toe-tapping tunes and likeable characters. The cast, led by Ella Hunt with her impressive singing voice, fight and sing their way through a zombie apocalypse descending upon the small town of Little Haven. This, not without its very moving moments, is crying out for a sing-a-long release around Christmas time at a cinema near you.

One Cut of the Dead is a Japanese comedy horror from Shin’ichiro Ueda which is slowly gathering quite a following. It's a fresh look at the genre and gathered many laughs at Mayhem. We follow the shooting of a low budget zombie movie, when suddenly it appears that real life zombies are attacking the crew. All I can say is, persist through the first 20 minutes and you will be rewarded, but I will not divulge any more....

Shinsuke Sato’s film Inuyashiki is a Japanese comic based movie following the fortunes of middle-aged Inuyashiki Ichirou. He is truly downtrodden, pathetic and if his life is not hard enough, he is also diagnosed with terminal cancer. However, after witnessing a bright light descending from the sky, knocking him out, he wakes up in possession of superpowers. Whilst Inuyashiki gets used to his newly acquired gifts, it looks like he is not the only one who changed that night. Although this movie follows very much the path of good versus evil, the characters are engaging, the acting is excellent, the story heartfelt and not always morally clear cut.  

Finally, how can I not recommend the latest instalment of the Puppet Master franchise, Puppet Master: the Littlest Reich from directors Tommy Wiklund and Sonny Laguna. It has gore, guts, extremely dubious humour, puppets, Barbara Crampton (from the original Puppet Master) and Udo Kier.

Okay, it is not everyone’s cup of tea (and there are those for whom it was downright offensive) but I found it to be rather entertaining. The story centres on the celebration of 30th anniversary of the Toulon murders, where collectors gather for the auction of the notorious puppets. Who would not want to own their own Tunneler, if only these pesky puppets would not be so psychotic and have a tendency to go on a killing spree? True fans will lament the absence of some of the original puppets such as Jester, but since there are more of 'Puppet Master' movies in production, we can only hope that they will return.

Mayhem also  presented an interesting film from South Africa.  Number 37 is an impressive debut from Nosipho Dumisa. She adapted Hitchcock’s idea of Rear Window and interpreted it through the story of individual experiences of those living in one of the most deprived areas of Cape Town.

You could do worse than putting Mayhem 2019 into your diary. If four days of (fantastic) cinema and friendly debate sounds like a good use of time to you, please join us at Broadway Cinema, Nottingham next year.

The website for Mayhem Film Festival is here.

Report from Mayhem Film Festival 2021

In her third Festival report, DEoL's roving reporter Satu Sarkas-Bosman takes us through the highs and even bigger highs of this year's Nottingham based Mayhem Film Festival. Buckle up, there's a lot to get through!

It was a pure joy to be able to join Mayhem 2021 at Broadway cinema in Nottingham after the misery the pandemic brought to all of us cinema lovers. Mayhem, founded in 2005 by two film makers, Steven Sheil and Chris Cooke, is known for its friendly atmosphere and varied choice of films. It was a few Mayhems ago I watched an Ethiopian Sci-Fi film Crumbs which was a treat rarely experienced outside the festival circuit.

The festival started in a very gentle manner with Alien on Stage (UK 2020: Dir Danielle Kummer, Lucy Harvey) which is a heart-warming documentary about bus drivers and other support staff from Dorset whose idea for the Christmas panto is a little bit different from the general offerings. Their adaptation of Alien with an amateur cast and homemade special effects will take you on a journey from local community hall to West End stage. It has all things British; heart, tragedy, a lot of smoking, despair, optimism, dry humour, more wobbly sets than Prisoner Cell Block H and an ultimate triumph. It is pure fun and leaves you feeling quite warm and fuzzy inside.

The Deep House (France/Belgium 2021: Dir Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury) has an interesting setting since it is a haunted house story underwater. Ben (James Jagger) and Camille (Camile Rowe) are vloggers determined to film something extraordinary in order to obtain those valuable views. The story is nothing you haven't heard before: the couple are told about a remote stretch of lake where a whole village is submerged in a flooded valley, and Ben especially is more than happy to be guided by a local stranger with a promise of something unusual. The idea initially works well providing an atmosphere that is eerie and captivating. There is a growing sense of claustrophobic dread, but unfortunately the last third of the film feels rushed and disappointing. 

Mayhem also has a tradition of screening an old classic, often a gem which is rarely shown. The Queen of Spades (UK 1949: Dir Thorold Dickerson) is based upon Alexander Pushkin’s short story about an elderly Countess exchanging her soul in order to be always victorious in card games. Russian soldier Herman, played by Anton Walbrook, becomes obsessed in uncovering the old Countess’s (Dame Edith Evans) secret. This movie is such a feast for the eyes with sumptuous outfits, beautiful sets, attention to detail and dandiest hair you will ever see. It is melodrama at its finest and called a masterpiece by Martin Scorsese himself.

The Show (UK 2020: Dir Mitch Jenkins) is a rather humorous and surreal film, shot in Northampton with Tom Burke as the main protagonist. Alan Moore has written a script which, on the surface, is a simple story of Tom Burke’s character Fletcher looking for a missing man called Mitchum. However once Rosicrucianism, dream sequences, odd costumes, voodoo, stolen artifacts and noir private eyes have been added to the mix… there's no need for any additional chemical enhancements when watching this one.

Night Drive (USA 2019: Dir Brad Burah, Meghan Leon) was one of the audience favourites and quite deservedly so. Sophie Dalah and AJ Bowen have such chemistry and carry this film, ensuring that there are no dull moments. Russell (Bowen) drives a ride share picking up Charlotte (Dalah) and a whole lot of trouble. This indie dark comedy does not have the luxury of a big budget but it keeps you entertained and wondering ‘what’s in the box?'.

Midnight (South Korea 2020: Dir Oh-Seung Kwon) offers us a familiar story of a serial killer and his pursuit to eliminate a witness. Kyeong-Mi (Jin Ki-Joo), returning from work, witnesses So Jung-Eu (Kim Hye-Noon) stabbing a young woman. This film is set apart from the many other similar ones for the fact that Kyeong-Mi is deaf and much of the dialogue is in sign language when she is communicating with her mother. The director uses silence very effectively; when you enter the silent world of Kyeong-Mi, you can feel all of your senses heightened. I have to say that there is a lot of running in this one and I ended up hoping that someone would have been a bit more ruthless when editing.

Well, if Xena the Warrior Princess and He-Man indulged in drugs and decided to tell a story the result would be The Spine of Night (USA 2021: Dir Philip Gelatt, Morgan Galen King). This all-animated fantasy horror tale is a beautiful, violent, epic visual feast spanning hundreds of years involving stories of old Gods and heroic endeavours. You have to admire the passion of its creators; this is a true labour of love.

Knocking (Sweden 2021: Dir Freda Kempff) is a slow burn story of Molly (Cecilia Milocco) attempting to adapt to independent life after spending time at a psychiatric ward. Milocco carries this movie due to her powerful performance. The story itself holds no surprises; after hearing persistent knocking and sounds outside her new flat, the viewer is left wondering if it is supernatural or are Molly’s mental health issues emerging again. I found the ending rather disappointing but the incredible performance of Milocco kept me interested.

Remember Quantum Leap? Kang I-an (Kye-Sang Yoon) wakes up in a different body every twelve hours in this fast-paced thriller. Spiritwalker (South Korea 2021: Dir Jae-Keun Yoon) follows Kang I-an’s desperate search for his real body through different bodies and strands of stories. The action sequences are well choreographed and pace so fast that there no danger of being bored.

Get the Hell Out (Taiwan 2020: Dir I-Fan Wang) is a Taiwanese film taking a swipe at politics and introducing you to a Zombie madness not seen since… well, I don’t know when. If you like your zombie stories completely over-the-top, utterly silly, with memes, frantic with gallons of fake blood and suits so colourful they make your eyes bleed, this is a film for you. It will also introduce you to nail clippers as a potential weapon protecting you from harm. The audience at Mayhem laughed out loud and found it ludicrously entertaining.

Hellbender

Hellbender (USA 2021: Dir , USA, Directors John Adams, Zelda Adams, Toby Poser) is a true family affair; Toby Poser, John Adams and Zelda Adams are a mother, father and a daughter team writing, directing and acting in this low key, slow burn story of Izzy (Zelda Adams) beginning to question why she is being kept isolated by her mother (Toby Poser) and the true nature of her alleged illness. The setup is very strong and you find yourself genuinely intrigued by the story. It is a coming-of-age tale with a folk story vibe and an excellent soundtrack.

The Night Shift (South Korea 2021: Dir Ba-Reun Jo) also known as Ghost Mansion is Ba-Reun’s first film and an anthology of ghost stories South Korean style. Webtoon artist (Seo Hyun-Woo) has published a book which failed and is now collecting stories for his new endeavour. He visits a ‘haunted’ apartment complex called Gwanglim Mansion and implores the caretaker to share his experiences. 5 tales are told and, although there is nothing new here, it will keep you sufficiently entertained.

Lamb (Sweden 2021: Dir Valdimar Johannsson) was the strangest story told at Mayhem this year and it is best to watch it with as little prior knowledge as possible. The cinematography is breathtaking and it presents the bleak Icelandic nature at its best. I was rather prepared to be bored since I was expecting a highly philosophical and pretentious piece of work. However, to my great surprise, the story absolutely captivated me and I did not care if anything portrayed on the screen was logical or not. Noomi Rapace (The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo) delivers a strong performance and conveys a multitude of emotions with very little dialogue. The style of this film made me think of Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth): what a start for Valdimar Johannsson’s directing career.

The success of One Cut of the Dead confirmed that there is always appetite for quirky films. Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (Japan 2020: Dir Junta Yamaguchi) follows very much in these footsteps in this rather feverish one-take sci-fi comedy. Kato (Kazunari Tosa) finds, to his great surprise, that a TV set in his cafe shows images from two minutes into the future. Throw in the woman he has a crush on, his friends, bad guys and an idea that if you use more than one screen, you can see even further into the future… This is fun and does not outstay its welcome over a 70-minute runtime. It was fresh, fun and a quirky ending to another excellent Mayhem.

Should you ever wander to the deepest darkest Nottingham in October, please consider coming and joining us in whatever Mayhem Steven and Chris decide to throw our way in 2022.

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.

Report from the 2020 Mayhem Festival (Skeleton Edition)

Guest reviewer Satu Sarkas-Bosman gave us the lowdown on Nottingham's Mayhem Film Festival back in 2018, and I'm pleased to include her roundup of the slimmed down 2020 Festival, which was founded in 2005 by film makers Steven Sheil and Chris Cooke, and has evolved into a marvellous mixture of horror, science fiction and cult cinema.

What a strange year this has been so far, our usual horror gatherings and festivals are all on hold or reach us online, therefore it was a pleasant surprise that Chris Cooke and Steven Sheil decided to go ahead with a much pared down version of the usual four day feast. Three feature films and one short film showcase over 4 evenings; it was sold out, suitably distanced and even our facemasks did not dampen the atmosphere.

The first Festival offering was Boys from County Hell directed by Chris Baugh (The Captors, Bad Day for the Cut) and his tale of an ancient Irish vampire. This horror comedy introduces us Eugene (Jack Rowan) and his father (Nigel O'Neill) and their fractious relationship. Eugene, together with his friends Claire (Louisa Harland) and William (Fra Fee), portray brilliantly the utter boredom of being stuck in a small village.

Eugene's father's freeway construction project causes plenty of bad feeling in the village, especially since it will destroy the cairn where the legendary Abhartach, a vampire like creature, allegedly sleeps.

Tragedy ensues resulting in blood being spilled and the creature waking from its slumber. There is plenty of bloody kills, humour and a particularly satisfying looking creature. Refreshingly there is no stake through the heart, crosses or any of the usual armoury when battling bloodsucking creatures.

The cast is excellent, the story moves on in a satisfying pace and gives you a fun way to spend an October evening.

Unfortunately I missed Psycho Goreman the latest offering from Steven Kostanski, former Astron-6 member and the director of The Void and Manborg. I heard, from a reliable source, that if you are a fan of his work this will not disappoint you.

The third evening gave us Mayhem's 'Shorts Showcase' which is always close to my heart. Troll (Dan Lord) and Heat (Thessa Meijer) gave us truly short and delightful bites. Behind the Door (Andres Borghi) is a familiar story of the consequences of a desire to speak to the dead. As for the rest:

Dead End (Jack Shillingford) gives you a shiny Landrover, foggy atmosphere and a werewolf: enough said.

Peter the Penguin (Andrew Rutter) appealed to my sense of the surreal, especially if you like penguins...

Changeling (Faye Jackson) dealt with motherhood, transformation with an intriguing atmosphere but part of the soundtrack was so high-pitched that you wished for it to be all over.

There Will Be Monsters (Carlota Pereda) was a clear statement of what should happen to those who attempt to take advantage of a very drunk woman.

Ferine (Andrea Corsini) unfortunately was my least favourite of the night, a very predictable take on a feral existence.

No one is Coming (Matthew and Nathaniel Barber) had that 80's feel to it, a lone woman (or is she..?) in a remote cottage.

Muse (Azhur Saleem) was a very well put together mix of sci-fi and decay: I would gladly have the paintings featured on my own wall. What indeed happened to those visiting the artist's home?

Abracitos (Tony Morales) had a feel of a Spanish ghost story; a phone call in the middle of the night shakes the world of the two sisters.

Farce (Robin Jensen) had a lot say about greed, decadence, large penises and true love. Sami man is determined to save his reindeer herd and have the woman his heart desires.

Live Forever (Gustav Egerstedt) was a musical number where the victims of horror films can tell you in a song the reason for their demise. This is great if you ever want a sing-a-long at a horror festival.

And finally...

This was the absolute highlight for me, The Oak Room (Cody Calahan) is adapted from Peter Genoway's stage play and beautifully written. The atmosphere from the outset draws you in.

There is a snow storm outside and when Steve (RJ Mitte) walks in to the bar, Paul the bartender (Peter Outerbridge) is not happy to see him. There are two distinct storylines here, happening in two separate bars and the finale links these tales together. I am not going to reveal the story here at all since all of it is interlinking and significant in its own way. 

This film is driven by a dialogue, the kind of storytelling you can expect when someone can really spin a yarn. It is evocative, engrossing and yet the characters feel very human. The acting is excellent; Peter Outerbridge, RJ Mitte, Ari Millen, Nicholas Campbell and Martin Roach all provide strong performances. 

The soundtrack is extremely effective and parts of it reminded me of the powerful tunes of Sicario. This film also made me think of Pontypool; it has the same feeling of a dark tones, suspense and uncertainty of the outcome.

New Films Round Up #4 - Reviews of Abattoir (USA 2016), The Darkest Dawn (UK 2016), Antibirth (Canada/USA 2016), Satanic (USA 2016), Fear Inc (USA 2016) and The Devil Lives Here (Brazil 2016)

Abattoir (USA 2016: Dir Darren Lynn Bousman)  Bousman's movie, about a seemingly immortal man, Jebediah Crone, who feeds off the souls of murdered people by entrapping them in a constructed house made up of the murder rooms of each of the victims (a very cool idea), is based on a series of comic books also created by the director. A planned web series, turning Abbatoir into a multi-media spectacle, hasn't happened, but the whole concept is really interesting.

Jessica Lowndes plays Julia Talben, a reporter whose family are slaughtered in their home, and who, in investigating the deaths further with her detective accomplice Grady, finds a pattern emerging. Over the years houses which are the scene of murderous acts are quickly bought and then re-sold, with the rooms in which the deaths occurred removed first. Talben connects the dots which take her to the remote town of New English, which turns out to be her own birthplace too. Talben and Grady gradually piece the story together, encountering the evil Crone and his band of followers, and attempt to foil Jebediah's master plan. 

So yes, I liked this. It's packed full of ideas, some of which work and some don't (the initial faux forties look and dialogue is quickly and advisedly dropped - I'm sure it worked better in the comic strips - and some of the ghost effects at the end tip over into plain silliness) but it's wonderfully atmospheric with some well used Louisiana locations and a brooding score by Mark Sayfritz. Abattoir also fails to deliver the obligatory redemptive ending, hinting at the possibility of a sequel. Bousman's earlier work - including three installments of the Saw franchise and the over the top Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) - have suggested a talented low budget film maker learning his craft. Abattoir, by no means a perfect movie, demonstrates skill with a small budget and a desire to try something new in a crowded genre market.


The Darkest Dawn (UK 2016: Dir Drew Casson) Impossibly young and possibly talented Drew Casson brought out the micro budgeted, derivative but still impressive Hungerford back in 2014. Tasteless title aside (Hungerford was the town where crazed inhabitant Michael Ryan killed and wounded more than 30 people in a gun spree back in 1987), the movie concerned an alien invasion straight out of Robert Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, with alien beings attaching themselves to residents of the town and controlling their brains. The Darkest Dawn is set in London, and also deals with an alien attack across the UK and the efforts of a small band of survivors to escape from the Capital and head to Manchester.

The very impressive opening, with its post production scenes of mayhem - including an extremely believable plane crash - bodes well, but once Casson draws you in, the remainder of the film is an extended hike around Blighty with our bickering survivors. Central to this group is the plucky but irritating Chloe Murdock (Bethan Mary Leadley) who has captured everything we see on a digital camera, a present for her 16th birthday. So yes, we're in 'found footage' territory once again, which provides plenty of opportunities for Chloe to speak direct to camera, with messages for her (presumably now dead) family about how brave she's being in the face of all this alien adversity.

It's difficult to know quite what Drew Casson was attempting to achieve with The Darkest Dawn. There's nothing that audiences haven't seen many times before; it's perfectly serviceable but terribly drawn out, with only a few scenes of CGI mayhem to leaven the endless footage of people tramping around shouting at each other.

Antibirth (Canada/USA 2016: Dir Danny Perez) Oh lordy, this one's nuts.

Natasha Lyonne (yes, that Natasha Lyonne) plays Lou, a wild child who following an evening out in the company of a marine, passes out and wakes up the morning after, well, sort of pregnant, despite maintaining that they didn't do the nasty. Her friend and fellow substance hooverer-upper Sadie (played by Chloë Sevigny, yes that Chloë Sevigny) is little help, and when a pregnancy test confirms the chain-smoking, bong bashing Lou is definitely in the family way, she encounters the weird Lorna (played by Meg Tilly - yes that Meg Tilly) who may have an explanation for the weird thing growing inside Lou's stomach, involving secret experimentation on young soldiers.

If I mention that writer/director Danny Perez's first spell in the director's chair was 2010's Oddsac, a 54 minute non narrative film which was basically an extended video for wackjob Baltimore band 'Animal Collective' with whom he regularly collaborates, you'll get some idea that Antibirth is a film best viewed through, er, artistic lenses. Both storyline and the collected contents of Lou's stomach are metaphorically and literally all over the place. I loved the ending - there is a birth and it's twins...after a fashion - but a lot of this film is like a cross between a Frank Henenlotter movie and Jed Johnson's 1977 flick Andy Warhol's Bad. If you think that's a recommendation, well then it is.

Satanic (USA 2016: Dir Jeffrey G Hunt) Ah, PG rated horror films - they're great, aren't they? Well some are. This isn't. Jeffrey Hunt is best known for his work behind the camera on a plethora of US TV programmes, including several CSI spinoffs. This becomes painfully apparent in the endless drone and pan shots of the LA skyline at night, and the slick but flat TV style of his direction. The story is the opposite of a tidily concluded 40 minute drama that he would be used to making, and, let's be quite clear about this, makes absolutely no sense in its final stages.

A group of young people are taking a school break. Enroute to a music festival, they decide to turn dark tourist and travel to LA to check out the death scenes of victims of (real life) satanist Anton le Vey. Snooping around these sites they come across an actual black magic mass and help a young girl, Alice, to escape the coven's clutches. Instead of thanking them the girl utters some enigmatic phrases and then cuts her own throat. Now under police surveillance strange things begin to happen to the group - it looks like Alice was the conduit for the forces of evil which now threaten our heroes. I'll stop there, because at this point I lost any understanding of what was happening. There's some poltergeist activity, a turgid power ballad, a lot of screaming and one of those 'self reflexive' endings deployed when there's nowhere else to go plot wise.

I'll make one confession: I was kind of fascinated with Sarah Hyland, who plays goody goody Chloe (and is therefore destined to make it to the final reel). Hyland is a great comedy actress - her prissy, narcissistic turn as Haley Dunphy in TV's Modern Family is a delight. But as a yelling machine, she's just awful. With her large saucer shaped head and bulging eyes she's like a live-action version of one of Tim Burton's puppetoons. And while she and the rest of the cast use the F-Bomb like it's going out of fashion, they manage to drum up not one iota of drama. A bad bad film, and while I have a strict no spoiler policy on this site, don't look at the movie's poster unless you want to find out how Ms Hyland ends up.

Fear Inc (USA 2016: Dir Vincent Masciale) Here's an enjoyable horror comedy that out post moderns Scream and all its sequels. It's Hallowe'en and we meet Joe, who's the kind of guy you need on your pub quiz team if the bonus round is 'US horror movies of the last twenty years.' He's a walking movie guide, always out for a seasonal thrill. So when he finds out about 'Fear Inc,' a company who specialise in custom made pranks for punters who think they're hard enough, he's disappointed when, after making the call, he's told that they're 'sold out' and can't help him. Well that's their story. Shortly afterwards, relaxing at his Australian girlfriend's luxury house with his other mates, the terror begins, and the group are stalked and despatched in the manner of famous scenes from horror movies. Perversely Joe is delighted, but when his girlfriend is kidnapped and he's forced into some Saw-like decisions he changes his mind.

Fear Inc doesn't start very well, but the second half is a rather clever update of the 'do you like scary movies?' school of film making, which ups the pace and manages a good deal of tension as well as knowing humour. There's nothing particularly new in this, but there's some good performances and a couple of laugh out loud sight gags. There's clearly a moral here about the negative impact of a life spent consuming horror culture and the subsequent inability to separate reality from fiction, and watching Joe communicating entirely via lines of movie dialogue made this reviewer think twice about how annoying he might be when talking about films. Not bad.

The Devil Lives Here (Brazil 2016: Dir Rodrigo Gasparini and Dante Vescio) Gasparini and Vescio's debut feature - previously titled The Fostering - is a decidedly baffling story about the sadistic slave owner of an apiary who calls himself, no, not the Honey Monster, but the Honey Baron, and who is mixed up in all kinds of violent goings on. Two centuries previously the Baron was murdered by one of his slaves, and the illegitimate child he fathered is also killed. Following his murder the Baron's vengeful spirit is kept in check by descendants of the slave, but when a group of young people arrive at the house where an annual ritual of driving a nail into the ground keeps the Baron away, they are caught up in a web of terror. Or something. I had quite some difficulty working out what was going on.

The movie draws on elements of Candyman and The Evil Dead but the promise of a violent denouement presaged by the heightened score doesn't actually appear, and the merging of youth in peril, some rather ill advised comedy with a smattering of folk horror didn't really work. Pacing is a massive issue in a film which just tips the hour and a quarter mark, and although ambitious in scope for the budget, The Devil Lives Here really does crawl along.

I did like Pedro Salles Santiago's creepy soundtrack, a symphony of discordant notes and insidious scratching, and I can applaud the attempt to make something of Brazil's rich folk heritage and its troubled past as the backdrop for the horror. But it's a bit of a mess really, a film that tries too hard to be intriguing, and could possibly have benefited from a simpler premise and, well, more scares.

Supermarket Sweep #22: Reviews of Shortcut (Italy/Germany 2020), Central Park (USA 2017), Ten Minutes to Midnight (USA 2020), The Resort (USA 2021), No Such Thing As Monsters (Australia 2019) and The Curse of Dracula (Slovenia 2019)

Shortcut (Italy/Germany 2020: Dir Alessio Liguori) Director Alessio Liguori’s follow up to 2019’s overwrought In the Trap is a YA monster movie in all but rating (it secured an ‘R’ in the US because of language, and slightly less troubled the BBFC, who have given it a ‘15’ certificate).

Anyhow, a small group of English schoolkids are on a bus travelling across the Italian countryside (they're the only passengers, which seems weird), the driver being avuncular Joe (American actor Terence Anderson). The kids include the usual stereotypes: bookish Queenie, or IQ to her friends (Molly Dew); hard nut but probably not really Reg (Zak Sutcliffe); pretty boy Nolan (Jack Kane); and fat kid Karl (Zander Emlano).

A blocked road forces the bus onto a side route, and vehicular failure forces them to stop, at which point escaped prisoner Pedro Minghella (David Keyes) bursts onto the scene and holds the bus occupants at gunpoint. But there’s a bigger threat out there: a large beast roams the tunnels of a nearby disused military facility, and after taking out both Joe and Pedro (the two adults) it looks like the kids are next!

As mentioned, apart from odd F-bomb and some mild gore, this is basically a movie aimed at teenagers; it’s bookended by some thoughts voiced by Nolan along the lines of “Little did we know about what was to come… and this is what we learned as a group,” which aims to give the story more heft than actually exists. There is the obligatory third reel ‘finding out’ sequences so beloved of YA targeted movies, which only serves to make the adults involved look like a bunch of bunglers; it’s the kids who know how to vanquish the beast!

Praise should be given for the practical effects rather than the CGI usually found in films like this, but that’s a rare positive in a movie which doesn’t make a lot of sense and, while well photographed, squanders its slim running time with faintly drawn characters and much WTFery. Not very good.

This review was originally published in www.bloody-flicks.co.uk 

Central Park (USA 2017: Dir Justin Reinsilber) As the rather unimaginative title of Reinsilber's debut feature suggests, a killer stalks New York City's biggest outdoor space. We're introduced to a group of high school kids, central among them being Harold Smith (Justin A. Davis), whose father has just been arrested for a Madoff style Ponzi scheme, and whose mother has taken her life, connected with the crime. There's also feisty Felix (Guillermo Arribas) and Mikey (Deema Aitken), a bright boy with a difficult home life who's failing at school and smoking way too much. In their spare time the group hang out in the Park with their girlfriends, playing Truth or Dare, while a psycho with a disguise created out of a face from a magazine and sellotape sneaks around watching them and picking them off one by one.

In terms of red herrings as to the killer's identity, Mr Shaw the English teacher (Michael Lombardi) is about the only fish in the park; but although he suspiciously decides to go for a late night bike ride, putting him in the danger zone, he then becomes an early victim. But it's assumed that the killer is linked to the Ponzi scheme otherwise it would be rather odd to include it in the narrative.

The movie's well acted (I really liked Aitken as the awkward Mikey) and photographed, but utterly pointless, and after establishing its first half competently it descends into a formulaic stalk and slash movie, which the world doesn't need now, and arguably didn't in 2017 when the thing was made. Look, I like Central Park; why I was only there a few years ago, it's a beautiful spot and seeing it made me feel a bit wistful. But I didn't like Central Park. Next!

Ten Minutes to Midnight (USA 2020: Dir Erik Bloomquist) While a storm rages outside, inside radio DJ Amy Marlowe (scream queen Caroline Williams), arriving for her show 'Ten Minutes to Midnight', is similarly seething: first she was bitten by a bat on the way into work, and secondly she quickly realises that she's being replaced by a younger model, Sienna Walker (Naomi Kang) courtesy of her sleazy boss Robert (William Youmans) who invites Sienna to sit in on Amy's broadcast.

As Amy realises that this might be the last edition of her show, she has a meltdown, bites Sienna's hand and, after retiring to the bathroom, chows down on a used tampon. 

But just when you think this is going to go the way of vampire movies, with Sienna and Amy both infected and causing chaos, Bloomquist turns his movie into something far less obvious; Amy's infection causes temporal and identity shifts, her colleagues swapping personas; and the 'ten minutes to midnight' now serves as both the show title and a point in time that Amy gets to live over and over again.

The central performance here is that of Williams who, at 64, is still building up an impressive CV, quite in contrast to her character DJ Amy, who everyone is queuing up to add to the scrapheap (and indeed Amy is a knowing update of Williams' role as DJ 'Stretch' in 1986's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2). I wasn't expecting, in a movie that starts and finishes with vampiric themes, to find in the middle such an unusual meditation on age and the value of life. Ten Minutes to Midnight packs a lot of emotional punch into its 70 minutes and Williams turns in an angry, physical performance that has her grappling with fate and her own advancing years. Some great turns too from the late Nicholas Tucci as know all security guard Ernie and Kang as Sienna. A very good film, aand all the better for being quite unexpectedly so.

The Resort (USA 2021: Dir Taylor Chien) Lex (Bianca Haase) is a writer and researcher of the supernatural, who has been given a birthday present of a trip to a Hawaiian island, for a part fun, part literary break, and to provide material for her latest book. Their destination is Kilahuna island and its massive, now abandoned tourist resort complex, which has been shut down for two years following a spate of hauntings, including sightings of a mythical 'half faced girl'; all the activity seems to be focused on Room 306 within the resort. Once on the island, Lex and her friends, beefy Chris (Brock O'Hurn), Istagram obssessed Bree (Michelle Randolph) and goofball Sam (Michael Vlamis), witter on about religion, ghosts and sleep paralysis to build up atmosphere.

It's no surpise that things don't go well: horror films about and for the social media generation usually end with a nasty fate for the cast; plus in this case the group's plight is signposted by intercutting with scenes of a hospitalised Lex, rescued from the island and supposedly the only one of the four to return. 

In its favour the first part of the film looks lovely, with some spectacular aerial shots of coastline and forest. However it soon turns into a "quick! Come on! Run!" style chase movie with some murky supernatural stuff, shoddy effects and the usual dumb ending trotted out by filmmakers who think that if it's scary it won't matter if it doesn't makes sense; well it isn't and it doesn't. Terrible nonsense.

No Such Thing as Monsters (Australia 2019: Dir Stuart Stanton) There's something uniquely nasty about the Australian depiction of its backwoods underclass in film, and Stanton's movie is certainly no exception; and you just know that the title is a play on the old 'the-real-monsters-are-human' truism.

Young couple David (Matthew Clarke) and his American girlfriend Mary (Angel Giuffria), who is hoping to get pregnant, embark on a long weekend camping trip, although Mary, with her fear of confined spaces (and a lot more besides) slightly blanches at the thought of a weekend in a tiny caravan.

After they've set up camp, they're slightly concerned when another party pitch tent next to them. Turns out the group are all related; their number includes Amy (Georgia Crisfield Smith), decked out in a white dress, mask and carrying a doll, who apparently suffers from a skin condition (Amy, not the doll)..

Accepting an invitation to join the second party for drinks, David and Mary become separated. When Mary wakes up the following morning, David is missing and she's been chained up inside the caravan. Her captors are, of course, the group who camped next to them, led by the seriously unhinged Becca (Rebecca Fortuna); and the family have mayhem on their mind.

The creepy and rather nihilistic feel of Stanton's film is enhanced by the fact that the attackers have no motive apart from mayhem and, in the case of party member Elmer (Jacob Fyfe) to procreate, irrespective of whether the recipient of his seed is within or without his family. No Such Thing as Monsters is bleak, relentless and bloody, but it's also rather pointless. The mad, bad and dangerous to know shtick has been done much better before (the two movies quoted on the DVD cover for a start); perhaps its only interesting point is that the film doesn't hugely concentrate on Guiffra's disability (she was born without the lower half of one of her arms) preferring to make her issues mental rather than physical; it's definitely a positive step for actors with disabilities, although she deserved better than this luke warm Aussie number.

The Curse of Dracula aka The Curse of Valburga (Slovenia 2019: Dir Tomaz Gorkic) Meet Marjan (Jurij Drevensek) and his brother Bojan (Marko Mandic), down on their luck and looking for ways to make money without them slipping back into their old drug dealing ways. With the help of their friend Ferdo (Ziga Födransperg) they come up with a cash generating scheme: Ferdo provides security services for an empty chateau, castle Valburga, previously a psychiatric institution. Using their friend's exclusive access to the facility, Marjan and Bojan concoct a fake legend - of a previous occupant of the castle, the evil Count Valburga, supposed cousin of Count Dracula, who still lurks within - and proceed to organise cash upfront tours. 

Their first tour group includes a sleazy photographer with a pair of attention seeking models, some goths looking to raise the devil, and a drunk husband and wife with a seemingly endless supply of beer. Oh and thuggish Sven (Niklas Kvarforth), who knows a bit about castle Valburga, and has his own reasons for being there. 

The Curse of Dracula is as broad as you like, fitfully funny, and sweary as hell. There's some glorious bits of comedic violence, and a lot of crass characterisation. The film's approach to women combines ball busting barflies and self absorbed wannabe porn stars who think that saying 'anal' over and over again will just get funnier and funnier. It's pretty inventive stuff and zips along but it's without one iota of subtlety, which gets wearing after a while. But there's a final scene that suggests that a sequel may be on the cards. You're welcome.

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.

George A. Romero - Between Night and Dawn Box Set

George A. Romero, whose name needs no introduction to fans of fantastic films, died earlier this year at the age of 77. The producer, director, writer and occasional actor was best known for a series of films updating and repackaging the zombie movie for a post Vietnam generation, chronologically developing the themes of the films to offer changing societal interpretations both shocking and wryly amusing. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, his first major feature, was and remains arguably one of the most important horror films of the 20th Century. But his output was more diverse than generally given credit for, and the three movies that make up the somewhat erroneously titled 'Between Night and Dawn' box set (it's missing 1978's urban vampire movie Martin because of rights issues) summarise his career between his first feature and 1978's Dawn of the Dead.

There's Always Vanilla (1971). Romero's very much of the time drama with comedy touches is the story of two young Americans that literally bump into each other and begin a relationship which starts off rather sweetly but quickly descends into drudgery and mistrust. He is Chris (Raymond Laine), musician and aspiring writer with a child from a previous relationship whom he visits from time to time, and she is Lynn (Judith Ridley from Night of the Living Dead), disillusioned commercials model, working in an environment she is scornful of and hassled by creeps. The film does a good job of creating a soured free love atmosphere, and downtown Pittsburgh is a suitably dull location, but this is a curio rather than a movie to treasure. In an interview with Romero (one of the many extras in this box set) the director admits that he doesn't think highly of the film because his technical attachment to the movie was somewhat peripheral. But despite its rather scrappy narrative and 'new wave' touches (those quick edits) there's some trademark Romero in here. The film's disassociated characters and moody off kilter framing would become hallmarks of his later movies, and it remains a spiky alternative to some of the films it was influenced by like The Graduate (1967).

Season of the Witch aka Jack's Wife aka Hungry Wives (1972). A previously little seen addition to the suburban witchcraft sub genre, ignited by Rosemary's Baby (1968) and most recently honoured (or sent up, depending on your point of view) in Anna Biller's The Love Witch (2016), Season of the Witch is a slow paced curio with a pronounced feminist agenda (as one imdb wag puts it, women's lib horror). Bored housewife Joan Mitchell leads a life of isolation, her work absorbed husband and fast growing up daughter having little time for her. Joan's female friends are suburban bores, but a visit to local witch Marion reveals to her the possibility of gaining strength, individuality and the attentions of the her daughter's boyfriend via witchcraft.

Romero's not-quite-a-horror movie is told entirely from Joan's perspective, documenting her decline and subsequent rise after discovering the power of witchcraft, but he doesn't quite give her the depth of character for us to identify or sympathise with her. Even the scenes of her husband being violent to her (edited out of the finished film) don't elicit much response in the viewer, aside from noting their casually exploitative nature. But Romero was less interested in characterisation than in putting his characters together and seeing what happens. Season of the Witch's violent finale is ambiguous. Are Joan's murderous actions the ultimate gesture of a woman's new found power, or the inevitable result of the deep psychosis that surrounds her? Whatever else, it's an intriguing watch.

The Crazies (1973) The nihilistic spectre of the Vietnam War looms large in Romero's film about the effects of a biological weapon - a virus called Trixie - released into a small Pennsylvania town. The director gives us no lead in to the events; the first scene, of two young children watching their father in the grip of toxic madness, smashing up their house, and their mother slain in her bed, is all the introduction we're given to the effects of the virus on those contaminated. But anyone expecting the post infection mayhem that Romero would give us in 1978's Dawn of the Dead may be disappointed; The Crazies devotes most of its time to depicting the chaos reigning among authority figures, the inability to strategise faced with the problem, and the rise of self appointed hunters of the infected, good ol' boys in white hazmat suits.

Romero's central point, that the veneer of civilised society is wafer thin, masking a climate of chaos, is relentlessly made, the bleakness of the story enhanced by the mix of amateur and professional actors and lack of narrative drive. It's an angry film - the scenes of people being picked off by rifle in an almost random fashion rekindles memories of the Kent State shootings a few years previously, and the self immolation of a priest, a shocking scene, directly references the same fate of Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức in his 1963 protest. Yet Romero, shooting here on 35mm, also manages to serve up some pastoral images to complement the viral madness.

The Crazies is a film that has actually improved with age and Arrow's restoration of this and the other two films, together with a host of extras, makes 'Between Night and Dawn' a great box set.

VFW (USA 2019: Dir Joe Begos)

Hot on the heels of Begos's other 2019 movie Bliss comes this note perfect homage to low budget 1980s gang based exploitationers with a side swipe at modern America.

A group of ex Vietnam/Korean vets hang out at a run down bar, managed by ex staff sergeant Freddy (Stephen Lang, excellent). The VFW of the title, also the name of the bar, stands for 'Veterans of Foreign Wars'; and the location is a real one, post 2494 in Irving, Texas.

As the guys shoot the breeze, and plan a birthday treat for Freddy after hours at a nearby 'titty bar,' just across the car park on the site of an equally decrepit cinema a different war is taking place; America's Opioid crisis has deepened, triggered by a new lethally addictive drug called Hype. Drug baron Boz (Travis Hammer), who as the film opens has casually caused the death of one of his entourage, Lucy (Linnea Wilson), while looking for a Hype fix, looks set to do a deal to sell his stash and skip town. But Lucy's sister Elizabeth aka Lizard (Sierra McCormick) steals the drugs as revenge for the killing, and hides out in...guess where? Yep, the VFW bar.

And so the stage is set for a battle of the generations as Boz's team of reprobates lays siege to VFW, while the vets - accompanied by new soldier Shawn (Tom Williamson), who picked the wrong day to pop into a soldier friendly establishment for a quiet beer - gallantly protect Lizard with a combination of American grit and lethal home made weapons.

Now I wasn't as enamoured as many by Bliss, and on the surface Begos's follow up stylistically treads the same ground; shot on 16mm with lots of saturated neon, oodles of murky but impressive gore and Steve Moore's pounding, authentic recreation of those well loved slightly wonky synth soundtracks of 80s genre movies.

But this is so much more than a pallid homage to the action films of yesteryear, although its debt to films like John Carpenter's 1976 movie Assault on Precinct 13 is considerable. One of the first things that strikes is the location: in a lengthy tracking shot which is actually pretty shocking because what is photographed seems totally undressed, the Texan urban wasteland unfolds, all graffiti, burnt out shops and broken wire fences. As Freddy drives to the bar, swigging from a hip flask, he and passenger Abe (Fred Williamson) bemoan the state of the streets, ironically pretty much unchanged from the same streets we've been used to seeing in 'urban' films from the 80s. "In this neighbourhood, gunshots are like crickets," someone remarks; clearly not much has changed in three decades.

And the casting of 80s exploitation regulars in the vet roles is both inspiring and referential - those exploitation movies that Begos loves did exactly the same thing. So we have: Stephen Lang, as seen in Michael Mann and George P. Cosmatos films; 80s action regular Fred Williamson; Martin (The Karate Kid I, II and III, plus a whole heap of others) Kove as sleazy used car salesman Lou; and best of all William Sadler, as the rheumy, sozzled Walter Reed, who rediscovers his inner solider at the appropriate time. These guys get all the best lines - "We leave at 23:00 or whenever I finish urinating" says Reed at one point - in contrast to the younger gang members who in the credits are mostly denied names (although Dora Madison, who memorably played Dezzy in Bliss, gets a little more character definition as the brutal Gutter).

Any American movie made today which touches on the haves and the have nots could be called 'Trumpean', but the extra angle here is Begos's thinly veiled criticism of America's treatment of its war veterans, and despite all the choreographed mayhem, chopped limbs and thundering soundtrack, this remains a very human story about not writing off older people in society. Excellent.


VFW is available on Digital Download now