The Prodigy (2019)

"Excellent Creepy Kid Horror"

The latest film from talented director Nicholas McCarthy (THE PACT and AT THE DEVIL'S DOOR aka HOME) gets a UK DVD and digital download release after its brief theatrical run earlier this year.

A girl runs screaming from a house. Her right hand has been severed. The police close in on the man who did it and shoot him dead just as Sarah (Taylor Schilling) gives birth to baby boy Miles.

As Miles starts to grow, Sarah and her husband John (Peter Mooney) start noticing that he's a little different to other children. He's uncommonly bright, has an extensive vocabulary, and mutters words in a strange language in his sleep. 

By the time he's eight and played by Jackson Robert Scott it's obvious that Miles isn't a normal little boy at all and it's all to do with that police shooting we saw at the start of the film. Exactly what is going on and why I'll leave you to discover, because it all leads to some extremely well executed scary stuff .

With THE PRODIGY, Nicholas McCarthy continues to explore the kind of themes he introduced us to in THE PACT, but whereas in that latter film the question being asked was 'Could someone be hiding in your house?', this time the question is 'Could someone be hiding in your child?'. Some truly unnerving scares, coupled with McCarthy's enviable ability to make the most unassuming of middle class houses seem almost unbearably creepy, suggests he might just be the closest thing twenty first century horror cinema has to Wes Craven, whose earlier movies very much tackled themes of horror assaulting the assumed security of middle class life.

Not that Craven is the only classic horror movie director to namecheck here. As in THE PACT there's a welcome Lucio Fulci feel - this time in an especially unpleasant scene in the basement - and fans of deliberate horror movie references should take a good look when a character reads a newspaper from Pittsburgh on her laptop. 

Vertigo's release also contains three tiny featurettes made to publicise the film, but you do also get a director commentary track that's well worth a listen.

With THE PRODIGY Nicholas McCarthy continues to fulfil his early promise. It's scary, suspenseful, has decent performances from its leads, and the ending left me nodding with satisfaction. Very much worth a look. 

Nicholas McCarthy's THE PRODIGY is out from Vertigo Releasing on digital download from 5th July 2019 and on DVD from 15t July 2019

The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999)

Onscreen that second bit of the title (CARRIE 2) is in much smaller letters than THE RAGE, almost as if it's an afterthought, or even suggesting a degree of embarrassment about linking this to Brian de Palma's 1976 original. But is that really the case? Well, now you (and I because I had never seen this one before) can have the chance to find out as 88 Films brings out THE RAGE: CARRIE 2 on Blu-ray.

A woman gets carted off to a lunatic asylum while at her house various utensils and bits of crockery quiver around a little girl. Fast forward more than ten years and that little girl turns out to be Rachel (Emily Bergl) who has been adopted by a lower middle class family. She attends a certain school where, many years ago, a certain Carrie White blew the place up during the high school prom.

When Rachel's friend Lisa (Mena Suvari) kills herself Rachel starts to uncover a mean-spirited point-scoring 'game' being played by the sports jocks with their sexual partners. Does Rachel somehow get roped in? And maybe find out what points she has accrued? Perhaps at a large party where the main intention is to ridicule her? What could possibly happen?

THE RAGE: CARRIE 2 isn't trash. In fact it's quite well made and acted. The problem with it (if there is one) is that it's a film of two parts. The first eighty minutes could have worked well without the subtitle as a TV movie high school drama. The final twenty minutes are HELLRAISER III. Because of this unbalanced approach it's likely viewers will either be upset at the scenes of CDs chopping people's heads off and teenagers being squished, while the audience who might appreciate such mayhem will have switched off long before. If you do enjoy the latter, and especially if you also like utterly daft endings then stick with it, because THE RAGE: CARRIE 2 has an ending that's as daft as they come. 

In case you don't find it daft enough, however, there's an even sillier one in the extras, complete with commentary by director Katt Shea. She also provides one of two commentary tracks on the disc, the second featuring both Shea and DOP Donald Morgan. You also get deleted scenes and a trailer. 

THE RAGE: CARRIE 2  is out on Blu-ray from 88 Films on Monday 8th April 2019

Baby Love (1968)

"Pete Walker meets Vladimir Nabokov - but who wins?"

Michael Klinger, who with Tony Tenser produced such movies as THE BLACK TORMENT (1964) and Roman Polanski’s REPULSION (1965) split from his colleague, citing the desire to make more respectable product as the reason. While Tenser went on to produce such classics as WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1967) and BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW (1970), Klinger eventually found the respectability he desired with movies like GET CARTER (1971). Before that classic, however, he produced BABY LOVE, which is something quite different.

Fifteen year old Luci (Linda Hayden) is orphaned when single mum Diana Dors slashes her wrists in the bathroom of their squalid terraced house Up North. Because Dors used to ‘know’ rich respectable doctor Keith Barron, Luci ends up moving to London and into Barron’s fashionable townhouse, where she proceeds to destroy his family from within, seducing his wife (Ann Lynn) and killing his son (Derek Lamden).

It’s impossible to imagine a movie like BABY LOVE getting made today, and if it was it certainly wouldn’t be given the  exploitation treatment it gets here. Director Alastair Reid (ARTEMIS 81 and others) is too good a director to make BABY LOVE an unpleasant viewing experience. In fact he’s skilled enough to make this grim and lurid tale of an underage nymphet embracing her seductive powers at every given opportunity almost respectable. Almost, but not quite. In fact the best way to describe BABY LOVE is if Pete Walker tried to film Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and almost completely missed the point, but made sure there was plenty of emphasis on class differences and a fair bit of nudity as well. Comedian Dick Emery even pops up at points as a kind of Clare Quilty character, mirroring Barron’s own suppressed desires for the teenager who may or may not actually be his own illegitimate daughter. In fact the film this most reminded me of was Pete Walker’s SCHIZO, where Lynne Frederick’s working class past comes back to haunt her. Here it’s Barron’s past that comes back, but in the form of an attractive underage girl who seems hell bent on destroying the new life he’s made for himself.

Despite (or perhaps because) of what I’ve said, BABY LOVE is curiously watchable. It’s certainly of its time and it’s never boring. What lets it down is the ending, which is almost of the ‘we’ve run out of money - stop filming’ variety. And who knows? Klinger tore pages of script from both REPULSION and CUL-DE-SAC when they went over schedule so maybe the same thing happened here. The acting is fine with Barron, a familiar face in situation comedies for decades, managing well as the doctor with a past who never cracks a smile. But the film belongs to Linda Hayden in the pivotal role as Luci. It’s a remarkably self-assured performance, and it’s not surprising she went straight on to work for Hammer, Tigon and Amicus. 
       Network’s DVD is the first time BABY LOVE has been released on the format. There’s a still and poster gallery but no other extras. It’s a lurid film, and not entirely successful by any means, but any student of 1960s British cinema, and any fan of Pete Walker-style BritHorror will definitely want to give it a watch. 

Network are releasing Alasteir Reid's BABY LOVE on Region 2 DVD on 26th January 2015

Bloody Birthday (1981)

Some movies should be preserved because they are examples of great art, others because they are examples of great storytelling. Still more may showcase fine acting, production design, or music.  88 Films’ Blu-ray release of BLOODY BIRTHDAY should be preserved for no other reason than it provides a fascinating snapshot of the popular culture of the time. Of course it’s also a deliriously barking mad slasher movie, one that I’d not had the chance to catch up with until now.

Three children are born during a solar eclipse. Ten years later they suddenly develop homicidal tendencies - strangling teenagers, bashing the local sheriff’s brains in, and shooting Susan Strasberg (perhaps they think she still has THE MANITOU growing in her back). The explanation for all this is as barmy as the children themselves. It’s something to do with the planet Saturn governing emotion, and because it was obstructed during the eclipse these children are now sociopaths. Perhaps “popular UK astrologers” (that bit’s for US readers) Russell Grant or Mystic Meg could explain it to us, and then again probably not. 

Aside from the novel idea of ten year olds shooting people, locking them in refrigerators or poisoning them, BLOODY BIRTHDAY delivers in several areas many other slasher films shy away from. There’s no shortage at all of topless young ladies, at least one of whom (Julie Brown) dances around for an inordinate amount of time before reaching for the feather boa I’m sure every self-respecting teenaged girl owned back then. However, it probably won’t be Miss Brown’s charms that will have you frowning at the screen, but more the eventual realisation that yes, that really IS a poster of Erik “CHIPS” Estrada in the background. Cultural icon spotters will also be well served between the killings with the opportunity to look out for the images of Deborah Harry, Ted Nugent and others plastered on bedroom walls.

Director Ed Hunt tries to ape some of the setups from HALLOWEEN but sadly he’s no John Carpenter. He does manage to convince Jose Ferrer to pop in for a cup of tea and deliver a few babies though, so there is that to his credit. BLOODY BIRTHDAY is not going to top anybody's 'best of' list but it is an diverting ninety minutes, probably best enjoyed on a double bill with Carlton J Albright's THE CHILDREN, or Tom Shankland's THE CHILDREN, or anything else with killer kiddies in it. 

88 Films’ Blu-ray transfer has a few scratches on the frame at one point, but overall this is a very good looking print of a very low budget film. Extras include a commentary track by Julian Kerswell (author of Teenage Wasteland) and an audio interview with director Ed Hunt that lasts just over fifty minutes. There’s also a ten minute interview with star Lori Lethin and the featurette A Brief History of Slasher Movies which is just that. There’s also a reversible sleeve, a booklet and a trailer. Sadly not on this disc is the interview with (uncredited) executive producer Max J Rosenberg where he describes director Hunt as a f*cking nut, but you can’t have everything. 

88 Films released BLOODY BIRTHDAY on Region B Blu-ray on 23rd June 2014