Into the Grizzly Maze (2014)

The good old-fashioned 1970s-style ecohorror picture makes a more than welcome return with INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE, which is a far better title for this than either RED MACHINE (its German release title) or ENDANGERED (one of its working titles), mainly because it tells you what kind of monster you’ll be getting.

A massive, rampaging grizzly bear is killing people in an Alaskan forest in a variety of horrible ways - tearing out throats, ripping off arms and legs and not caring a jot if its victims are armed with guns or chainsaws. Bad boy hero with a girl’s name  Rowan (James Marsden) arrives in town with the intention of finding the bear and killing it, and hopefully finding his missing friend and native American guide Johnny Cadillac at the same time. Meanwhile his cop brother Beckett (Thomas Jane from THE MIST) isn’t happy to see Rowan back, nor is he happy to have to go into the forest himself to hunt one of the bears he has been involved in an extensive protection programme with. Meanwhile Beckett’s deaf wife Michelle (Piper Perabo) is in the forest as well, doing something eco-friendly but hardly equipped to deal with the weather let alone a rampant evil grizzly.

How do we know the grizzly is evil? And desperate? And perhaps ‘something unnatural’? Because resident expert bear hunter and all-round marvellously eccentric Douglas (Billy Bob Thornton) tells us it is. Soon he’s been recruited by Sheriff Sully (Scott Glenn) to shoot the bear as well, and pretty soon everyone is in the misty depths of the freezing forest, discovering maggot-ridden corpses and fending off bear attacks before the final, supremely entertaining, showdown.

Director David Hackl was production designer on SAW II, III & IV and directed SAW V. Here, in INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE he demonstrates a fine understanding of how the old ecohorrors like ‘Big’ Edward L Montoro’s production GRIZZLY (1977) worked, and actually manages a far better job here than director William Girdler did with that film. He’s more than ably assisted by a fine collection of character actors who help immensely to make everything in between the bear attacks interesting. There’s a reasonable amount of CGI but it’s never intrusive, and the movie never has to resort to using a man in a bear costume for close-ups because the performance they get out of Bart the Bear (playing the villain of the piece - or is he?) is just splendid, and he fully deserves the cast credit he gets at the start.

Well made and well acted, INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE is an old-fashioned eco-horror in the very best sense of the word. The preview disc contained no extras. 

Signature Entertainment are releasing David Hackl's INTO THE GRIZZLY MAZE on Region 2 DVD and Region B Blu-ray on 17th August 2015

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (2014)

Now here’s something that’s not bad at all. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s version of Charles B Pierce’s 1976 docu-slasher arrives on UK DVD (but not Blu-ray for some inexplicable reason) courtesy of Metrodome.

It’s 2013 and a masked killer is terrorising the town of Texarkana, committing murders in the style of the 1976 film THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN, which in itself was loosely based on a series of killings in that area in 1946. When Jami (Addison Timlin) is witness to the death of her boyfriend Corey (Spencer Treat Clark) it seems as if the killer has singled her out for a special reason: to make the town remember someone the killer identifies only as Mary. As the deaths continue and Jami digs deeper into the history of the town, and the original killings, it seems everything might actually be connected.

A brave and ambitious attempt at something a bit more metatextual than your average run-of-the-mill remake, the new version of TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN gets so many things right that when things go wrong you actually end up feeling sorry for it. The murders are genuinely terrifying and, on at least one occasion, oddly beautiful. The film is set on and after Halloween, and Gomez-Rejon imbues the town with a delicious autumnal quality that somehow feels very 1970s despite the contemporary setting. 

There’s also a vaguely Lynchian quality to the visuals as well. Every television set in town seems to be playing the original film endlessly, and snippets from that movie are interspersed into the film we are watching from time to time. There are some great locations, including a murder in a cornfield and a double killing in what looks like a graveyard for enormous old signs. 

THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN is not a perfect film, however. Be warned that the ending is a bit giallo-type bonkers, and way out of step with everything that has gone before. In fact it virtually screams producer interference although I have no idea if that is actually the case. The other problem is the interplay between the two young leads, who sadly don’t spark off each other in the way that, for example, Johnny Depp & Heather Langenkamp did in the original A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. It’s a shame because if these scenes were a little more lively, the TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN remake could have been up there with the best of them. It’s still very much worth your time, though.

Metrodome’s DVD comes with 2.0 and 5.1 stereo surround options. Extras consist of a considerable number of interviews with cast and crew, including star Timlin, producer Jason Blum and director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. 

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's remake of THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN is released on Region 2 DVD on 17th August 2015

Kull the Conqueror (1997)

A sword and sorcery movie that really wants to be another CONAN, or at least one of its imitators from the early 1980s, KULL THE CONQUEROR is getting a new UK DVD release courtesy of Fabulous Films.

After a curiously anachronistic-sounding voiceover and some even more curious soft metal rock music over the opening titles we get introduced to Kull (Kevin Sorbo), merrily whacking at people with his axe as he auditions for a place in the king’s army (I think). He takes on General Taligaro (Thomas Ian Griffith) and his enormous blonde mullet, only for the two to be interrupted by the news that the king has gone bonkers and is killing all his heirs. Kull arrives at the palace in time to be pretty much randomly handed the crown and is made king. 

You too can be king and wear this pot on your head

Needless to say, the general and a bunch of British character actors including non-singing evil wizard Ed Tudor-Pole and Douglas Henshall are soon plotting to usurp Kull’s place on the throne by resurrecting ancient sexy witch Akivasha (Tia Carrere). Soon she’s put Kull under her spell and bumps him off. Somehow he survives and has to travel with dull and listless harem girl Zareta (Karina Lombard) and her trippy priest brother Ascalante (Litefoot) aboard the boat of everyone’s least favourite Bette Davis impersonator (Harvey Fierstein). They need to find the breath of Volka to defeat Akivasha and etc etc.

KULL THE CONQUEROR is one of those movies with the potential to make one weep for what could have been. Everyone is trying terribly, terribly hard. The production design and costumes are great, as are the makeup effects by ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS’ Gianetto De Rossi, and while the acting isn’t great on the whole it’s entirely acceptable for this sort of thing.

But there’s something very important missing, namely a guiding hand to make all of this work, give it a good sense of pacing and paper over any cracks. And that just doesn’t happen. The script by Charles Edward Pogue (allegedly author of one word in the final screenplay of David Cronenberg’s remake of THE FLY) takes far too long to get going, and director John Nicolella seems happy to let things meander along to no great purpose. 

        Even an hour in, when the plot finally has a direction, we’re still stopping for ‘comedy’ interludes. The quest itself has a distinct lack of peril and incident because there just isn’t time after all the faffing about. Joel Goldsmith manages a reasonable attempt at being Basil Poledouris with the music, but every now and then it’s as if a WHITESNAKE tribute band has run into the recording studio and taped over some of the score. 

If you’re a fan of sword and sorcery, KULL THE CONQUEROR will give you a rainy afternoon’s worth of entertainment. In the grand scale of these movies, one sadly has to place it just above Joe D’Amato’s ATOR THE FIGHTING EAGLE and way, way below Michael J Bassett's far superior and unjustly neglected Robert E Howard adaptation SOLOMON KANE. Fabulous Films' DVD has nothing in the way of extras. 

Fabulous Films are releasing KULL THE CONQUEROR on Region 2 DVD on Monday 10th August 2015

White God / Feher Isten (2015)

Hungary’s unique, affecting and multi-layered contribution to the “When Animals Attack” subgenre gets its UK DVD release from Metrodome after touring the independent cinema circuit earlier this year.

Thirteen year old Lili (Zsofia Psotta) loves her mongrel dog Hagen. When her mother goes off with her new lover for three months, Lili has to go and live with her dog-disliking father in his dog-unfriendly flat. While Lili does everything she can to keep Hagen (including being thrown out of the school orchestra in the process), her father eventually leaves the dog by the roadside.

Here Hagen’s adventures proper begin as he enters the seamy underworld of dog fights. He manages to escape, but not before he’s been turned into a fighting machine capable of winning a fight to the death against a Rottweiler. Captured by the city dog patrol, he ends up at the pound, where eventually he incites a doggy riot that results in the city being over-run by canines. Will Lili find Hagen again? And how will he react to her now that he considers humans to be the enemy of all dogs?

WHITE GOD has been compared to RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. While it’s easy to see why, the clue to the film’s real backbone lies in its title, a clever play on the classic Sam Fuller movie WHITE DOG (1982) in which Kristy McNichol comes across a stray white German shepherd that, it turns out, has been trained by a racist to attack blacks. In WHITE GOD, Hagen is trained to become less a well-rounded animal than a fighting machine, and the parallels with the dehumanising process of creating human soldiers are there for all to see.

What’s most interesting about WHITE GOD, however, is the climax of the film. Has Hagen’s horrific experience allowed him to transcend in an almost MARTYRS-like way to achieve a level of intelligence higher than that of other dogs? Is there a moral here, that through adversity will come triumph - but only for a few? Is it in fact an allegory for the entire history of Hungary? Probably not. In fact that’s probably reading too much into it. But the racial subtext early on (mongrels are despised - only ‘pure’ breeds are considered worth owning) and numerous other references suggest there’s a lot more going on in WHITE GOD than just a simple clever-beast-leads-his-people-to-salvation story. You can read it like that as well, of course.

The movie itself is stunningly made, with superb use made of about a hundred dogs all expertly trained to do their thing. Metrodome’s DVD has a 17 minute behind the scenes piece as part of its extras which tells lots about how the dog actors fulfilled their roles. There are also a few deleted scenes, at least one of which it’s rather odd that it didn’t turn up in the finished print.

        Original, affecting, and superbly made, WHITE GOD deserves a wider audience. You know what to do. 

Metrodome are releasing WHITE GOD on Region 2 DVD on 
3rd August 2015

Killing Zoe (1993)

Roger Avary’s directorial feature debut gets a new Blu-ray and DVD release from Fabulous Films and allows us to once again wonder what this film is really about: is it a treatise on the uncontrollable angst generated by nihilistic despair? Or just a day in the life of some crap French bank robbers?

Eric Stoltz is Zed, who comes to Paris to lend his safe-cracking skills to a bank job. To pass the time in his tiny French hotel room he arranges to spend a few hours in the company of call-girl Zoe (Julie Delpy). When gang boss Eric (Jean-Hughes Anglade) arrives, Zoe is unceremoniously thrown out, and Zed is taken to meet the rest of Eric’s gang. The gang appears to be made up of a collection of drug addicts, lunatics, and one ex-member of Spandau Ballet (Gary Kemp).

The bank raid has been planned for the following day. Zed is shown a quick set of blueprints of the building to be raided and is then encouraged to consume a vast quantity of drugs and alcohol. Then it’s off into the nightlife of Paris, the gang’s wild night ride culminating in a visit to a sleazy basement jazz bar where Eric performs on stage, spouts a lot of drug-addled cod-philosophy, and has sex with another man in the toilets while Zed watches.

After all this excessively hedonistic and somewhat inadvisable (if you’ve got work in the morning) activity, it’s not surprising that the next day the boys are not quite up to par. Consequently the robbery goes a bit wrong and Team Rubbish ends up trapped in the bank with the police surrounding the building and a number of hostages inside, one of whom is (surprise!) Zoe. More arguments, more gunfights and more drug-taking ensues as the gang become increasingly desperate.

Roger Avary is probably better known these days for co-writing Quentin Tarantino’s PULP FICTION and (bizarrely) the SILENT HILL movie. He was also attached to PHANTASM V for a while. Because it was released around the same time as PULP FICTION, KILLING ZOE has been compared to that film, but it’s really quite a different beast. Tarantino’s style tends toward wisecracking likeable villains, whereas Avary’s film seems more an interesting snapshot of a tiny subculture of society. He neither condemns nor condones his characters, but lets the drama play out, allowing us to decide whether this essentially nihilistic bunch of losers deserve our sympathy. That very fact makes it more interesting than either PULP FICTION or RESERVOIR DOGS, and KILLING ZOE is still a film that very much divides opinion. The film culminates in gunfights and action, but it’s the middle act in Paris the night before the raid that is the literal heart of the film.

Fabulous Films’ transfer of KILLING ZOE looks a bit washed out and faded, but having never seen this before I have no idea if this obviously low-budget production has ever looked any better. Extras include a trailer and a couple of galleries but sadly no commentary track. 

Fabulous Films are releasing Roger Avary's KILLING ZOE on Region 2 DVD and Region B Blu-ray on 3rd August 2015

Quatermass (1978)

Nigel Kneale’s fourth and final Quatermass television serial finally gets a well-deserved stunning Blu-ray release courtesy of Network.

It’s the last quarter of the twentieth century and civilisation is breaking down. While the superpowers squander billions on pointless space projects, on earth the increasingly disaffected youth are turning to movements like the ‘Planet People’ who are drawn to places of ancient and mystic significance where they are, in turn, being harvested by some immense alien power. Professor Bernard Quatermass, tired, worn out, and only wishing to find his grand-daughter, is drawn into the mystery & ends up fighting yet another deadly threat to mankind. 

After the huge success of his three QUATERMASS BBC TV plays in the 1950s, Nigel Kneale didn’t get around to writing the fourth Quatermass adventure until the early 1970s. It wasn’t filmed until even later in the decade, this time by Euston Films who had enjoyed considerable success with THE SWEENEY (and virtually revolutionised the television police drama after years of glamorous ITC adventures like The Persuaders and Jason King). At the time its forthcoming broadcast on ITV (in four episodes) was much heralded with posters, and you couldn’t move for the novelisation in Woolworths. Then it all went pear-shaped in the form of a strike at ITV that caused a full-scale blackout of the channel beginning on the 10th August 1979 and lasting for eleven weeks, with episode one of QUATERMASS finally being broadcast to no fanfare at all on Wednesday 24th of October.

QUATERMASS does some things well and some things not so well. It’s an interesting depiction of a Britain on the verge of social breakdown, even if the gangs who besiege our hero are probably a bit too well spoken to be believable. More than anything nowadays, it comes across as being written by a man who was a bit fed up with much of the society that was around him at the time he was writing it. You can almost imagine Kneale grumbling ‘bloody hippies’ as he tapped away at his typewriter (although he actually envisioned his ‘Planet People’ as punks rather than peace-loving). 

        Quatermass is less a noble, thoughtful, contemplative scientist in this one and more a desperate old man. In fact he admits as much in the first episode, saying all he cares about is finding his grand-daughter. In fact, QUATERMASS is all rather a depressing story about the insignificance of man’s place in the universe (and his exploitation), with only a glimmer of hope at the very end. It would have been wonderful if they had been allowed to go ahead with Kneale’s original plan and film at Stonehenge, but the crew was denied permission to film and hence Ringstone Round was born, or rather, built. 

Network’s Blu-ray transfer is nothing short of perfection. QUATERMASS has never looked this good & I’m not sure it could ever look any better. Disc one offers us all four episodes of the original ITV series in 5.1 surround and with advert break cards inserted at the appropriate places. There are mono sound and music only options as well. You also get the recaps that would have preceded each episode as a separate option, and there’s a textless (and soundless) title sequence from THE QUATERMASS CONCLUSION.

Disc two gives you the edited film version THE QUATERMASS CONCLUSION, in 1.85:1 and not looking quite as crisp as the television episodes. There’s also a trailer (without sound) and an image gallery. None of the extras from the previous 3 disc Clear Vision DVD release have been carried over (the Kneale interview and detailed production notes are sadly lacking) and we get nothing in the way of commentary tracks, a making of, or even a short featurette with some reminiscences of remaining cast and crew, which is probably the only way this otherwise excellent release could be improved.

Network are releasing their two-disc Blu-ray set of Nigel Kneale's QUATERMASS on Monday 27th July in four limited edition covers based on the colour of the title sequence of each episode. 

GirlHouse (2015)

Insipid, uninspired, and a prime example of unfulfilled potential in a slasher thriller, GIRLHOUSE arrives on DVD courtesy of Signature Entertainment.

Kylie Atkins (Ali Cobrin) is a student desperate for money to pay her tuition fees. She successfully auditions to become part of a house filled with lovely girls whose almost every move is filmed and broadcast via a subscription-only internet live feed. She quickly becomes a success and draws the attention of the socially inadequate but physically powerful Loverboy (Slaine), whom she upsets. Via a series of contrivances Loverboy discovers the secret location of the GirlHouse and turns up to kill everyone.

Did the internet make him like this?

Look at that plot - ridiculous, unbelievable, and therefore with the potential to be something utterly brilliant. In the hands of a Sergio Martino (TORSO, STRANGE VICE OF MRS WARDH, etc)  GIRLHOUSE could have been the stuff of sleazy exploitation gold, filled with bitchy dialogue and plenty of voyeuristically deviant behaviour in between horrible gory murders. Instead, for the most part GIRLHOUSE downplays its potential for overt eroticism, unrelenting suspense and mortifying horror to instead try and be the kiss of death for stuff like this - A Respectable Film.

I felt sorry for him

It is completely understandable that some actresses don’t want to take their clothes off on screen, but casting one as the leading lady in a film with this title and subject matter inevitably means you’re going to have to create a number of increasingly contrived setups to cover her up in the scenes where she needs to be topless, and in GIRLHOUSE these rapidly reach the comedic heights of that scene in AUSTIN POWERS with the balloons and the teapot. 

Not a teapot in sight…yet

I felt sorry for Loverboy. I presumed I was meant to feel sorry for Loverboy. I assumed, therefore, that Loverboy would not turn out to be the killer at all, and I would be allowed to feel a sense of relief that this was not the kind of film that would exploit the stereotype of the obviously unhappy, isolated, unloved fellow that he is. But I was wrong and so is GIRLHOUSE. There are no twists and no surprises, so I’m not spoiling anything by telling you this. 

I will admit that the finale of GIRLHOUSE is quite well put together, with an effective rampage by our killer. By the time we get there, however, many viewers may well have switched off and gone to find something a bit more worthwhile. And I can’t honestly blame them. I haven't even mentioned the entirely inappropriate quote that starts the film off and had me bristling before the first image had appeared. There are much sexier, scarier slasher thrillers out there than this. Give it a miss and wait for the next one to come along. 

GIRLHOUSE is being released on Region 2 DVD by Signature Entertainment on 20th July 2015