Pray For Death (1985)

“A decent slice of 1980s ninja action”

         After starring in Cannon’s Ninja Trilogy, Sho Kosugi went on to topline a number of mid-1980s martial arts exploitation pictures. First up were Emmett Alstom’s NINE DEATHS OF THE NINJA for Crown International, and PRAY FOR DEATH for Transworld, now released on UK DVD & Blu-ray by 101 Films.

         Akira Saito (Kosugi) is unsatisfied with life in Japan. His wife Aiko (Donna K Benz) wants to move to the US with their two little boys (played by Kosugi’s real life sons). They purchase a grubby restaurant in a rundown part of Los Angeles, which turns out to double as a drop where bent policemen leave stolen goods for Michael Constantine’s gang to pick up. 

Unfortunately one of the policemen is even more crooked than usual and keeps a valuable necklace for himself. When chief goon Limehouse Willie (screenwriter James Booth) fails to find the stolen merchandise, he suspects Akira and kidnaps his son. What he doesn’t know is that back in Japan Akira was a ninja. Still plagued by guilt over killing his evil brother in front of their adopted father (Robert QUINCY Ito in lots of old age makeup) Akira believe he has set aside his ninja ways. But sooner than you can say NINJA DEATH WISH Akira becomes a killing machine and the stage is set for his revenge on Constantine and his gang.

         Not as good as either ENTER THE NINJA or REVENGE OF THE NINJA, PRAY FOR DEATH is still lots of 1980s ninja fun for the undiscriminating fan. Tighter editing in the middle and a stronger music score to keep everything moving would have been an immense help, but there’s still plenty of action, including an opening scene that’s plays delightfully with audience expectations.

         Gordon Hessler (SCREAM & SCREAM AGAIN, THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD) doesn’t handle things quite as well as Sam Firstenberg, but he does manage one memorable scene in a mannikin factory that manage to be both eerie and suspenseful at the same time.

         101 Films’ Blu-ray transfer looks great. If you’re a fan of PRAY FOR DEATH  from the days of VHS you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised to discover just how good it looks in 2.35:1 widescreen. There are no extras at all which is a shame but understandable, especially as Gordon Hessler is no longer with us. 

101 Films are releasing Gordon Hessler's PRAY FOR DEATH on UK DVD and Blu-ray on 29 February 2016

Valentino (1977)

“Top quality biopic from our Uncle Ken”

The BFI continues its valuable work of preserving the films of Ken Russell on Blu-ray with the release of his lavish 1977 biopic of the life of silent film star Rudolph Valentino.

Hollywood 1926: following mock newsreel footage we are shown the coffin containing the body of Rudolph Valentino (played by Rudolf Nureyev) in an opening scene that virtually screams ABOMINABLE DR PHIBES with its gorgeous art deco production design. The funeral home is broken into by the hysterical mourners who have been besieging the building. Once order is restored, the important women in his life remember their time with him via flashbacks up to his death.

These include Bianca (Emily Bolton from TENKO and MOONRAKER), June (Felicity Kendal from THE GOOD LIFE & subsequently immortalised in THE YOUNG ONES), deliciously mad Alla Nazimova (Leslie Caron) and Natacha Rambova (Michelle Phillips) who seduces Valentino in a dance of the seven veils that made it onto the poster and lots of the stills used to advertise the film (and the Blu-ray box cover up the top there). Battles with studio bosses, a lucrative contract advertising perfume, and a boxing match with a known heavyweight champion all follow before Valentino’s untimely death from peritonitis and associated complications. 

Ken Russell does a fine job of bringing Valentino’s life story to the screen, managing to remain admirably restrained in some place while going superbly over the top in others (especially the scenes in the funeral home). He’s ably assisted by a fine cast including all of the above plus a cadre of (mainly) character actors, meaning you’ll be spotting the likes of Linda Thorson (THE AVENGERS), Alfred Marks (SCREAM & SCREAM AGAIN), Peter Vaughan (DIE DIE MY DARLING), Dudley Sutton (THE DEVILS) and Anton Diffring (THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH). As I’ve mentioned above, the production and costume design (by Philip Harrison and Shirley Russell respectively) are occasionally  breathtaking, echoing Danilo Donati’s work on Fellini’s CASANOVA from the previous year.

The BFI’s dual format Blu-ray and DVD edition comes with a number of excellent extras, including archival material of Ludovic Kennedy interviewing Nureyev about the film, and a nine minute short of Valentino’s actual funeral from 1926. Derek Malcolm’s Guardian Lecture interview with Ken Russell from 1987 is audio only, but is accompanied by the film so it serves as a second commentary. The commentary proper is by the always excellent Tim Lucas who yet again provides a fact-packed track that saves you having to read a textbook about the movie.

There’s a new interview with Dudley Sutton who discusses working with Russell, and some of his other projects (but sadly not COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES) in a charming twenty minutes that’s also a delight to listen to. You also get TV spots, trailers, a picture gallery, a short piece where Lynn Seymour remembers Rudolf Nureyev, and a booklet of essays. The entire package is excellent and another highly recommended release from the BFI. 

The BFI are releasing Ken Russell's VALENTINO on dual format DVD & Blu-ray on 29th February 2016

Navy SEALS Vs Zombies (2015)

“Sunday Teatime Timewaster”

Well it is. If you like zombies. And Navy SEALS (Sea, Air & Land Teams, so I’m informed). And, of course, the two together in a smackdown in the city of Baton Rouge in Louisiana, which is where this film takes place.

         While the US Vice President is visiting the above town, a zombie outbreak occurs. Nobody knows why or really seems that bothered. Michael Dudikoff - the AMERICAN NINJA himself - sends in a crack team of Navy SEALS to get the US VP out and save him from the impending ZA. They do but before anyone can say WTF the helicopter they’ve got the VP into crashes and he’s presumably DOA from some zombie’s MO. But the SEALS are given a second SR mission to access a tower and rescue some PhDs who have been working on a cure. 

         Cue lots of shooting, zombies, and the kind of acronym-filled dialogue that seems to pervade films like these. Some of the Navy SEALS are quite fat and I was given to wondering just what kind of seals the Navy had actually ordered. There’s certainly no beach balls being balanced on noses here, but there are some quite massive beards being balanced on chins - is one allowed to boast such facial hair in a crack commando unit? Mightn’t it get in the way, or end up being used in torture and interogation techniques by the other side? “Oooh look at you you’re beard’s rubbish. Now tell us your government’s plans or we’ll taunt you again.”

         NAVY SEALS VS ZOMBIES is actually a very by the numbers bit of zombie action. There’s no real style, no wit, and no originality. Near the start there’s a news clip where they can’t spell the word discretion “Viewer discression advised” it says, which made this viewer cringe more than any of the blood and guts on display. That said, if you like this sort of thing it’ll certainly help you waste 84 minutes. There are no extras. 

NAVY SEALS VS ZOMBIES is out on DVD from Icon on 

15th February 2016

Crimson Peak (2015)

“As good as Jan de Bont’s THE HAUNTING”

The latest film from Guillermo del Toro, director of CRONOS, THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE, PAN’S LABYRINTH and the HELLBOY movies amongst others, comes to UK Blu-ray and DVD courtesy of Universal Pictures. 

America 1887: little Edith Cushing is visited by her mother’s ghost, who warns her to beware of something called ‘Crimson Peak’. Fourteen years later, Edith is now played by Mia Wasikowska and wants to be a writer ‘like Mary Shelley’. She meets Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) who has come to visit her wealthy industrialist father in the hope that he and his colleagues will finance a mining device that Sharpe has invented. 

          Edith’s father refuses and does the ‘Stay away from seducing my daughter because I suspect all you want is my money’ routine, for which he subsequently gets his head bashed in by a not-so-mysterious someone. By the machinations of the overtly contrived gothic plot that this film is, Edith ends up marrying Sir Thomas and goes to live with him and his sister in the UK. In fact, they go to Cumberland, where we see not a sausage but instead lots of the red clay that is apparently common to the area, and which the Sharpes' crumbling old manor house was built on and is slowly sinking into. 

The house has no roof and little in the way of heating. Edith takes a bath and manages not look in the slightest bit chilly, even when she gets out to investigate one of the many ghostly apparitions that begin to appear to her now that she’s firmly ensconced in gothic land. Why are the ghosts appearing? Should the fact that Sir Thomas lives with his sister and absolutely nobody else, not even a single servant, bother her? Will Sir Thomas’ floppy goth haircut get caught in the digging machine he’s set up near the front of the house? It will if he leans any nearer to it, I can tell you.

CRIMSON PEAK looks absolutely gorgeous. The photography is lush and glowing, and the production design is so deliciously gothic you can’t take your eyes of it. But that’s it. There’s really not much else to recommend this one, I’m afraid. The plot is daft and seems to ultimately revolve around killing lots of people in order to build a digger. The two leads (Wasikowska and Hiddleston) play their roles as blandly as the young love interests in a Hammer or Corman/Poe film. The problem is, nobody ever cared about those characters back then either, because it was Price, Cushing and Lee, or even John Carson or Eric Porter, who were the ones keeping us interested. CRIMSON PEAK has nobody to keep us interested. Nobody at all. And when your cast is in danger of being out-acted by the scenery you’re in a lot of trouble.

I wanted to like CRIMSON PEAK. In fact I really wanted to love it. But by fifty minutes in I was desperate for something to actually happen, because by then the seduction of the rich visuals and the lovely sets had worn off. Call it a gothic romance, gothic melodrama, or whatever you like, CRIMSON PEAK is still horribly, horribly boring. Burn Gorman (AND THEN THERE WERE NONE) turns up for a tiny character turn, and only goes to emphasise how sadly lacking CRIMSON PEAK is in actors who can bring the necessary life to gothic characters in a movie like this. There’s no depth, no verve, no energy to any of them. They’re all deader than the house that no-one in their right mind would live in. I’m really, really sorry Guillermo del Toro because I think you’re a fantastic film-maker, but this is movie is just eye candy, in fact eye candy that's so excessive it starts to make your eyes smart after a bit, if you haven’t already fallen asleep.

Universal’s DVD and Blu-ray contains a number of extras for the CRIMSON PEAK fan. There’s a feature-length commentary track by del Toro, five deleted scenes, four tiny making of featurettes (under the collective title I Remember CRIMSON PEAK) and six other short behind the scenes pieces that last between five and twelve minutes each. If I told you they are a bugger to negotiate between the different menus you might say I was being unfair and perhaps I am. But CRIMSON PEAK really is a massively disappointing film. In YA gothic romance terms it’s nowhere near as good as TWILIGHT. In terms of gothic horror I can’t really rate it at all. Sorry Guillermo. 

Universal are releasing Guillermo del Toro's CRIMSON PEAK on Blu-ray and DVD on 15th February 2016

Birdemic - Shock & Terror (2010)

“Enough things wrong with it to fill a PhD thesis”

In 2010 future GODZILLA director Gareth Edwards made a film with very little money, creating the impressive special effects with the aid of his laptop. That very same year, Vietnamese director James Nguyen used the same principles to make his own monster movie, utilising a tiny budget and home-made computer generated effects. The difference between Mr Edwards' MONSTERS and BIRDEMIC is that Mr Nguyen got it all horribly, unbelievably, breathtakingly wrong. If you’ve never experienced the unique motion picture event that is BIRDEMIC, now’s your chance because Severin Films are bringing it out on Blu-ray.

Uncanny special effects

For some mysterious reason birds start to attack the residents of an American seaside town. Well, they’re not really birds, more the CGI animated version of cardboard cut-outs that can barely manage a flap let alone pose any serious threat to anyone. Oh, except that they explode. I don’t know why. I don’t think anyone else does either. It all turns out to be due to that “damned global warming”. There probably a message here, and if you can make it all the way through the film BIRDEMIC will certainly leave you thinking, just not necessarily about environmental issues.

This ain't no SUMMER HOLIDAY

If nothing else, James Nguyen’s BIRDEMIC should stand as an inspiration to all aspiring film-makers out there. Because with this in the world, the chances are they're going to come up with something better, if perhaps not necessarily quite so entertaining.

More very special effects!

Where to start with the wrongness of BIRDEMIC? The sound track recording is as amateur as me and my brother interviewing our cat when I was nine; the camera frequently can’t frame what little action is going on; scenes unnecessary to what little plot there is, like a man filling his car with petrol, seem to go on forever. After forty seven minutes of BIRDEMIC’s painful and meandering romantic subplot we finally get our first view of the killer birds. And yes, you really will never have seen anything quite like them before. BIRDEMIC is a film that makes Ed Wood and his counterparts look like genius film-makers, and how much you’re going to enjoy this will depend directly on your tolerance (or curiosity - this is indeed a very curious film) to such low rent rubbish.

Lessons in promoting your film No.1 - Can you see what he's managed to get wrong here?

Severin’s Blu-ray comes with plenty of extras, including two commentary tracks, one from James Nguyen himself and one from the two leading actors. There are a couple of deleted scenes (if one was feeling unkind one could argue that the entirety of BIRDEMIC is just one long scene deserving of being deleted). You also get Nguyen’s tour of American cities and some British ones too! This extra is one of the best bits as you get to see audiences experiencing the film for the first time, and the subsequent raucous reception BIRDEMIC received at these premieres. There’s also a Severin trailer reel that one presumes promises forthcoming Blu’s of GWENDOLINE, BMX BANDITS and (yes!) PSYCHOMANIA!

Severin Films are releasing James Nguyen's BIRDEMIC SHOCK & TERROR on UK Blu-ray and DVD on 15th February 2016, right after Valentine's Day 

The Mutilator (1984)

“Exhaustively good value for money”

Sounding like a film about an especially aggressive American wrestler, Buddy Cooper’s FALL BREAK comes to UK Blu-ray and DVD in a splendid package that contains more extras than you can shake an unfeasibly huge boathook at.

We kick off with little Ed deciding to surprise his father for the man’s birthday by cleaning his gun collection. Unfortunately all does not go as planned, and by accident Ed shoots his mother through the chest, providing a warning for gun lovers everywhere, and the only (and presumably unintended) subtext in this film. Dad arrives home, drags his wife’s body over to the drinks cabinet and offers the dead woman a sip of Jack Daniels.

Not a murder weapon, unfortunately

Now it's ten years later, possibly - it’s not terribly clear. What is clear is that while Ed has grown into a man in his early twenties (at least he looks as if he is) the fashions in the area of North Carolina where THE MUTILATOR is set have changed not one iota. Who knows? Perhaps they’re still walking around over there with their sweaters casually knotted around their necks right at this moment.

         Ed receives a phone call to say that his father has had a bit of a funny turn. Ed and his friends decide to spend their fall break vacation at his father’s beach house. Dad's hiding there, has gone completely mad, and starts bumping them off one by one, using the kind of items one might keep in a holiday home such as an antique battle axe and a massive boat hook.

Definitely murder weapons

        THE MUTILATOR arrived at the end of the first wave of American slasher movies that had been kickstarted by John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN and Sean Cunningham’s FRIDAY THE 13TH, and it’s unapologetically in the same mode as all the imitators that followed. So if you love PROM NIGHT, MY BLOODY VALENTINE, FINAL EXAM and all the others you’ll love this one too. If you’re unfamiliar with the slasher subgenre, then a better description for this is probably the one coined by Leslie Halliwell for any number of horror movies he didn’t like, namely ‘short sharp shocks punctuate slabs of tedium’. Admittedly THE MUTILATOR does get going in its final act, but don’t expect too much of it.

Murder weapon in use

Arrow’s Blu-ray and DVD offers so many extras that this has to be one of the best value for money packages of the month. As well as two commentary tracks there’s a feature-length making of, which means if you’re an 80s slasher fan with the film itself as well you’ve already got six hours of entertainment right there. But that’s not all. You also get a charming little introduction from Mr Cooper and friend, a new piece featuring Mark Shostrom whose effects work on this is really very good indeed, a short interview with composer Michael Minard (again a lot of fun), a behind the scenes reel, trailers, the full length theme song to the film (with instrumental!) and the screenplay on DVD-ROM, making the entire MUTILATOR package exhaustively good value for money. 

Arrow are releasing Buddy Cooper's THE MUTILATOR aka

FALL BREAK on dual format Blu-ray and DVD on 

15th February 2016

Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970)

“The best thing about it is the title”

         Not one of director Mario Bava’s best (although it is better than DR GOLDFOOT & THE GIRL BOMBS which I had the misfortune of reviewing on here last week) FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON has been given the lovely Blu-ray treatment by Arrow. If you’ve never seen a Mario Bava film before don’t start with this. I made that mistake many years ago and wondered why on earth people thought his work was so impressive. Watch BLACK SABBATH (1963) instead (probably my favourite) or maybe LISA AND THE DEVIL (1972). But not this. If you’re undecided about watching this specific Bava picture then hopefully the following will help.

Nice framing

         A group of unpleasant Italians with appalling fashion sense and a taste for J&B (there are often two bottles of it on display) congregate at a “modern” (for 1970s loonies with no taste and no sense of practicalities) villa on an isolated island. Cut off from the mainland they soon start to be bumped off. Everyone’s there to try and bid for the formula to a revolutionary resin. But Professor Farell (William Berger) is sticking to his chunky sweater and sandal-wearing roots and says he wants to ‘do science for the good of mankind’. Or something like that. Which begs the question why is he there in the first place. 

More nice framing

         As we near the end virtually everyone is dead. We eventually discover who the killer was in one of the stupidest endings for one of these things ever filmed. Seriously - I’ve watched FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON three times now (because I’m possibly as mad as whoever came up with some of the dreadful costumes in this) and the final revelatory speech still makes my jaw drop. It’s a very poor ending indeed, and smacks of someone who has got so bored with the project they’re decided to do a Jess Franco and leave the audience with any old nonsense.

Horrible rotating bed in case you like nausea with your sex.

Ah yes, Jess Franco. If you had shown me the opening thirty minutes of this with no prior knowledge and asked me to guess a director it would have been His Jessness. The camera zooms in and out and in and out, there are a few wobbly shots of the setting sun, and an interest in weird architecture, all of which would suggest the slide-trombone-wielding hand of Mr Franco here. 

One reason to watch FIVE DOLLS

         But it’s not. It’s Mario Bava, who really should have known better. As should whoever approved the music score, which is another truly awful aspect to this film that cannot be forgiven. It’s as if someone lost the tapes for the orchestral Bruno Nicolai score that was intended to accompany this one and instead some bloke knocked it up on his Bontempi in 24 hours. Possibly one of the worst, most intrusive and most inappropriate scores to grace an Italian horror film, Piero Umiliani’s jazzy rubbish will be stuck in your head for hours afterwards, even though you won’t want it there.

Two reasons to watch FIVE DOLLS

         Are there any good points? Well, it IS Bava and so there are a few nicely framed shots, as well as at least one clever discovery of a murder. But the rest of the film is so boring that these are little recompense. At about forty minutes in one character says “Everyone seems to be waiting for something that’s not happening” and we know exactly what she means.

Bloody murder! At least you can't hear the music

Arrow’s Blu-ray comes with Italian and English dialogue tracks, and an option where you can just play the music if you’re completely insane. Tim Lucas provides us with his usual, thoroughly scholarly, work in a commentary track and there’s an hour long Bava documentary from 2000. 

         Oh, and I should probably mention FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON has got the supremely lovely Edwige Fenech in it. So there you go - one good reason for watching it after all. And I bet I end up watching it again someday for her if nothing else. If I ever get that theme tune out of my head. 

Arrow Films released Mario Bava's FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON on dual format UK Blu-ray and DVD on 

1st February 2016