Weird Wisconsin: The Bill Rebane Collection (1965 - 1988)

First it was Herschell Gordon Lewis, then William Grefe, and now Wisconsin-based Bill Rebane finds himself the latest low-budget independent director of exploitation films to be the subject of an Arrow blu-ray box set. Who amongst us who caught Mr Rebane's exceedingly memorable THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION (1975) when it was shown in UK cinemas would ever have thought we would one day be holding in our hands such an item? SPIDER INVASION is probably still the film he's best known for, but sadly it's not included here, which is a bit of shame, but let's take a look at what we do get, spread over four discs:

Disc One

Monster A Go Go (1965)

Not strictly a Rebane film as he only shot some of it, then Herschell Gordon Lewis bought the footage, added a bit & then released the result as the support feature to one of his own films. Consequently it's not surprising that this ultra low-budget version of Hammer's THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT (or even Richard Gordon's FIRST MAN INTO SPACE) is a bit of a ragged affair in which an astronaut returns to earth abnormally tall (and played by the improbably named Henry Hite) and proceeds to go on a tiny rampage before the film pretty much just stops. As entertainment it barely meets the trades descriptions act but as a footnote in the history of H G Lewis and exploitation cinema of the period it's certainly worth watching once.

Invasion From Inner Earth (1974)

Bill Rebane's 'official' first feature has three characters living in a cabin in the woods trying to survive the aftermath of an alien invasion. There's very much a 'make it up as you go along' feel to it and even Kim Newman admits on this disc that he's never been able to get all the way through it without falling asleep. Fans of wacky endings would be well advised to keep those eyelids propped open, however, because this one will cause much head scratching and late night debate if you've got friends round & you've all had enough to drink (coffee rather than alcohol).

Extras on disc one include two ten minute interviews with Rebane (one on each film), three Bill Rebane short films and a fifteen minute piece by Kim Newman which, if you're not familiar with Bill Rebane's filmography (and I'll admit I wasn't, apart from THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION) I would suggest watching before you embark on any of the films.

Disc Two

The Alpha Incident (1978)

Bill Rebane's take on THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN sees a space probe bringing an infectious organism to earth from Mars. Due to a fair bit of incompetence the organism escapes at a railway station, resulting in those who are there having to isolate themselves indoors. Slow to the point of being ponderous, this nevertheless does offer a horrible mode of death by which the organism kills its victims when they fall asleep, and a genuinely bleak, grim tone that makes one wonder what people thought who saw this when it was released as the B feature to STAR WARS. 

The Demons of Ludlow (1983)

The tiny town of Ludlow (population 47) is celebrating its bicentennial when a piano is delivered from England. Apparently it belonged to the town's founder and just happens to harbour his ghost. I think. Because this one is a bit muddled and despite playing the scene where 'all is explained' twice I'm still not quite sure what was going on or why a 200 year old piano should sound like a synthesiser when it's played. But never mind that -  it's not the plot (which is basically John Carpenter's THE FOG with a piano. Yes that's right) that's the reason to watch this, but some peculiar and occasionally downright unsettling scenes involving the ghosts the piano somehow seems to harbour / conjure up when it's played. One suspects the gruesome effectiveness of these bits is by accident rather than design but if the films of Andy Milligan appeal to you (and they do to me) then you'll want to see this one. 

Extras include two more Bill Rebane 'Sharp Shooter' interviews about each film, trailers, and a video essay by Richard Harland Smith about THE ALPHA INCIDENT who makes some interesting connections to the COVID pandemic as well as revealing the film played as the B feature to not just STAR WARS but a number of other films as well. 

Disc Three

The Game (1984)

Three very rich people invite a disparate group of individuals to their isolated island mansion in order to take part in a game. The only rule is that if for any reason you leave the property your right to the prize money that's at stake is forfeit. Of course plenty of reasons for leaving the place have been planned by those in charge.

THE GAME boasts a reasonable idea and a very peculiar ending but as with the other films in this set, how well you'll get on with it will depend on your tolerance for the quality of the film-making (not that great) balanced against the concepts and ideas the film presents us with. Sadly there's not enough of the latter to make THE GAME worth sticking with unless you're forgiving, or planning to steal the idea to mount your own, better version of it.

Twister's Revenge! (1988)

Here we go with Bill Rebane's version of Knight Rider but with a talking monster truck and a bunch of hillbillies. Three incompetents decide to steal it, fail and so instead they kidnap the wife of the man who owns the truck and hold her to ransom. If you're a monster truck fan this will still only be the film for you if you like lengthy scenes of one driving all over the countryside and occasionally squashing something. TWISTER'S REVENGE is the kind of film that makes The Dukes of Hazzard TV series look like something by Christopher Nolan. Possibly useful as something to make children sit and watch if they've seriously misbehaved.

Extras on disc three include more of Mr Rebane's reminiscences on the above two films and one of the best extras on the set in which Stephen R Bissette gives us a video essay and talks about what it was like to discover Rebane's films as each one of them came out. 

Disc Four

It's all non-fiction on this disc, starting with Who Is Bill Rebane?  - a new feature length documentary on the film-maker, followed by King of the Wild Frontier in which Stephen R Bissette spends close to two hours talking about the director's films. You also get out-takes from THE ALPHA INCIDENT, THE DEMONS OF LUDLOW, and a trailer for THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION, plus stills from the films that aren't included on the other discs.

Weird Wisconsin: The Bill Rebane Collection is a four disc Blu-ray set that's coming out from Arrow Video on Monday 24th May 2021

Wrong Turn (2021)

Not a Remake and Not a Sequel

Well it isn't. Despite being the seventh film to bear the title WRONG TURN since Rob Schmidt's 2003 original, and the same writer (Alan B McElroy) as that film, this is a WRONG TURN in name only. Well, and in terms of bright young things meeting horrible fates in an American forest (this is the first of the films to actually be made in the USA, by the way).

Jen (Charlotte Vega from Brian O'Malley's THE LODGERS) and her bunch of millennial friends leave the city & head off into the mountains to trek the Appalachian trail. They stray off the path like they're not supposed to, one of their number does something extremely inadvisable, and pretty soon they're prisoners of the Foundation - a community formed before the American civil war. Six weeks after they disappear Jen's father (Matthew Modine) comes looking for them.

This new WRONG TURN isn't bad at all. You get the sense the plan was to combine torture porn with folk horror and perhaps tip a bit of Amazon TV hit VIKINGS into the mix as well. What that means is that we get a film that's rather unevenly paced but good enough to maintain interest throughout. Director Mike P Nelson gives us some excellent imagery and there are a fair few decently creepy moments that don't make you feel as if you're watching the umpteenth film in a backwoods horror franchise - which is probably why it got a (deserved) retitling. The climax isn't as suspenseful as it could have been (and the music really needed to switch from the usual folk horror groans and bongs to something with a bit more drive) but nevertheless if you've seen a few of the previous entries in the franchise you may be pleasantly surprised by this.

Extras on Signature's Blu-ray include a half hour making of, seven minutes of deleted scenes, and a commentary track by the director. 

Mike P Nelson's new WRONG TURN is out on Blu-ray from Signature Entertainment on DVD & Blu-ray on 

Monday 3rd May 2021

The Deeper You Dig (2019)

  

"Northern Gothic EC-style Art House Horror"

After its UK premiere at 2019's Frightfest the latest project from film-making team the Adams family (father John, mother Toby Poser and daughter Zelda) gets a Blu-ray release from Arrow Films.

Driving home from a bar late one night Kurt (John Adams), the worse for alcohol, knocks down and kills fourteen year old Echo (Zelda Adams). He buries the body and tries to forget about the incident while he works on the rundown house he's renovating in the woods. But he's reckoned without Echo's mother Ivy (Toby Poser) who is a psychic, and Echo herself, who has every intention of manifesting her now dead self through Kurt's body.

A very low budget effort that is nevertheless extremely competently shot, edited, acted and scored, THE DEEPER YOU DIG's opening act is very much like an EC comics story as Echo comes back from the grave to haunt Kurt. Then things start to get weird and there are a couple of weird moments that are pleasingly reminiscent of Don Coscarelli's 1979 PHANTASM. 

The film is a slow burn, in fact in some places it's a bit too slow and could maybe have done with a good 20-30 minutes being cut from its running time. That said it's an impressive effort and far, far better than most of what is being made on similar (and higher) budgets out there at the moment (including some of this month's other releases).

Arrow's two disc set comes with a commentary track from the husband and wife directors, and a 50 minute interview with all three of the Adams family. Anton Bitel spends nearly 30 minutes contextualising the film within the Adams' filmography and examining themes within it in the video essay 'It's In the Blood'. There's also 12 minutes with special effects coordinator Trey Lindsay, the Frightfest TV interview from last year's festival, music videos, an image gallery and a trailer. As a bonus, the second disc has an earlier Adams project, THE HATRED (2018) which runs just under an hour and is worth a look after and if you enjoyed the main feature. 

THE DEEPER YOU DIG is out in a two disc Blu-ray set from Arrow Films on Monday 5th October 2020

Echoes of Fear (2020)

"Don't Look in the Basement!"

An ultra low-budget film with a decidedly retro "Backwoods USA Independent" feel (and believe me that's a compliment), ECHOES OF FEAR (even that title feels 1970s) is getting a Digital and DVD release courtesy of Second Sight after receiving its UK premiere earlier this year at Southend's annual Horror On Sea festival.

Alisa (Trista Robinson) inherits the house of her grandfather (Norman Zeller) after he dies in the shower. She moves in with boyfriend Brandon (Paul Chirico) with plans for selling it. But all is not well in the house. Alisa hears strange sounds in the night including the meowing of a cat, and pretty soon she's seeing things too. As the ghostly apparitions worsen, the discovery of a dead cat buried in the basement is just the beginning of a series of shocking revelations about the history of the house she is living in.

ECHOES OF FEAR is obviously very low budget, and for the first half an hour it feels like an attempt to do a haunted house movie with almost zero resources. That said, as we approach the end of the first act there are some decent scares that suggest directors Brian and Laurence Avenet-Bradley know their Japanese horror cinema and their Mario Bava as well - there's a splendid shock moment that emulates a scene in one of the Italian master's later films.

Where the film really earns its points, though, is in the final act, when the film becomes the kind of grim, grainy, sweaty gothic of the kind Texan director S F Brownrigg used to make, like 1977's KEEP MY GRAVE OPEN or (as I've alluded to up there) his classic 1973 DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT. In fact if ECHOES OF FEAR had been made in the early 1970s and shot on 16mm I don't doubt that now it would be lauded as a lost minor classic. It's unlikely to receive such accolades today, but ECHOES OF FEAR is certainly going to warm the heart of any fan of the golden era of low budget US exploitation to know that movies like this, made with no money but plenty of ambition and an obvious knowledge of the genre, are still out there to be discovered.

ECHOES OF FEAR is out from Second Sight on digital download on Monday 20th July 2020 and DVD on 

Monday 3rd August 2020

American Horror Project Volume 2 (1970 - 1977)

"Fascinating Examples of Independent 1970s American Horror Cinema"

Just over three years after volume one found its way onto our shelves, it's a delight to welcome the second instalment in Stephen Thrower's valuable American Horror Project, dedicated to preserving some of the more obscure items put together by independent American moviemakers during the 1970s (the only decade so far covered by the series but who knows what we may get in the future?). 

As I mentioned in my review for Volume One, these are all films made by people working outside the Hollywood system, or indeed often any kind of system at all. Sometimes the directors in question only ever made one film before going back to their day jobs (or before being captured and returned to their longterm care facilities for all we know). Often quirky, frequently interesting (if only for their sheer bizarreness), and always low-budget, there still remains a wealth of weird and obscure  US films out there that deserve to be brought to the attention of a (slightly) wider audience than those who already know about them.

Once again, as in Volume One, the package contains three films in a gorgeously presented set. Here's what we get this time around:

Dream No Evil (1970)

First up is this slightly odd (and oddly slight) movie that was the first of three horror films made by director John Hayes, the other two being GARDEN OF THE DEAD and GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE (both 1972).

Grace McDonald (Brooke Mills), having been rescued ten years ago from an orphanage by the Bundy family, is now engaged to Patrick Bundy (Paul Prokop) who is busy studying at medical school. Meanwhile Grace takes part in a travelling show with Patrick's preacher brother Jessie (Michael Pataki going full tilt at the lectern in this one) where she has to dive thirty feet onto a massive cushion to illustrate a literal descent into hell. 

Grace is obsessed with finding her missing father Timothy (Edmond O'Brien). She eventually does, only to learn he has recently died. Or has he? While Grace watches, Timothy gets up from the embalming table, kills the undertaker (Marc "I didn't know there was a pool down there" Lawrence from DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER) and goes with Grace back to their farm, where the murders don't stop.

DREAM NO EVIL is a very gentle, measured piece that's a world apart from the typical exploitation product of the time. It takes a while for the plot to kick in, and with its voice-over narrator helping to explain things, at times it feels like a Season One episode of THE OUTER LIMITS. I think it's a more accomplished and consistent piece than the rather jerky and fragmented (and much better known) GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE. Just don't expect too much from it.

Extras include a filmed appreciation by Stephen Thrower, who also narrates a thirty minute video essay on the career of director Hayes up to 1971. Chris Poggiali gives us twenty minutes on the career of star Edmond O'Brien, there's an audio interview with frequent Hayes collaborator Rue McClanahan, and an audio commentary from Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan.

Dark August (1976)

There's something of M R James and even more of early Robert Altman about Martin Goldman's Vermont-shot micro budget horror picture. City boy Sal (J J Barry) moves to the country and accidentally runs over and kills a young girl (played by director Goldman's daughter). Her grandfather puts a curse on Sal and he finds himself being followed by a shadowy cowled figure. 

Or is he? Sal has a lot of problems, not least paranoia and extreme anxiety. Despite being cleared by the ensuing court case his guilt over the girl's death constantly threatens to overwhelm him. Eventually he seeks the help of a local shaman (Kim Hunter) who promises to conduct a ritual to help him. But does it work?

With an even more measured, slow and deliberate pace to it than DREAM NO EVIL, like that film DARK AUGUST is another movie that's more art house than exploitation. It's the characters that are important here, and the everyday problems they have to deal with that may just have been added to by a vengeful spirit. How much you'll like it will depend on your predilection for character-led pieces with little in the way of the standard horror tropes of the period to liven things up. 

Extras include a Stephen Thrower appreciation, a director commentary, a piece by Stephen Bissette in which he catalogues a mammoth number of movies that have either been made in Vermot or which contain Vermont references, and interviews with director Goldman and producer Marianne Kanter.

The Child (1977)

It's time to play hide and go kill in 2K as we get to watch a true one-off from a director (Robert Voskanian) who sadly never got to make another feature. Of the three films under consideration here, THE CHILD is by far the goriest, the quirkiest, and the most off-kilter. Consequently it's my favourite of the bunch.

Pretty Alicianne (Laurel Barnett) arrives at a rambling old house in the country to take up her new post as governess to eleven year old Rosalie (Rosalie Cole). We already know Rosalie is bad news because we've seen her feeding a kitten to a living corpse underneath the credits (a movie first. In fact probably a movie only). 

Rosalie has the power to animate the dead, whom she terms her friends, but she's not above causing the local creepy scarecrow to go walkabout as well. The protracted climax involves a battle with the living dead and a typical 1970s ending. 

Don't for one minute let the above summary lead you to think THE CHILD is in any way an ordinary or normal film. There isn't a minute of this that isn't weird in some way, from camera angles to dialogue delivery, gory makeup effects to the weird music score that swings between lush piano and blippy bloppy electronic noises. THE CHILD is a remarkable, weird, disorientating unique piece of cinema, beautifully restored by Arrow. If you need a reason to get this set it's this. 

Extras include an appreciation by Stephen Thrower, who also moderates the new audio commentary track featuring director Voskanian and producer Robert Dadashian. There are also new interviews with Voskanian and Dadashian, plus a trailer and the original press book. 

        THE CHILD aside, the emphasis of AMERICAN HORROR PROJECT VOL. 2 is on movies that depict main characters affected by subtle, quiet ,creeping dread. Prior to receiving this set I had never heard of DREAM NO EVIL or DARK AUGUST and having now watched them it's easy to see why. Whereas back in 1977 posters for THE CHILD were in every horror movie publication, the more ethereal nature of the other two pictures suggests they would have been much harder sells, with distribution consequently extremely limited. Which just makes this set all the more valuable for giving them to us in these lovely restored 2K transfers. Arrow are to be congratulated for rescuing such titles from obscurity. At one point Stephen Thrower remarks that he wishes every American small town had made a horror movie. So do I, Stephen. Let's hope we get to see more of the ones that were actually made in future sets of AMERICAN HORROR PROJECT. 

Arrow's AMERICAN HORROR PROJECT VOLUME 2 is out on Blu-ray on Monday 24th June 2019

The Slayer (1982)

J S Cardone’s weird, ambitious, rubber reality murder mystery (he doesn’t consider it a slasher film) gets a splendid 4k upgrade whistles and bells release from Arrow.

Kay (Sarah Kendall) and her husband David (Alan McRae) travel to a secluded windswept island for a holiday with Kay’s brother Eric (Frederick Flynn) and his wife Brooke (Carol Kottenbrook). The Crazy Ralph wannabe aeroplane pilot who brings them warns them off staying but they don’t listen. 

The only buildings on the island appear to be the house they are staying in and a run-down theatre (obviously a genuine location and superbly creepy). As the weather worsens, someone (or something) starts bumping people off (including a fisherman who, in the grand tradition of these things, turns up just to get bonked on the head by an oar). 

But that’s not all. Kay is convinced she has dreamed what is going on, and Eric confides that as a child, Kay did something very unpleasant with the family pet. Is Kay responsible for the killings? Is someone else? Or is it a great big monster with spikey teeth?

THE SLAYER plays fast and loose with what should be a straightforward plot line but isn’t. That, plus the considerable skill behind the camera, means THE SLAYER isn’t a standard early 1980s US horror film, but more something that harkens back to the ambitious, weird and often outright loony backwoods USA pictures of the 1970s. I’m not going to reveal the ending because it wouldn’t be fair (of course) but also because I’m still not sure what was going on, and that ambiguity is just one of the reasons this one is worth watching.

Arrow’s 4k transfer looks amazing - who would have thought movies like this would ever be getting such treatment? Extras include two commentary tracks - one with Cardone, Kottenbrook and executive producer Eric Weston, and another with The Hysteria continues. A third ‘commentary’ track is actually a 50 minute audio interview with composer Robert Folk (of POLICE ACADEMY fame), followed by good quality recordings of the (very good) music cues from the film.

There’s also a making of that runs for nearly an hour, as well as a look at the locations. You also get ‘The Tybee Experience’ which gives you a feature-length audience reaction track and a post-movie Q&A.

A VHS staple for many years, with its restored print and excellent supplementary features, Arrow Films have come up with the definitive presentation of THE SLAYER. If you buy the first pressing you’ll also get a booklet with new writing on the film from Lee Gambin. 

J S Cardone's THE SLAYER is out on dual format from Arrow Films on Monday 21st August 2017