The Changes (1975)

A long sought after classic from the golden age of British children’s television doesn’t disappoint, as the BFI brings to DVD this ten episode series from 1975. I stress ‘doesn’t disappoint’ because nostalgia can be a funny thing, and rose-tinted memories from nearly forty years ago can by brutally shattered by the miracles of modern technology making such material available again for examination. The only time I watched THE CHANGES was on its original broadcast (I would have been seven years old) so I was concerned it might not be deserving of the near-mythic status it has subsequently attained. I needn’t have worried.

In the UK of 1975 Something Weird happens - a combination of freak weather conditions and a peculiar, alien sound -  that causes people to destroy all machinery, from bicycles to locomotives, household gadgets to entire factories. Teenager Nicky Gore (Victoria Williams) gets separated from her parents when her family decides to escape to France, and the rest of the series details her adventures as she passes through a changed and broken Britain. 

THE CHANGES was one of a number of excellent television series made in the mid-1970s (many of them by HTV’s South West division, although the BBC, who produced this, had their fair share too). They tended to depict well-spoken older children exhibiting remarkable resilience and coping skills while under duress, and subsequently were remembered with extreme fondness by those of a certain age. As the comedian Stewart Lee quite rightly observed a few years ago, if you were a lonely teenager in the 1970s this sort of television was just what you needed, as opposed to more modern-day teen-orientated fare such as SKINS (2007 onwards) which seem designed to make alienated children feel even more so. 

The palpable sense of anarchy and impending apocalypse in the first episode of THE CHANGES scared the hell out of me as a child, and I was pleased to discover that it’s still capable of raising a shiver of Peter Watkins proportions. Of course, I’m now old enough to appreciate that the scenes of mass destruction at the beginning are actually stock footage intercut with, of all things, a few scenes from Hammer’s QUATERMASS & THE PIT, but even that feels like a nice touch. After the opener the series quickly calms down and becomes a fine example of mid-1970s pastoral post-apocalyptic SF. To be honest, no-one would have imagined post-apocalyptic 1970s Britain to look much different from normal 1970s Britain, and so that’s pretty much what we get here - isolated villages and farms filled with suspicious (and increasingly  superstitious) locals. 

THE CHANGES is very much John Wyndham by way of Alan Garner. The three books on which the series was based were written by Peter Dickinson, who never achieved quite the popularity of Garner, but certainly wrote a trilogy worthy of the treatment it receives here. The pace is quite leisurely, allowing the Sikh community Nicky finds herself travelling with to have an enjoyable SEVEN SAMURAI-style adventure, and as well as there being a pleasingly strong anti-racism vibe (the ITV sitcom LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR was still hugely popular at the time) there is also an anti-misogynist and anti-religious fundamentalist tone to the proceedings that’s obvious while never feeling preachy. 

So, if you are still in any doubt, THE CHANGES is excellent - ten half-hour episodes of 1970s BritSF at its best. Hugely ambitious - all shot in colour and on film, with a big cast, large-scale scenes of conflict and devastation, and excellent, pretty much wall-to-wall, location work.  Fans of the era will delight in spotting familiar faces like Edward Brayshaw (Harold Meaker from RENTAGHOST), Jack Watson from Pete Walker’s SCHIZO (1976), Zuleika Robson from Sidney Hayers’ REVENGE (1971) and dear old Roy Evans from every British horror film ever. The only extra is a short film about Asians adjusting to life in 1980s Britain, but there is a very nice booklet with writing about the show, including a contribution by Paddy Kingsland who wrote the music and went on to work on THE HITCH-HIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. Highly recommended.

The BFI is bringing out Peter Dickinson's THE CHANGES on a Region 2 double-disc DVD set on 25th August 2014

Werewolf Rising (2014)

Horror cinema, like evolution, sometimes takes a retrograde step. As certain insects have lost their hind-pairs of wings or dolphins have returned to the sea, so this beloved genre of ours sometimes seems to be careering backwards to a time in the 1950s, when US Drive-In audiences were ‘treated’ to such Roger Corman-produced low budget fare as CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA and THE WASP WOMAN. These were movies that consisted of about an hour of nothing much happening at all, filmed in a static way with stilted dialogue and a tremendous sense of ‘Please Get ON With It’, intercut occasionally with shots of a cheap-looking monster or a girl in her underwear. They also tended to have great posters, the equivalent of which today is the eye-catching DVD box cover (see above for an example - fantastic, isn't it?)

      WEREWOLF RISING eschews the exposure of attractive female flesh (on the whole) for a nifty-looking werewolf that we get to see flashes of, but otherwise the result is much the same as all those bottom of the barrel 1950s movies, as well as much of the other product / rubbish currently in release from the Image Entertainment / RLJ stable. What you actually get for your money is a micro-budget, amateurish production with occasional flares of competence that one suspects had more spent on its advertising campaign than on the film itself. 

      Ex-alcoholic Emma (Melissa Carnell) returns to her Arkansas country shack after a period in rehab. She befriends Johnny Lee (Matt Copko) who, when he’s not sleeping on the floor next to his collection of beer cans is trying to impress her on his sit-on lawnmower. Emma’s other friend is Uncle Wayne (Brian Berry) a fat paedophile with a drink problem who brings wine to dinner and tries to get off with Emma in her kitchen, a place which seems to have been decorated by a chicken-obsessed madman. 

      A werewolf is terrorising the local area (as we’ve witnessed in the prologue). Johnny gets bitten and undergoes a CGI transformation. In what is possibly a werewolf movie first, he pays a naked visit to the laundrette afterwards to get his clothes washed.

Things reach a climax as Emma gets terrorised in her cabin and it all gets pleasingly mental and bloodstained for a bit, but by the resolution I still couldn’t work out who the werewolf we see at the beginning was meant to be.

      WEREWOLF RISING does have a few nice moments - the opening sweeping views of the forbidding, wintry landscape are excellent, and every now and then there are shots during the cabin terrorisation bits that show some nicely backlit scary werewolf shapes. On the whole, however, this is on a par with other Image releases like BLOODY HOMECOMING and THE INVOKING in terms of being, well, really not very good. While I hate to do micro-budget projects like this down, it’s difficult to find much to recommend here, and it was difficult to resist the urge to fast forward through much of its 77 minute running time. For serious werewolf completists only.

Image Entertainment are releasing WEREWOLF RISING on Region 2 DVD on the 22nd September 2014

Sharknado 2 - The Second One (2014)

From the people who can’t spell Sci Fi comes the film everyone knew was a dread inevitability. SF movie sequels tend to follow a strict formula of being bigger, noisier and more spectacular. It will therefore come as no surprise to anyone exhibiting an interest in this that SHARKNADO 2: THE SECOND ONE is even stupider than the first.

At the start of this one a CGI plane, piloted by AIRPLANE’s Robert Hays on which original SHARKNADO stars Ian Ziering and Tara Reid are travelling to New York, is beset by the toothy-bitey-fishy-infested whirlwind of the title. No sooner has stewardess Kelly Osbourne had her head bitten off than Tara’s lost a hand and gained a vendetta. Somehow the plane manages to land. “I’ve seen worse,” says Robert Hays, but we’re not sure if we have. Not yet, anyway.

Twin sharknados are threatening New York! Regular updates on news and weather stations allow for lazy writing but much hilarity, especially with the weatherman who quickly becomes a serious contender for best actor in the film (if anyone would want that claim). Jaw-dropping scenes of poorly animated sharks attacking the big apple abound while Judd Hirsch drives people around in his taxi (ho ho) and we all wonder when Tara Reid’s going to turn up again. When she does it’s with a quite remarkable limb attachment of either startling originality or utter desperation. Watch the Statue of Liberty’s head roll down the street! Watch out for an occasional hammerhead shark from an especially bored animator! (Assuming they had more than one). Wonder how bad things must have got for stars like Kari Wuhrer for her to have to be in stuff like this after the heights of ANACONDA and EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS.

It’s hard to know whether SHARKNADO 2 represents a new nadir for movie-making or the zenith of an entirely different entertainment form altogether. I will freely admit that I could not stop watching it, but rather than for the thrills and fun of a good old Roger Corman-style monsterfest, it was more because of the  unbelievable bravado of those involved in its making. The sheer sense of ‘anything goes’, the lack of sense of any kind, the minimal attempts at believable special effects all make SHARKNADO 2 the kind of film that deserves to live nowhere else but at the bottom of a CornFlake packet, a free gift to be tipped out, toyed with when there’s nothing better to do, and then forgotten.

That won’t happen though, at least not if the SyFy (I still hate that spelling) Channel has anything to do with it.

SHARKNADO 3 has been announced.

Patrick: Evil Awakens (2013)

Mark Hartley's operatic, deliciously over the top remake of Richard Franklin's 1978 Australian horror film about a bed-bound telepathic teenager, who affects the lives of those in the hospital in which he is a patient, premiered around the UK last year as part of the FrightFest all-nighter (we saw it in Bristol). It's finally getting a UK DVD release on 11th August. The more observant amongst you (actually that's probably all of you - I don't think sleepy people visit this site) will have noticed that the picture opposite is for the US Blu-ray. That's partly because the UK DVD cover still seems to be in mock-up form, but also because the version we have here at House of Mortal Cinema is the US Blu-ray. Sadly it's locked to Region A and there doesn't seem to be a UK Blu forthcoming, so if you haven't got yourself a multi-region player yet (and you're probably in the minority if you come here often) then here's another excuse to do so.
      PATRICK the remake follows the plot of PATRICK the original pretty closely, and even reproduces some of the murders. It's a pretty good updating, and I'd go so far as to say that the first hour or so is superb if you fancy a gloriously blood-and-thunder treatment of this kind of story. The setting is a gloomy old hospital in the middle of nowhere. Almost everyone boasts Australian accents and cars with UK registration plates. Mad doctor Charles Dance (who doesn't speak Australian) has filled the hospital with patients in a persistent vegetative state. He doesn't seem to have that high a grant to keep the place going as it's so dark the only money he spends on electricity must go on that ECT machine he uses frequently on one very special patient. 
      Exactly why he's shooting poor old Patrick full of drugs and regularly zapping his brain is, in the best horror movie tradition, never really explained. Nurse Sharni Vinson (from Adam Wingard's YOU'RE NEXT) gets a job at the hospital and forms a special bond with needy, psychotic, mother-figure obsessed Patrick, not that she realises this when she first puts her hand down his underpants. Soon she finds all the men around her are cutting themselves, burning themselves, and driving themselves off cliffs as Patrick embarks on the kind of wooing programme that would leave most stalkers slack-jawed in admiration. 

      PATRICK all goes off the rails a bit towards the end but it's actually a very good low-budget remake of a film that was always fun but was never the classic some claim it to be. Director Mark Hartley has a fine eye indeed for some splendid over the top imagery (Vinson's screaming mouth reflected in a shard of broken mirror, and some of the most dramatic camera angles I think I have ever seen just to show someone walking into a house) and the performances are, on the whole, spot on for this kind of thing. I can admit to a preference for Susan Penhaligon as the object of Patrick's attentions but Charles Dance is just superb as the loony doctor. Also of note is the score which is easily Pino Donaggio's best work in years and pleasingly Herrmanesque. The CD is available. Extras on the Blu-ray (which looks lovely) consist of a number of cast and crew interviews. It's not known if the UK DVD will have any extras.

PATRICK: EVIL AWAKENS is being released in the UK by House DVD on 11th August 2014. The Region A Blu-ray is already out.

The Last Horror Film (1982)

Caroline Munro was in some odd pictures in the 1980s, kicking off with MANIAC (1980) in which she came across as the proverbial gorgeous EuroHorror actress who had somehow been dropped into the bucket of sleaze that was the rest of the film. She also made FACELESS for Jess Franco, SLAUGHTER HIGH - a US-set slasher movie made in the UK, and a crazy version of THE BLACK CAT for Luigi Cozzi. However none of these projects even comes close in terms of a sense of ‘absolutely anything goes’ to the ramshackle endeavour that is THE LAST HORROR FILM. Thrown together with the chief aim of giving its married leads a bit of a jolly for free at the Cannes Film Festival, while simultaneously pandering to the whims of co-star Joe Spinell, it’s unsurprising that what resulted sat on the shelf for a couple of years before hobbling out on home video. Of course, that’s not to say there isn’t a lot to enjoy here, but just perhaps not in the way the film makers intended.

New York taxi driver and frustrated wannabe film maker Vinny Durand (Spinell) travels to Cannes with the intention of making a film with glamorous horror star Jana Bates (Munro) who is there with her director Alan Cunningham (Munro’s husband and co-writer and co-producer of this Judd Hamilton) in anticipation of her winning the best actress award. As soon as Vinny arrives, people associated with Jana start dying, but even though Vinny is subject to weird hallucinations, is he actually the killer? 

Utterly jaw-dropping for so many reasons, including more gratuitous breast shots in its first ten minutes than any other film I think I have ever seen; quite horrendous fashions (even for 1981); dream sequences that even Ken Russell would think were too silly; terrible songs that go on forever; and the sight of Joe Spinell dancing around in ladies’ underwear and sharing a joint with his mother Mary, whose other movie appearances include Old Lady Sitting Next to Eddie Outside Courtroom (uncredited) in William Lustig’s VIGILANTE, THE LAST HORROR FILM leaves the viewer scratching their heads with too many questions that need answering. Is Caroline dubbed? What the hell has Judd Hamilton done to his hair to make it that colour? How many times is Joe going to burst into tears in front of women of various ages? Why has John Scott’s score for INSEMINOID been plundered for bits of this and does he know? Did they really spend time setting up a shot where a large cream cake gets dropped accurately between a pair of absurdly surgically-enhanced breasts?

88 Films have done a top-notch job giving us the best print available of THE LAST HORROR FILM. When a disc begins with an apology you know there may be trouble ahead, but full marks to them for being upfront about the state of the transfer and explaining the reasons why. To be honest it looks great on the whole, with only a couple of instances where it’s obvious that something terrible has happened to the vault elements.

There are a number of extras, some of which are in keeping with the quality of the film they accompany. There’s an introduction by Lloyd Kaufman ported over from the region 1 DVD release in which he demonstrates that he has no idea when the film was made or who directed it. There’s an on stage Q&A at the Glasgow Film Theatre with Caroline Munro where she talks about SLAUGHTER HIGH and other things but not THE LAST HORROR FILM at all, and Luke Walker reminisces about his friend Joe Spinell while driving a car. Absolutely the best extra is a short talking head piece by William Lustig (director of MANIAC) who actually provides some information on how THE LAST HORROR FILM came about, and how he was asked to help finish the movie when it got into trouble. He gracefully declined and confirms the suspicions of all who have watched the film when he says “There was no adult running that show.” Finally, as well as the 88 trailer reel, there’s the short promo film that Spinell made for MANIAC II: MR ROBBIE which never happened because of his premature death. It’s been available stateside as an extra on versions of MANIAC for many years but it’s good to see it available in the UK.

88 Films are releasing the remarkable piece of work that is THE LAST HORROR FILM on Region B Blu-ray on 21st July 2014

Orloff & the Invisible Man (1970)

It’s been too long since we’ve had a Jess Franco review on here. I’d been missing the world of crash zooms, jarring editing and naked young ladies boasting what one kindly presumes are merkins made from badgers, and I’m pleased to say I was amply rewarded with all three in the shape of ORLOFF & THE INVISIBLE MAN. What completely surprised me was that this movie wasn't directed by Mr Franco at all, but by Pierre Chevalier. I have to say, though, that M. Chevalier has managed a splendid job of making something that could be considered worthy of being considered a Franco film. 

We are somewhere in eighteenth century Europe (I’m guessing). The weather is grim and wet, usually due to actual rain but sometimes, in a rare and impressive attempt to provide some continuity, due to a watering can just out of shot being poured from above the camera. This dreary gothic milieu is further augmented by a hero with a red satin-lined cloak, a serving girl with no bra on, and a rickety old coach that gets stuck in the mud. Putting an interesting spin on the proceedings (and goodness me they do rather need it) is a somewhat peculiar jazz score that seems to consist of various instrumentalists plucking and blowing notes at random with little thought for what their colleagues are up to. Sometimes everyone just gives up and snaps their fingers, presumably to gain the attention of whoever was providing them with the hallucinogenic drugs that made them think what they were producing was actually music. 

But on to the plot. Handsome young Dr Garondet (F Valladares) is asked to come to the castle of Professor Orloff (Howard Vernon). Leaving the dreary rain-drenched village where he lives proves to be difficult, however, as none of the locals are willing to take him near the place. He eventually gets there under his own steam, only to find himself in a Monty Pythonesque exchange with a manservant before encountering a maid who appears to be busy doing some colouring in on the kitchen table. There then follows the kind of stilted dialogue exchange that will have many an amateur dramatics enthusiast weeping, and if you want more of this we only have to wait until the doctor meets Cecile (Brigitte Carval). She’s Orloff’s daughter and is in the habit of staring off into space a lot while she describes things that have happened to her that are way outside the special effects budget of this.

Garondet finally meets Orloff, and before you can say ‘I hope we get a crash zoom on that stuffed owl on his desk’ we have because it’s flashback time! Apparently Cecile died and was put in the family crypt, where two of Orloff’s servants broke in to steal her jewellery. She came back to life, got stabbed, but made it back to the house, whereupon the bloke thief was imprisoned while his partner, pausing only in her desperate, frenetic escape from Orloff’s hounds to try on all the jewellery she’d stolen while sitting by the river, got beaten for her efforts.

Then it’s back to the owl. Orloff has created an invisible man who can serve drinks and bump into furniture. He’s also capable of chasing serving girls around and (because this is a Franco film after all) tearing all their clothes off and ravishing them in a scene which goes on and on and on and on.

The doctor gets locked in the dungeon but he escapes. Cecile gets undressed and reveals that her merkin is made from two badgers. The invisible man becomes visible, leading to the revelation that when Orloff rendered him invisible he forgot to make him take his fancy dress gorilla costume off first. Well, science is difficult sometimes and a mad scientist can’t be expected to remember everything. The doctor bonks semi-visible-gorilla-man on the head and he and Cecile escape. The castle burns. Something else happens that doesn’t make much sense. The end.

The print of ORLOFF & THE INVISIBLE MAN that I saw lasted 76 minutes and even that seemed a long time. Oddly enough, while it drags and the acting is on the whole dreadful, it’s nowhere near as bad as the worst Jess Franco film I have ever seen. There are a couple of instances here where the director is trying to set up an interesting shot, and perhaps if he had had another half an hour allocated to his shooting schedule he might have actually achieved it. The camera isn’t always static (it is quite a bit, though) and the locations are interesting, but that’s about it. In case the casual visitor to this site is wondering - ORLOFF & THE INVISIBLE MAN is one for hardened fanatics of this sort of thing only. You have been warned. 

The print of ORLOFF & THE INVISIBLE MAN used for this review was part of Image Entertainment’s 4 DVD Orloff box set that’s currently on sale in US discount stores for around $9. It’s up to you to decide if that’s a bargain or not.

Remo Williams - The Adventure Begins (1985)

Does anyone remember the 'Destroyer' series of paperbacks originally written by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir? I certainly do. Back in the late 1970s you couldn't move for them in newsagents, railway station bookracks, and department stores like Woolworths. The original series ran for an amazing 145 paperbacks so it's not surprising that when, in the mid-1980s, Orion Pictures was looking for a subject for a potential new franchise, they figured a movie about the adventures of Remo Williams and his Korean mentor, Chiun, could possibly kick start a series of James Bond proportions.

 With that in mind they hired Christopher Wood, writer of one of the best Bonds (THE SPY WHO LOVED ME), one of the worst Bonds (MOONRAKER) and creator of the tatty British sex comedy series that began with CONFESSIONS OF A WINDOW CLEANER  to come up with a script. They also got Guy Hamilton, a Bond director (GOLDFINGER, LIVE AND LET DIE) to film it. Sadly, REMO - UNARMED AND DANGEROUS, or REMO WILLIAMS - THE ADVENTURE BEGINS didn't do anywhere near as well as anyone was expecting, which is a shame as it's actually a charming piece of mid-1980s action-adventure.

Fred Ward is a New York cop who has his death faked and his face altered. After the back of a hospital bedpan provides inspiration for his new name (a nice touch), newly christened Remo Williams discovers that he's been recruited by a secret organisation known as CURE. It's run by Wilford Brimley who never gets out of his chair, and Remo's mentor in all things unarmed and dangerous turns out to be an elderly Korean called Chiun (Joel Grey in Oscar-nominated makeup by FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2's Carl Fullerton). Soon Remo is on his first mission, fighting baddies on the Statue of Liberty, and  taking on evil weapons dealer George Grove (Charles Cioffi from KLUTE and THE X FILES).   

Slower paced than movies of today (and some of its 1980s contemporaries it must be said), REMO WILLIAMS - THE ADVENTURE BEGINS shares a number of interesting similarities with Paul Verhoeven's later ROBOCOP. In both an average policeman is 'recreated' as someone / something else, and both boast a witty script that's bursting with quotable lines. Performances are all absolutely fine, with Grey a winner in the most endearing role, and Ward making a likeable hero who grows on you as the picture progresses. There are some fine action set-pieces, most notably one that wasn't in the script at all, but which was inspired by Guy Hamilton noticing the scaffolding around the Statue of Liberty in preparation for its centenary celebrations. 

The only real problem with REMO is its pacing. The film takes a bit too long to get going, and if anything the set-pieces are in the wrong order, with the final showdown with the villain a bit of a damp squib compared with what's gone before. That shouldn't put you off watching it, though, especially if you're of the generation that loved Saturday afternoon American television adventure fare like THE A TEAM or THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, because REMO feels just like an extended episode of one of those shows. 

Arrow Films is releasing REMO WILLIAMS - THE ADVENTURE BEGINS on Blu-ray in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The print is clean and bright and the original uncompressed Stereo 2.0 PCM soundtrack presents Craig Safan's unexpectedly subtle and meticulous score in all its glory on an isolated channel. Extras include an interview with Safan who talks about the difficult of melding a Korean ensemble with a 65 piece studio orchestra. There's also a brief history of eighties action heroes, an audio commentary with producers Larry Speigel and Judy Goldstein, interviews with Joel Gray and Carl Fullerton, a trailer, a booklet by Barry Forshaw, and a reversible cover.
  REMO WILLIAMS - THE ADVENTURE BEGINS is a lot of fun. Much lighter than its contemporaries (FIRST BLOOD, COMMANDO, etc), which of course may have been the reason for its financial failure, it remains a well-made, well-acted and thoroughly enjoyable piece of Saturday afternoon adventure hokum. In another age it would have run to a series and deservedly so.

REMO WILLIAMS - THE ADVENTURE BEGINS is out on Blu-ray from Arrow Films on 7th July 2014