Tales of Halloween (2015)

“Definitely the Lighter, Sillier Side of Halloween”

After its UK premiere at last year’s Frightfest this US anthology movie, that manages to tell ten stories in just over ninety minutes, gets a UK disc release courtesy of Arrow Films.

Over the years, it’s fair to say that British and American attitudes to the 31st of October have been markedly different. For many in the UK, Halloween night still represents an uneasy mix of pagan ritual history, coupled with an excuse for the more PURGE-like members of modern teen and twenty-something society to perform wanton acts of vandalism. In the US, on the other hand, it seems to be mainly about sweets. Oh, and having a party, with a distinct orientation towards children and family fun. 

I say this because if you’re expecting a grim and downbeat anthology movie about witchcraft, cruelty and the general grimness that we might expect from a Halloween here in the UK (as I think quite a few Frightfest attendees including myself were anticipating when this one premiered) you’re going to be disappointed by TALES OF HALLOWEEN, a movie that’s very much about the lighter, sillier, and very much more American aspect to this particular night of the year. 

The movie opens with a cracking credit sequence designed by Ashley Thorpe that deserves not to have the credits reeled out over it. The ten stories all take place during one Halloween night, pretty much on the same street as far as I could tell. We begin with Dave Parker’s Sweet Tooth, a cautionary tale featuring a pre- BLOOD FEAST remake Robert Rusler and Caroline Williams who make the mistake of eating all their little boy’s sweets. 

In Darren Lynn Bousman’s The Night Billy Raised Hell Barry Bostwick with horns takes his little friend around the neighbourhood to play some ‘hilarious’ pranks on a Jeffrey Combs lookalike and others. Adam Gierasch’s Trick involves some eyeball violence, while Axelle Carolyn’s Grim Grinning Ghost crams in a host of cameos before getting to the subject of the story. Lucky McKee’s Ding Dong is a thinly veiled tale of domestic abuse with a hilarious Pollyanna Mackintosh looking like Donna Summer with four arms. 

Mike Mendez scores a daft hit with Friday the 31st, a tale of a tiny space alien that ends up chasing a Jason Voorhees lookalike. John Skipp and Andrew Kasch’s This Means War details a feud between neighbours and their garden decorations, pretty much all set to music. Paul Solet does a backstreet Halloween Western with The Weak and the Wicked and Ryan Schifrin’s The Ransom of Rusty Rex is all about how John Landis has his son kidnapped for ransom. Or does he? Last and best and daftest of the lot has Neil Marshall directing his tale of a monster killer pumpkin on the loose in Bad Seed, with Joe Dante turning up at the end.

I have to admit that, much as I wanted to enjoy TALES OF HALLOWEEN, I found it a bit of a slog, with the first bit that was actually any good occurring way past the halfway mark. A couple of these stories would work well as comedy sketches, others just seem an excuse to parade a host of famous friends in bit parts. Bad Seed is the kind of solid silly comedy the Zucker brothers used to do so well, and Friday the 31st could have been lifted direct from something like ROBOT CHICKEN. You’ll probably have trouble remembering the rest of the stories the next day.

Arrow’s DVD comes with a number of extras, including a commentary track, deleted scene, behind the scenes, photo gallery and storyboards. Exclusive to the Blu-ray are a number of shorts including the rough-as-VHS-ever-got Brain Death from Neil Marshall, Axelle Carolyn’s The Halloween Kid, Joe Lynch desperately needing a drink and finding a serial killer in Thirsty, thirty seconds of a plasticene man and his penis in Lucky McKee’s Boilly, a brain-frying pop video called Hot Rod Worm and a great little short by Ryan Schifrin called No Rest for the Wicked - go straight to this one as it’s by far the best of the bunch.

TALES OF HALLOWEEN is out on Blu-ray and DVD from Arrow Films on 24th October 2016

Darling (2015)

“The New American TENANT”

Writer-director Mickey Keating’s follow up to POD (2015 - premiered at Frightfest last year) gets a DVD release in the UK courtesy of Soda Pictures.

         Darling (Lauren Ashley Carter) is the name of the troubled (we are soon to find out) young woman who gets the job as caretaker for Sean Young’s posh New York townhouse. She (and we) get a brief info dump on how allegedly it’s the oldest house in the city, that someone once tried to conjure up the devil in one of the rooms, and that the previous caretaker killed herself by jumping from an upstairs balcony. Then Darling's left alone to get on with things and quite possibly go even more mad than she already is.

         So far, so Polanski (the black and white photography helps with this) and indeed, soon we’re in REPULSION land by way of THE TENANT with a good dollop of David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD thrown in as Darling starts to experience flashbacks (or are they?) and ends up inviting Henry (Brian Morvant) whom she meets in a bar back for brandy and horrible things. After that there’s a touch of Abel Ferrara’s MS.45 before things get even more stuttery and loony. I won’t tell you the ending because, well, you have to watch the film for that.

         Proudly wearing its influences on its sleeve (and director Keating cites some of the above as reference points in the three short featurettes that are extras on the disc) DARLING has loads of scary style, some properly disturbing imagery, and a great central performance from Lauren Ashley Carter. In fact the only criticism I would make about DARLING is that it feels like a long short film rather than a feature (if you see what I mean). The photography, the soundscape and the general sense of weirdness are all excellent, but there’s not quite enough substance there to make this entirely satisfying.

          That said, Keating comes across on the extras as extremely knowledgeable about the history of cinema in general and weird cinema in particular and a director’s commentary would have been most welcome. On the basis of POD and this he’s definitely one to watch and if you fancy a bit of late-night messing with your mind DARLING is definitely worth a watch.  

Mickey Keating's DARLING is getting a UK DVD release from Soda Pictures on 24th October 2016. Here's the trailer: 

Preacher (2016)

“Twin Peaks - Texas Style!”

Well the start of this one certainly feels like it. Courtesy of Sony Pictures, here comes the first season of PREACHER, an adaptation of writer Garth Ennis and artist Steve Dillon’s Vertigo comic book series of the same name.

Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper) is the preacher in a small Texas town. He styles his hair similar to Jack Nance in ERASERHEAD (another Lynch connection?), and has a Dark and Mysterious past, which he shared with his ex girlfriend Tulip (Ruth Negga). She arrives back in his life about the same time an Irish vampire called Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) jumps 30 000 feet from an aeroplane and lands with a splat in a nearby field, pausing only to eat an inquisitive cow in order to reconstitute himself.

But it’s not just in Texas that odd things are happening. An African preacher, a priest of the Church of Satan, and Tom Cruise all explode, and before you can say “I beg your pardon?” Jesse has been possessed by the same extra-terrestrial force that did them in. He doesn’t explode, though. Instead it gives him the ability to control others by simply telling them what to do. This results in a chap cutting out his own heart and giving it to his mother (a bit of a mistake, that one,) and a local girl in a coma opening her eyes for the first time in months. And there are even bigger things planned for Jesse and his friends. 

PREACHER starts off really well. There are plenty of quirky characters with interesting back stories, some good acting (Jackie Earle Haley turns up as the evil boss behind the local ‘Meat and Power’ company) and everyone has obviously tried to hard to give this a graphic novel ‘look’. Unfortunately, it does all start to drag a bit after that, with far too much talking and not enough weird things happening. Still, it is early days and apparently the second season premiere is set for 2017, so it may well pick up (the original comic book runs to over 70 issues).

Sony’s three disc Blu-ray and DVD release contains all ten episodes, with deleted and extended scenes, a piece on the stunts and more information on the pilot episode. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release is a gag reel, and a couple of featurettes - ‘Chainsaw Fight Breakdown’ and “Behind the Killing Machine’ which were not provided for review. 

Preacher Season One is out from Sony on Blu-ray and DVD from Monday 17th October 2016

Burnt Offerings (1976)

“Oliver Reed Vs Haunted House” 

And you probably won’t guess who wins if you haven’t seen this, TV Movie maestro Dan Curtis’ shot at big screen haunted house horror, now given a new dual format Blu-ray and DVD release courtesy of Arrow Films.

The Rolf family (father Oliver Reed, mother Karen Black, aunt Bette Davis and son Lee Harcourt Montgomery from BEN and Curtis’ own DEAD OF NIGHT - the ‘Bobby’ episode) move into a remote country mansion for the summer. Even the presence of a flamboyantly eccentric and wheelchair-bound Burgess Meredith to help explain the (very low) rent doesn’t worry them, nor the knowledge that apparently the ancient and reclusive Mrs Allardyce will be living in the top room during their stay.

But they should be concerned, because while Mrs Allardyce is nowhere to be seen, Karen Black starts behaving as if the old lady is in fact there. Lee Montgomery ends up close to death on several occasions, Bette has a stroke and Oliver, while staying off the shandies (for the most part) starts to be haunted by visions of his mother’s funeral, and the scary chauffeur he remembers from it. Is Mrs Allardyce hiding somewhere in the house, or is it the building itself that’s the villain of the piece?

Dan Curtis was best known for TV horror. Movies like THE NIGHT STALKER, TRILOGY OF TERROR and DEAD OF NIGHT still evoke fond memories in horror fans. His soap opera DARK SHADOWS never made it over here but it was instrumental in making his name and giving him the chance to do other work within the genre. 

Unfortunately, with the transition to a lengthy cinema film (nearly two hours) Curtis does lose his way somewhat, with an idea that would be better suited to the shorter television format. Performances are all fine, as is the music by his regular composer Robert Cobert. But BURNT OFFERINGS still lacks something substantial enough to make the movie ultimately unsatisfactory. It’s not entirely a dead loss, but don’t go in expecting too much. Besides, there weren't many mid-1970s movies that boasted the technical credits of both Eugene GORGO Lourie as production designer and Jacques ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN Marquette as director of photography.

As always, Arrow have gone the extra mile to give their presentation of BURNT OFFERINGS some decent extras. There are two commentary tracks, one from Richard Harland Smith and a second from Dan Curtis, Karen Black and screenwriter William F Nolan. Nolan is also the subject of one of the featurettes in which he talks about his collaborations with the director. There’s also a great interview with Lee Montgomery, who shows us his signed script for the film. As well as that there's an interview with character actor Anthony James (who plays the chauffeur), plus a promotional gallery, reversible sleeve and new writing in a booklet that’s limited to the disc’s first pressing. 

Dan Curtis' BURNT OFFERINGS is coming out on Dual Format Blu-ray and DVD from Arrow Films in Monday 17th October 2016

Stigmata (1999)

“Pop Video Horror - With Extra Dan Brown & Fighting Priests!”

Before director Rupert Wainwright made the rubbish remake of THE FOG (2005) and THE COLLECTED VIDEOS OF MC HAMMER (2002), and after producer Frank Mancuso Jr helped deliver numerous crappy FRIDAY THE 13TH sequels to an unsuspecting (and frequently unforgiving) public, the two combined their talents to make STIGMATA, now out in the UK on a dual format Blu-ray and DVD combo set from Eureka.

I know, it doesn’t sound terribly promising from the off, does it? Patricia Arquette’s the star of this one, playing Frankie Paige, hairdresser and atheist, who seems to keep an inordinate number of Ritz Cracker boxes in her flat (watch out for them as the camera closes in on her in bed early on). Frankie works at some kind of hairdressing salon-cum-tattoo parlour, goes to nightclubs and generally indulges in the kind of habits that suggest this film is trying terribly hard to make out she’s a bit of an edgy sort, when in fact the girls in a Rob Zombie picture would be overwhelmed by how hygienic and clean living she and her friends are.

Frankie starts to get stigmata. Punctures appear in her wrists, she is subject to a ghostly whipping on the underground, and hawthorn tree-like scratches appear on her forehead. What’s going on?

Evil Catholic Priest Head of the Vatican Jonathan Pryce (because you just know he’s going to be) despatches defrocked organic chemist and born again Catholic priest Gabriel Byrne to find out if there’s anything to ‘that CCTV video on the Pittsburgh subway’ (it must be a quiet week, potential miracle-wise).

Gabriel finds Patricia doing a sub-Italian EXORCIST routine while writing Aramaic on the walls of her flat. Could she be Jesus trying to communicate? Could this have anything to do with the mythical so-called Gospel of Jesus that Jonathan Pryce and his gang have been trying to suppress by excommunicating anyone who discovers anything about it? If this was an OMEN movie they would all have died in ludicrous but jolly creative deaths. But it isn’t, so instead we have to put up with Mr Wainwright’s rather overly flashy pop video way of telling this particular convoluted tale as the movie heads off with gay abandon into Dan Brown conspiracy theory territory.

STIGMATA is quite daft, and it gets dafter the more the film tries to explain itself. That's actually a shame as I was quite enjoying Ms Arquette bleeding for no reason and writing on walls until the explanation came along. It’s certainly not boring, though, and if you fancy something that’s a cross between one of David Seltzer’s TV God squad mini-series things like REVELATIONS (2005) minus Natascha McElhone’s sexy nun but with lots of extra Dan Brown and Catholic priests having a scrap you’ll have fun with this. I just wish FATHER TED had done a version of it.

Eureka’s release comes with a Rupert Wainwright commentary track, a making of, deleted scenes, an alternate ending, a music video with Natalie Imbruglia (now that takes me back), trailer and isolated music (some of which is by Billy Corgan) and effects track. 

Rupert Wainwright's STIGMATA is coming out from Eureka in a dual format DVD and Blu-ray set on Monday 17th October 2016

The Burning (1981)

“Shear Classic Slasher Horror”

A terrible pun hopefully appreciated by anyone familiar with this, Tony Maylam’s post FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980) slasher created by Bob & Harvey Weinstein, and now given a limited edition steelbook (!) dual format release by Arrow.

Mean old Cropsy (Lou David) is the caretaker at Camp Blackfoot. Some students decide to scare him by placing a burning skull by his bedside close to the large can of kerosene he presumably keeps there for any midnight fuel emergencies.

In the tradition of the best public information films, Cropsy pays dearly for his improper storage of a flammable liquid, and ends up in a burns unit for five years before being wheeled to the door and bid a not-so-cheery farewell as he’s dumped on the streets of New York.

Understandably miffed by his lack of follow up in the community, and unable to express this as a result of his face resembling an unskilled five year old’s attempt at a papier mache Guy Fawkes before it goes on the bonfire, Cropsy takes out his frustrations on a prostitute before setting off for one of those US countryside summer camps we don’t have here in the UK and a bunch of teenagers on whom he can vent his rage that include Jason Alexander, Holly Hunter and Fisher Stevens.

Sadly, despite gaining skills in canoeing, the use of certain garden tools and most of all, in creeping threateningly around a forest for lengthy periods of time without actually doing anything to anyone, Cropsy meets a grim end as he mistakenly messes about with a blowtorch in an abandoned mine - another public information lesson there, I think.

THE BURNING was one of a wave of movies that followed in the wake of Sean Cunningham’s FRIDAY THE 13TH and is neither the best nor the worst of them. With a bigger budget than many it comes across as rather more polished than some of the ropier efforts, and the standard of acting ranges from okay (the leads) to rubbish (where did they get that chap who works in the burns unit from?). The synth score by Rick Wakeman has been highly praised but I’ve always considered it mediocre at best in a decade that gave us the best work of composers like Fredric Myrow, Charles Bernstein, Richard Band and of course John Carpenter. 

The real star of THE BURNING is, of course, Tom Savini, whose ‘Grande Illusions’ as he called them in his book, are still a grisly joy to behold. Those who fondly remember THE BURNING from its initial (mistaken) uncut UK VHS release on the Thorn EMI label may be surprised to discover just how briefly these effects are seen.

Arrow’s Blu-ray of THE BURNING gives us an excellent transfer and plenty of extras, including three commentary tracks (one of which is new) and interviews with stars Lou David and Leah Ayres, editor Jack Sholder, makeup god Tom Savini and a new interview with composer Rick Wakeman, who is always good value and doesn’t disappoint here. You also get a trailer, image gallery and some behind the scenes stuff. The first pressing also comes with a booklet by Julian Kerswell. 

THE BURNING is getting a limited edition steelbook dual format release from Arrow on 10th October 2016. 

If you prefer to wait for the standard edition that will be out on 19th December 2016, just in time for Christmas! 

Bite (2015)

“A different kind of REPULSION”

Chad Archibald’s squishy subtextual horror picture, which received its premiere at London Frightfest last year in front of a sell-out crowd (I know because I was there), gets a UK DVD release from Second Sight.

Casey (Elma Bergovic) is about to get married. For her bachelorette party she travels with her two best friends to a resort ‘down south’ for sun, sea and booze. While there, as well as dancing, getting trashed and managing to lose most of her stuff (including her diamond engagement ring), Casey takes a dip in a natural pool and gets bitten on the bottom by something other than one of the local boys.

It’s when she gets back to her flat where both her fiance Jared (Jordan Gray) and his domineering mother live that the problems start. Although to be honest, Casey’s personal problems are actually already in full swing. She’s getting married in a week and she’s really not sure she wants to be. Jared wants kids and she doesn’t. Jared’s mother has forbidden him to have sex with her before marriage and he’s actually complied (always a worrying sign). Then to top it all, Casey starts to turn into an egg-laying insect monster thing.

Despite how I might have just sold it, BITE is not a comedy. Reviews have likened it to a Cronenberg picture, which it is on a superficial level (body horror, Casey vomits liquid that dissolves flesh) but in actual fact the movie’s style has far more in common with early Polanski. Early on Casey ends up trapped in her flat as her transformation begins, her change quite possibly instigated not so much by a tropical insect bite but rather by the social pressures that have culminated in her no longer being able to cope with the future life she is being forced into by those around her. As those social pressures intrude on her new life, she kills them. 

For much of BITE‘s running time I was expecting the film to reveal that the gloopy, slimy, egg-covered nightmare that Casey’s flat becomes was actually all in her head. The ending scuppers that idea, but I just wonder if that’s what writer-director Chad Archibald was aiming for - a character study of a woman pressured by society to adopt the traditional roles she isn’t yet ready for and indeed may never be, and the horror that ensues when it becomes obvious that’s not going to happen. In this way, BITE is more art house than exploitation horror, and as such is definitely worthy of attention. 

Second Sight’s DVD has no extras (boo!) apart from two sound options. A director’s commentary for this one would have been very much appreciated. 

BITE is out from Second Sight on UK DVD on 
Monday 10th October 2016