The Xtro Trilogy (1982/1990/1995)

As franchises go, the Xtro trilogy is, shall we say, a head scratcher, where the first one is justifiably a cult film whilst the other two are curiosities of what horror sequels can wander off into unexpectedly. The strange thing is that the original Xtro is a truly bizarre experience, where the director despite it being the best film of the three holds it as a mess.  The reason why for these two statements, and what the sequels are which don't get as frequently mentioned in the slightest, are the subject of this article.

From https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOGZhY2I4M2MtMDlkYS00ZDEyLW
IyNjctM2VjMmNiN2ExZGFhXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTQxNzMzNDI@._V1_.jpg

Xtro (1982)

Director: Harry Bromley Davenport

Screenplay: Harry Bromley Davenport; Michel Perry; Iain Cassie; Robert Smith

Cast: Philip Sayer as Sam Phillips; Bernice Stegers as Rachel Phillips; Danny Brainin as Joe Daniels; Maryam d'Abo as Analise Mercier; Simon Nash as Tony Phillips

The first Xtro film is a peculiar creation onscreen and behind the camera, in which you can effectively boil it down to a domestic drama about divorce and how it can leave very destructive emotional wounds for everyone, explicitly about a father returning back to his old family. The difference here is that the father was abducted by aliens and returns to his wife, son and her new love having been turned into an alien creature, one still with the intention of communicating to his son and taking him back.

The film touches on a premise where you can uncover so many layers, when upon returning, he gives his son powers and all hell breaks loose. It was a New Line Pictures production before the company was even a major player, produced before the Nightmare on Elm Street series made them financially well off. Shot in England, it has an entirely different air, that of a working class domestic drama if invaded by the hyper prosthetic heavy grotesque horror that came from the United States. Horror from the British at the time, whilst I won't damn it all, could have a tendency to be cheesy or just sleazy, usually not the hypersurreal pop bombast that Xtro provides, a film that was notorious for a woman giving birth to a grown man, which is would be enough to keep the production in horror's twisted history but has a lot more going on beyond that.

The drama is compelling, a lot emphasised on the fact the son has been obsessed with his absentee father all these years to the chagrin of the step father to be, a photographer who is sympathetic as feeling like the third wheel as his lover also has affection for her absent husband. With an additional character in terms of a nanny, played by Maryam d'Abo from For Your Eyes Only (1981), one of the best of the James Bond films from that era, it plays with enough weight and gains a lot more depth from the strangest that enfolds. Where Xtro gets weird, it does so from the beginning onwards, which is great for this. It was a film many, like myself, presumed was on the Video Nasties list when in fact it was just a film with notoriety that got lumped into the moral panic. It's strange to think this is suitable for fifteen year olds to watch nowadays when it's still a dark, emotionally wrought and perverse creature, managing to escalate even after the grown man being birth is grotesque and given away in the prologue of the main narrative.

Weird sexual undercurrents are everywhere - in the sexy French nanny who sneaks her boyfriend into the house, the wife still being in love with absentee husband, even how the powers being passed from father to son involves an uncomfortably incestuous scene of neck sucking with a giant rubber nipple lump being created. And then someone lost their minds and introduced random material into the world as, with super powers, the son turning his toys into living creatures. Thus he have a clown played by a dwarf actor to help him, a child's childish spite curdled into evil as he starts a project to turn his apartment into an all-white death-trap of body horror, living plastic soldiers and a real fucking panther of all things. And the swearing in that last sentence is justified, to apologise for my French, because New Line Pictures founder Robert Shaye had access to one and demanded an actual wild animal be included in the film somehow even if it didn't make sense to, which just exemplifies how bugnuts insane Xtro actually becomes.

It is for once a film where studio tampering is actually adding greater power to a film, as if the case when that aforementioned soldier appears, a doll (like the Action Men of my youth) that is an actor in costume mechanically moving along like a doll, terrorising a neighbour in a scene which becomes more disturbing because this willingness to stretch the limits of the production and take a risk. Certainly in the entire trilogy this is the best made and the most imaginative. There is a style here, the down-to-earth British drama a very unique place for this type of horror film to exist, between the urban environments and woodland even if you still have the time's dated aesthetics, particularly the step father's own pad which is white and has a parrot of all things. Davenport himself also created the score, which he doesn't look highly upon at all, but is nonetheless incredibly evocative which works for the limitations as a synthesiser score for a low budget film he had issues with. Altogether there's a lot to admire, and to see this film finally is with weight is much more rewarding when I had originally learnt of it as a young teenager as merely a lurid sci-fi horror film. Learning its this surreal, complex oddity is something to behold....

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Psychodrama/Random/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

From https://s3.drafthouse.com/images/made/XTRO_Still_1_758_411_81_s.jpg

======

From https://cdn.cinematerial.com/p/500x/s3rr50tt/xtro-ii-the-second-
encounter-japanese-vhs-movie-cover.jpg?v=1456645177

Xtro II: The Second Encounter (1990)

Director: Harry Bromley Davenport

Screenplay: John A. Curtis, Stephen Lister, Robert Smith and Edward Kovach

Cast: Jan-Michael Vincent as Dr. Ron Shepherd; Paul Koslo as Dr. Alex Summerfield; Tara Buckman as Dr. Julie Casserly; Jano Frandsen as McShane; Nicholas Lea as Baines; W.F. Wadden as Jedburg; Rolf Reynolds as Zunoski; Nic Amoroso as Mancini; Bob Wilde as Secretary Kenmore; Rachel Hayward as Dr. Myers

...so how on Earth did the sequel turn out as blandly as it did? Davenport had the rights to the name even if none of the original source story, which isn't necessarily the answer to my question. This is an issue with horror sequels where the reality already created can be distorted, where the extra terrestrials in this film are an entirely different creature in another context, but that this is mainly a rip-off of the 1979 film Alien is where the problem lays. Whilst it's a seminal film, Ridley Scott's picture has a lot to answer for in accidentally leading, alongside James Cameron's Aliens (1986), to a lot of rip offs which told the story exactly and were boring. I mean, least the Italian film Alien 2: On Earth (1980) had the decency to be entertaining, as others have been, but there are probably five to one good one which are bad, and jeez Xtro II is evidence to the dangers of creating a huge hit that other people just want to recreate over and over again without adding invention to it. Even if Davenport, in a 2005 interview called Xtro Xposed, rags on star Jan-Michael Vincent as being unprofessional and not helping the production, this is as bland as you could ever get without anything being really entertaining about it.

Trapped within a secret underground lab that deals with extra dimensional time travel, the plot even down to the chest bursting scene is absolutely Alien re-imagined and quite boringly so. Entirely shot in an industrial sound set, it even looks so entirely different from the original in a negative way, on an anaemic level in terms of even how the lighting and cameras used has left something ineffable lost.

Its sin is how dull it ultimately is. It's a curious piece on premise then execution, Jan-Michael Vincent in a time after his brief moment in the sun for the TV series Air Wolf (1986-1987), and his seventies film career, looking off his game, made worse knowing his life was going to spiral further into alcoholism and tragedy. Again, Davenport thought, alongside with sadness for him, he was an complete obstruction to the shoot, but not many on the film are really pulling anything out of interest, female lead Tara Buckman's most charismatic trait craving cigarettes and wasting them soon after, little else to go from. You thankfully get a little levity from the hired mercenaries that appear even if most of their humour is cheesy and flat, be it making dumb one liners and E.T. references. One of them, a New Age member who is a vegetarian, believes in reincarnation and is happy go lucky to the point I actually liked him in a cast of little, is a godsend for the entire film, the MVT and thankfully a character who lasts a long time throughout.

Its the worst position to be in when the film can barely muster a detailed review as it'll just be a plot descriptor about events like the perils of climbing up a long and hot elevator shaft and rubber giant alien attacks, not help that set mostly dark in the end, as the facility is closed for quarantining by the computer with a nuclear time limit at hand, it's not a visibly pleasing film even in the low budget kitsch way. And that's the peril with horror sequels; even though I have developed an obsession with their odd tangents that can redeem their major problems, something I'll get into with Xtro III, when they are remotely middling and little sticks out, they're an agony to sit through. Even the masochist in me must accept how bland Xtro II, as this is unfortunately the kind of tone that is common in horror in general as a genre, frankly all cinema.

Abstract Spectrum: None

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

From http://rarefilm.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/
Xtro-II-The-Second-Encounter-1990-4.jpg

===========

From http://www.fantafilm.net/Schede/1991/95-35b.jpg

Xtro III: Watch the Skies (1995)

Director: Harry Bromley Davenport

Screenplay: Daryl Haney

Cast: Sal Landi as Lieutenant Martin Kirn; Andrew Divoff as Captain Fetterman; Karen Moncrieff as J. G. Watkins; David M. Parker as Corporal Dermot Reilly; Jim Hanks as Private Friedman; Andrea Lauren Herz as Private Banta; Daryl Haney as Private Hendricks; Nigel Gibbs as Smythe; Robert Culp as Major Guardino

This problem of middling quality is still felt with Xtro III, but immediately there's a humour felt when, recreated with what was available for a mid-nineties straight to video production (fake scratches and all), the beginning is a parody of a fifties news reel. It even begins with a look at a new blonde bombshell film star at a swimming pool before setting up the story, of a UFO having crashed on Earth and being covered up by the American government, even if it means making a boy who recorded it on camera apologise for making it up to the entire country. This is one of the many little details which make any moments of predictable blandness in Xtro III redeemed considerably.

The film gets eccentric at points, set around a motley crew of mercenaries led by Sal Landi, looking like a relative of wrestling promoter Vince McMahon Jr., sent to a secret island to dispose of old explosives which is actually a hidden lab built around where that UFO landed. The surviving scientist is a Robinson Crusoe-like eccentric, the lab test rabbits have multiplied over decades and are inexplicably everywhere, and the film even has a character who is basically is Tonya Harding, infamously a talented ice skater who was in a scandal for supposedly having a rival's legs broken, if (in some convoluted movie law) sent into military service and becoming Private Vasquez from Aliens (1986).

Now, frankly, Xtro III is still a generic sci-fi action horror film which now indebted to Predator (1987) as, whilst significantly shorter in stature, these aliens also have (digitally rendered) cloaking ability. That's a factor which cannot be ignored, especially as the original Xtro was not a mainstream horror film but a true one-off oddity already, and my vicarious pleasures of the mutating pool of sequel filmmaking can only stretch so far until even I got sick of the generic plot with a figure, with evil villain moustache, trying to cover the conspiracy up by having everyone killed. Thankfully even here, weird details helped, like fake Halloween decoration spider web being made legitimately dangerous just for the idea that, if your actors stay still within it unable to ever get out of it again, it's more a problem especially when the entire woodland on the island is coated in it. Certainly having it shot on an island, with some production value again in aerial shots, giant explosions, and even hiring of a freight ship and helicopters,  makes a great deal of improvement with a varied world with day and night scenes.

Also the aliens themselves become interesting again, the stereotypical little grey men made more disturbing between spitting out the cobwebs of doom, or using their extending tongues, to their behaviour of torturing the humans they catch in pure sadism. Or should that be vengeance as, in a major plot spoiler, its arguably a revenge vigilante film from the alien's perspective as, landing on Earth expecting a warm welcome, they were captured with the pregnant female was killed and experimented on, which naturally left the survivors with a murder rage whenever humans appear. It's a nice touch to bring back, even in a generic action sci-fi tone, a bit of personality again like the original Xtro, mainly that human beings for all our virtues can also be nasty little shits at the best of times, made evident as the film plays to a very dark humour with the ending when everything is covered up by the government even when the film returns back to the mainland.

I can't help but see The X-Files, which started in 1993, having a little influence here, when alien conspiracy theories and the distress of the US government became more common in culture in general, and conspiracy theories could lead to these playful genre films than leading to people taking guns into a pizzeria. It is of course odd that this is an Xtro sequel - none of the films are consistent to each other unless the aliens in each are viewed as different species - and whilst you could view it like an anthology mentality of a different story each time, the fact Davenport eventually made action horror films with more emphasis on action is really perplexing considering the first.

There are no more films after this, though he has talked of making Xtro 4 in the 2010s, the original film a cult hit by itself. The curious world of the horror franchise is one which can sadly, especially in the current day, lead to a lot of bland sequels, and a lot which cannot really defended as the best in cinema. But with an open mind, however, its one of the most fascinating areas in cinema as a form in which mutation, tangents and unpredictability especially when they're meant to follow each other as an apparent series leads to disharmonic results. The Xtro trilogy isn't one of the strongest, mainly due to Xtro II being so bloody boring, but the motley trio are fascinating and the original 1982 film is the one everyone reading this has to look into if they haven't seen it before.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

From https://monsterhuntermoviereviews.com/
wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Xtro-Three-1.jpg

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987)

From https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/
YqkAAOSw44BYCpix/s-l640.jpg

Director: Bruce Pittman

Screenplay: Ron Oliver

Cast: Michael Ironside as Bill Nordham; Wendy Lyon as Vicki Carpenter; Louis Ferreira as Craig Nordham; Lisa Schrage as Mary Lou Maloney; Richard Monette as Father Cooper; Terri Hawkes as Kelly Hennenlotter; Brock Simpson as Josh; Beverley Hendry as Monica Waters; Beth Gondek as Jess Browning; Wendell Smith as Walt Carpenter; Judy Mahbey as Virginia Carpenter

Before anyone asks, deliberately skipped over the original 1980 Prom Night, which is the most well known of this franchise and is a slasher film released the same year the original Friday the 13th. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Leslie Nielsen in a serious role, I will return to the film, but as someone with an ambivalent relationship to the genre, where there are some that I like and others I don't, I remembering it being boring and that it didn't have the quirks that I do like in slashers.

In vast contrast, after seven years being off from a sequel, Prom Night is interesting when you gander at the direction they went, beginning with a film which took a radically different direction. In fact, it wasn't a sequel, but renamed into being one rather than another Canadian horror production by itself. It's quite obvious as well what the film, whether a sequel or not, was following. By this point, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) became a juggernaut and, with its template of surreal dream sequence set pieces, that is clearly what that production wanting to hitch their trailer to and gain cash through.

I will give the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise a lot of credit - its later sequels were helped by how much Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) justified the existence of all of them in a symbolic metatextual way, but the franchise even when it was cranking out titles with some slapdash results (parts 4 and 5), they encouraged the idea that to sell a horror film you needed surreal sequences. It didn't necessarily mean the films would be good, but it meant there was a creativity in the production staff that is unrivalled as a result of the many eighties films trying to cash in on the band wagon.

Who is Mary Lou? A fifties high school diva whose voracious sexual appetite is matched by her desire to be a prom queen, leading to her prom date to chuck a stink bomb at her in the midst of the award ceremony, its fuse and the flammability of the dress unfortunately not accounted for. Burnt to death on prom night, she is awoken in the eighties and decides to possess an eighties female student at the school, reigning havoc. The heartbroken lover becomes Michael Ironside, the veteran Canadian actor, now principal of the school with a dark hidden part, whilst the other lover stays on in the plot as a priest who eventually comes to warn him of Mary Lou's return. There's no real message behind the film in the slightest, though its curious that this anti-religious and demonic Mary Lou is contrasted by her new host, a girl from a very religious family, Vicki Carpenter (Wendy Lyon), who is browbeaten by her mother to be shy and dress down even though she with her boyfriend, the principal's son, desire to skip college and live a life of their own.

From http://www.movingimage.us/images/calendar/media
/Hello_Mary_Lou_550x238-detail-main.jpg

It tries to be serious, which in contrast to Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (1990), where they went entirely for comedy with the same titular character but saps any energy from it as a result. The seriousness of this prequel is one of its best aspects, even looking like it is going into an Exorcist pastiche only to get to something else entirely, fully aware now that entirely not meant to be a Prom Night sequel that, honestly, this was probably a better direction as there's now a titular figure who is memorable, Mary Lou if you want to try to equate a theme to this film a representation of fifties nostalgia gone sour, something in mind that fifties culture became a fixation in the eighties, and was particularly mangled and destroyed perfectly in John Carpenter's adaptation of a Stephen King novel Christine (1983).

Something, thankfully, exceptionally peculiar also rears its head in this film as it starts with Mary Lou tormenting our female protagonist. With complete disregard for logic, the villain can bend reality, and as this is a low budget Canadian film from the era before CGI was commonplace, they even had to drawn back on a trick, involving a pool of water shot on the side as if on the wall representing a blackboard, that Jean Cocteau was using in the nineties thirties. It plays this off in a combination of humour and creepiness, a humour to have with some of the fifties references, including fully possessed Vicki Carpenter using slang from few decades earlier and Wendy Lyon dressed like a member of a Grease theatre production, but overcoming even the somewhat haphazard plotting by emphasising the darker underbelly of this world. I will be blunt that this is far from a perfect film, not in the slightest without its flaws, be it trying to pretend it's set in the United States to the vagueness of its own logic. But it tries to cover a lot, and also even makes sure the characters have a bit to them. Even the prissy wannabe prom queen of the current timeline is given emotional sympathy when, to cheat for the prize, it leads to an act of humiliation that is pretty surprising in how it's handled, and that it's even done with heartbreak for her when she's the stereotype beforehand to hate.

Then there are the generally uncomfortable sexual undertones, between the incest scene or a rocking horse in Vicki's bedroom, representing an isolated innocence, coming to life with a grotesque long tongue. It leads to the best sequence of the film in the women's shower; no potential gay panic underlying it can undercut how it's a disturbing and effective scene, involving a locker crushing, made more surprising as, when the production wanted to be chaste, actress Wendy Lyon was comfortable going the scene in full frontal nudity, which is not titillating but in context appropriately more frightening. I remember, when originally viewing Hey Mary Lou, as forgettable and silly. In hindsight horror is a curious thing, a genre which has produced so much garbage yet its inherently greater scope of plasticity, that the unpredictable can take place by accident let alone on purpose, viewing the world in a cinema screen as easily distortable. That sequence in I have talked about in this paragraph makes up for any issues with the film by being absolute creativity with pulpy horror and its nasty as it needs to be.

In mind to this there are aspects of the second sequel, The Last Kiss, which do have the same energy; its unfortunately been only probably available in most places as the censored TV movie cut, which will remove full frontal nudity, the graphic violence and swearing but inexplicitly finds "fag" acceptable for television in the period it was put together, which says a lot in hindsight decades later of priorities. It's also too broad without the right balance horror comedy of the Frank Henenlotters of the world would present, a bit too happy to be silly rather than build a framework of a story to make the humour connecting. After this the story gets odder, which is why I am interested in the series - the series returned to a slasher in Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil (1992), and there was a film called The Club (1994) which was originally meant to be a sequel until someone unhooked their cart from the immobile trend. There's also the 2008 remake, which is not held high in the slightest, from the period where arguably the hatred horror remakes get comes from as that when they were prolific in number and rarely taking a strange risk, leading to exceptionally terrible work. You can at least say Hey Mary Lou: Prom Night II was taking a risk, which is why I am soft on it's like a prom date. A morbid person, but that's part of their personality.

Abstract Spectrum: Creepy/Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

From https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/styles/1200x680/
public/2017/10/hello_mary_lou_prom_night_2.png

Hell House (2001)

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com
/images/I/41qFfKYoAdL._SY445_.jpg

Director: George Ratliff

Oddities, Obscurties and One-Offs

As a documentary unfortunately under seen, Hell House offers the curious counterbalance to Halloween in the "hell house", which were innovated within American conservative Christian culture through Jerry Falwell in the late seventies, to which the Presbyterian church Trinity Church Youth Group is the subject of this film, making a haunted house for Halloween that depict the worst in humanity and the fires of Hell to scare people to Jesus. Director George Ratliff first tackled the subjects in a short documentary (1999's The Devil Made Me Do It) before expanding it into a feature.

Notably, and probably the huge virtue of Hell House the documentary is that it doesn't take a bias viewpoint but an entirely subjective view to a very controversial subject, significant in that we confuse debating religious and moral ideas for troublesome qualities for anti-religious attitudes and a lack of collected, thoughtful opinion. Make no bones about it, a trigger warning is required for watching the film as, even whilst they have fake blood and cheesy amateur acting from the church's youth members, these hell houses can be unsettling for their subject matter and take on, as in this case, conservative attitudes which are problematic.

The idea of taking the modern world, in its harshness, and scaring people to thought rather than just goose bumps is a thoughtful concept; Christianity has a tenant of wanting to help people to salvation, and they do so by bringing up the worst of a society that lacks compassion and virtue, which is something which can be implemented by a person secular or religious to bringing about contemplation. The issue, which is where I'd argue has become a huge factor into religion losing ground in importance especially in the late 20th century onwards, is that as modern society has taken on more reflective viewpoints on these subjects, the ideas particularly seen in this particular hell house are offensive, insensitive and naive.

The Trinity Church Youth Group got controversial, and had media attention, because they recreated the Columbine high school shootings of 1999. To take a controversial stance, if done with sensibleness and respect to those who had die, you could recreate such an event if you intended to show people the perilous slippery slope leading to the horror and tragedy of the event; here however, even referencing the media scare fear that video games were responsible, with Doom (the old one) playing on a TV, there's a complete lack of subtlety, mere shock tactics made even more startling as, in mind that blanks are still dangerous to use, the Church use actual fire arms and fire them into the ceiling. Then there are the other exhibitions.

A gay man dying of AIDs and going to Hell, including the idea that he became gay because he was abused by his uncle, is homophobic and in the last part arguably childish, in how it comes off as an immature attitude that does not comprehend a far more complex worldview and adult would develop, thus falls into a problematic stereotype that has rightly been written off over the years¹. A girl who is date raped in a nightclub commits suicide and goes to Hell is another pronounced example, which has become far more problematic as mental health has become a greater issue in the current times, the attitude of suicide immediately condemns a person is itself becoming an abhorrent attitude to many. Arguably, its examples like those two I have mentioned that has helped pushed people away from Christianity and religion in general, due to a viewed lack of empathy or even humanity, even without anyone asking if they actually believe in a God or not. Also the general tone of the hell house you witness, recorded by the production from its planning for that year to the final act opened on Halloween, has a sub current of patronisation, in which the last part of the house is a room where people only have a few minutes, if that, to go into a prayer room or to symbolically be walked out the hell house with a sense of shame.

What's fascinating with Hell House the documentary, and why it's such a virtuous piece of film making in a time when unfortunately the genre became weighed down by bias and lack of clarity, blameable on people like Michael Moore who went to tubthumping his ideals, is that whilst all the following can be plucked from its material, it also finds that sense of complexity too in them, that the creators of these hell houses are still human beings who are not one dimensional monsters, but figures with their own complex emotional baggage and moments where you can even still sympathise with them.

If you can get past of the troublesome ideas they pass on, you see that the naivety, as a result of where they've closed themselves off to the point of having their own Christian schools, is a factor in where the problems with their ideologies originate, how that without fully connecting to ordinary live outside the Church their ideas seem antiquated if not offensive. A poor female secretary is lost when the head who puts together the hell house, Bob, tries to explain to her what Magic: The Gathering is with neither of them clearly knowing what it is, a fantasy card game that was popular at the time which goes into their black magic, Satanist exhibit which is woefully misinformed. Full on Satanic panic, its literally a black magic human sacrificing ritual which, briefly seen, if comedic and completely neuters the entire hell house, envisioning that reading Harry Potter and playing Magic: The Gathering is enough to become one with Satan. Something as simple as the guy who plays the nightclub DJ having to actually bring in knowledge of night club life, because he felt it was woefully inaccurate, is a reminder that this is "middle America"; other times its something as woefully misguided as wanting to decorate sets with a 5-pointed pentagram, but accidentally putting up the 6-pointed Star of David, where one goes from the gut without clarity and lead to howlers like this.

From https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500_and_h282_face/
gZbxHzUSgCYEvFZ9OLI3okIiF18.jpg

Yet the film also succeeds in even gaining sympathy for these people, because the little we get from when they speak complicates them. Hell House is a standard documentary but one that succeeds as a document rather than cinematic in a way that shouldn't be an insult, doing so much that even if you see this group of Christians as a community, even speaking in tongues at one point, you also have them as ordinary people rather than the stereotypical villainous zealots. Particularly as simplifying sides has become a huge issue regardless of political belief, made worse in the late 2010s, the greyness of these figures is fascinatingly radical. Personal stories are interspersed in direct-to-camera interviews, and a few are eye raisers, such as one woman who discusses that she was raped when she was younger and, playing the teen date rape victim who commits suicide, saw her rapist among the patrons there, an emotionally complex issue which led to her forgiving him, a controversial but really powerful concept which is one of Christianity's best virtues that it is possible to even forgive someone who has committed the worst transgression to you.

The man who runs the Hell House, Bob, is also such a complicated figure with so much emotional baggage left unpacked in what we see he should've eventually had gone for therapy even if he felt his faith was enough. Single, his wife walked out with someone she met on the internet and left him with four kids, his youngest son also an infant with cerebral palsy, a fit caught on camera one of the most harrowing moments. Whilst he comes off as an emotionally steady person at first, focused entirely on the Hell House attraction, he notably wrote part of his own life into an exhibition of domestic abuse. Specifically even referencing the dalliance on the web of the wife, whilst it comes off as part of the healing process, seeing him suddenly in tears watching this performance realises many issues in his person.

Even if you cannot get past their beliefs, one scene is there where one person makes the most powerful agreement against the hell house, in one sentence, in how it lacks the complexity of the outside world. It's a thought made by a young woman in a red Slipknot hoodie and hits the nail on the head fully and potently. The scene in question was wisely the only one where the director ever shows a criticism of the Church's work, in which her male friend in a Fear Factory is emotionally angry and, despite using "faggot" a lot, is actually offended by the blatant homophobia, between him and his two friends actually referencing liberal Christian ideas.  That his female friend hits upon this argument of hers with full impact makes the point for their side fully, whilst the staff member debating with them can merely say their work is a subjective exhibition meant to encourage thought. It was the entire documentary ever needed to do and it adds more to ponder alongside the great material it shows around the scene from the Church's side.

If I am to bring in my own opinion, than let me admit one thing, that I have always found the concept of Hell in itself in Christianity always had a logistical flaw I found problematic. As someone who isn't part of an organised religion but does believe in a deity and human soul of an unknown form, Hell has always as a concept come both as a) a mere scare tactic which it always was in terms of being a threat to force people to be good, like a bogeyman to scare children to go to bed, and b) very simplified to the point that if you over think it, there are paradoxes. No complex deity would want to let a Devil have most peoples' souls, through damnation, and would provide forgiveness and eternal life instead, and no sane Devil would encourage an image of themselves as the punisher of wickedness when, if you go by the more human version painted in Thomas Milton's Paradise Lost, the more subversive ideal would be to band as many souls together to slight God.

These are ideas which people do hold as real and to be respected, but a very simplified view of Hell does exist in most people's mind which doesn't presume the actual complexities of human emotions. Likewise, Jesus Christ dying for the sins of all humanity as the Son of God so they could all be forgiven, through the most agonising death of crucifixion in the mortal human flesh, completely negates both the idea of Hell as a concept. A huge, problematic elephant of how a lot of conservative Christian culture from the United States worship, even if you have to first content with the likes of their homophobia, is faintly found here as well in the documentary, in how the Church can be said to argue that you have to worship the right God under the right Church, not as severe as an Estus Pirkle piece but still to be found in these hell houses. There is an irony to this as the Church itself is quaint - they are ordinary people, who say that their ideas are their own and they are open to be thought of by outsiders. It also doesn't ignore that, when casting, most of their youth group is a lot more excited to play the teen suicide or a devil than say an angel, a tantalising vicarious pleasure clearly had in the dark side even from these people meant to be virtuous. Hell is apparently more creativity rewarding than Heaven, which is a question in itself to ask

.

As for the director himself? George Ratliff went into fiction cinema, including a 2018 work Welcome Home that, by all accounts, is a soft-softcore thriller with not a lot of softcore. It's a weird tangent to end up in after making such a great documentary a decade earlier.

From https://dr56wvhu2c8zo.cloudfront.net/hellhouse/assets/
5b4d8716-6635-4e28-8e1a-b3bf905e2182/02_abort_color_1200.jpg

=======

1) Reflecting on the Church's clear disconnect from the world around them, a lot of anti-gay Christian rhetoric clearly comes from people that don't understand the ordinary life of an LGBTQ person, and this kind of rhetoric is clearly where a split between more liberal Christians (and gay Christians) from more conservative ones came to be. Personally I blame the fact that, in lieu to also how the ancient texts have been translated over millennia, if we're just sticking to the New Testament its particularly the likes of Romans 1:26–27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 which are the biggest offenders for this attitude, in how even explicit in their tenants they were influenced by millennia of translation and just the viewpoints of their scribes. Then there's the confusion to what "sodomite" in lieu to the original sings of Sodom and Gomorrah actually were, which has not helped.

Death Metal Zombies (1995)

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/
images/I/81OiGY2bBUL._RI_.jpg

Director: Todd Jason Cook

Screenplay: Todd Jason Cook

Cast: Milton Rush as Johnny; C. Jo Vela as Kathy; Lisa Cook as Angel; Todd Jason Cook as Tony / Nixon Killer; Bill DeWild as Brad / Nixon Killer; Mike Gebbie as Tommy; Terry Aden as Eddie

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

A passionate fan of the death metal band Living Corpse wins a tape with an exclusive track on the cassette, one called Zombified that turns listeners into the undead and commands them, the band demonic, to go out and kill. Thus, we have a no-budget film with a heart for both this type of schlocky horror premise and the music with affection full a little winking mirth.

At this point for me covering them, no budget (micro budget) cinema has to be reviewed on an entirely subjective level, as while there are great examples which traverse the limitations they had to a higher level, Peter Jackson starting off with Bad Taste (1987), there are films were the limitations and rough edges are their virtue too. There are examples of Francis Ford Coppola's "little fat girl" theory, that anyone with a camera can make a masterpiece, but the empathy a viewer like myself has means I couldn't discard the imperfect either if they have heart. Said theory didn't take into account that film fans and cineastes of a certain type can gain as much love from something fun too.

Whilst technical craft is a scale of skill, art is subjective, only in rare cases when a certain level of craft is entirely needed where this is truly a concern. (Food preparation needing to be a craft to avoid food poisoning for example.) The problem is that, well, whether one enjoys or admires a piece is entirely subjective except when its tedious, and not deliberately so or to the point of being perversely watching either, just tedious, also a subjective concept but one which is a bugbear regardless of film budget or the taste of the audience, a factor which can either lose you a majority of viewers or win them over. Thankfully we have a film here in Death Metal Zombies which, whilst its lags badly in the final half, was made with a lot better pace and mind to this issue than other films of similar budgets.

Cinema like this is inherently to be considered from the initial perspective of why they were made, as that's of considerable importance. Here, friends came together create a death metal zombie film, significantly better than the premise could've been. Controversially, this is definitely a better film than Deathgasm (2015), a New Zealand heavy metal horror film whose jokey tone and generalness really peeved me off when it was highly rated. This is much more entertaining, knowing there was less funds to work with, shot over weekends where you can admire the strained but earnest amateur acting and the signs of the era of flannel on half of the cast. Hell, even soundtrack, which I'll get to, is a time capsule to the fact that, contrary to the idea this was a dark age for metal music, the nineties gave us a lot of weirdo and unique bands. Here I spotted a band like Pyogenesis this time that've I have come to learn of as being the kind of underappreciated idiosyncratic band I'd love, all alongside the kind of death metal bands whose fan base probably were aware that they were to be taken with some tongue in cheek.

This micro budget genre, circling around any film made on a very low budget but pinned especially on the shot-on-VHS form, or shot-on-standard-digital of the early 2000s, is also a distinct creation with its own tropes. Earnest, non professional acting as if found throughout this tale as the cast, introduced a while before a zombie outbreak ever happens, is actually likeable from the get-go and throughout; director Todd Jason Cook, a celebrated skateboarder, peppers these characters with more passion in terms of loving heavy metal than a large dramatic range, but that's a lot more than some of these micro budget films sadly don't. Made over time, effected to the point a main character had to be bumped off abruptly "under" a bed sheet, the film shows the flaws of the production history but never feels negated by them.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EJHfcfpdz-A/hqdefault.jpg

The buzz of the VHS it was shot on, fuzzy and capturing all in its own time capsule, feels apt if somewhat distorted in the version I saw. A necessary lack of logic found in these films is to be found as well, mainly that whilst the zombies are the main subject, the film starts by abruptly introducing a serial killer with a Richard Nixon mask on. Nixon is never explicitly tied to the film but just a side dish off in his own little world; it took an inserted epilogue shot ten years later to have Nixon be a prick as well as a vicious killer as he adds to the carnage that already transpired. Certainly, whilst he has nothing to do with the plot originally, this figure just adds to the quirks which I love in films like this, his rubberised thinning black hair and large proboscis as ridiculous as the tone needed.

Vignette heavy, (or is it really tangent heavy?), is the best way to describe Death Metal Zombies. An initial prologue sets up a group of multi-gendered death metal loving friends, even getting into a brawl with another gang in the open woodlands that has nothing to do with the plot barring being cool looking. Thankfully, the film has two virtues from this. One is that, alongside charm, this is inherently all with humour without becoming ironic - three random victims for one scene, two men and one woman, get more character just from one of them being a man so muscular and jacked he can have two belts on at once and a pink body builder top, a man despite his size also in the middle of a break which is comically portrayed with his friends trying to get him to feel at peace. It's also a scene, whilst contrived, which leads to someone sitting on a knife blade arse first, so this film isn't daring to take itself seriously in the slightest.

I have to admit there's also a really diverse cast at hand, particularly with a lot of women involved. There's nudity, which is actually rarer in these films at times then you'd think, but it's interesting that it's a variety of people regardless of body shape and not the main crux when gore and gags like country music killing zombies which is the crux of the premise. In fact, due likely to the need to remove a male main character, our protagonist ultimately is one of the women, which does stand out. Some of the material is clearly padding, such as a female thief abruptly introduced halfway through just to be killed off, but when all the main cast are actually charming, be they the lovable figure at first or menacing as Satan's zombie slaves, it's a joy to have. Logic does go out the window, and ideas like country being a weapon aren't as fully implemented as one would hope, but it's the take of knowing humour to the production whilst taking it seriously I have to admire.

The other virtue, the best, is that, managing a deal with Relapse Records, if you like extreme metal this is a quality of soundtrack you rarely get in micro budget cinema due to licensing issues or budgetary ones. Some have done well and succeed in spite of adversity and creativity, but even the ridiculous and somewhat naffer tracks, at least those dated of the era with industrial influences and morbid subject matter, fit the tone perfectly. You'd be surprised to suddenly encounter Amorphis, quite a highly regarded Finnish band bringing graceful euphoric guitar riffs over death metal vocals, sat next to utter oddballs - the notorious Anal Cunt, whose motto was indeed as offensive as the name, sat alongside a strange Jesus Lizard inspired death metal track and what can only be described as a classical waltz that slowly turns into a blast beat grown-athon that still left me sniggering on this viewing. That its licensed music for this low a budgeted work shot on VHS is the real kicker for me - Relapse Records is highly regarded in metal especially in less mainstream circles, so this was a coop for Cook if any to acquire collaboration on.

Obviously Death Metal Zombies is an acquired taste, imaging imagine how the director-writer managed to get enough people to be a good crowd of zombies, better than some films at this scale in many areas, is rewarding. Knowing how hard to just make a film at this scale is makes it worthy of being recognised. A film which can do this and have a sense of humour, such as the impracticalities to actually playing a tape backwards to stop the evil hordes, is a hell of a lot more rewarding than a predictable, technically more polished snorefest. It's simply fun, but a hard won fun due to have its budgetary limitations have to overcome them and is seen.

And in mind as a heavy metal fan, it was befitting I saw this around the same time as a film like Lords of Chaos (2018), a biography of the black metal band Mayhem which had the budget and investment but, alongside problematic artistic choices, was an utterly generic and neutered product not worth investing money in. In comparison, an absurdly low budget (and absurd) film with a simple premise the film actually pulls off is higher in value because it got the attitude right. "Swedish Life Metal" was a swipe used in the dialogue of Lords of Chaos, dismissing "posers" (anyone who likes to listen to metal, drink beer and head bang with friends) when characters instead huffed dead crows to be inspired by death and burn churches, looking both fucking ridiculous and well as problematic edgelords even before you consider their real life counterparts committed real crimes and spouted white supremacist nonsense, regardless of the fact that the music is worthy to be separated from it. Death Metal Zombies isn't Swedish, though the genre stemmed from Florida in the States originally, but manages to be more metal in tone and a lot more watchable.

From https://stigmatophiliablog.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/dmz9.jpg

How Fernando Pessoa Saved Portugal (2018)

Director: Eugène Green

Screenplay: Eugène Green

Cast: Carloto Cotta as Fernando Pessoa / Alváro de Campos; Manuel Mozos as Moitinho de Almeida; Diogo Dória as Ministro da Saúde; Alexandre Pieroni Calado as Mourinho; Ricardo Gross as Padre Marinheiro / Bicha da Horta; Mia Tomé as Modelo; Eugène Green as Pintor

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

A short one, not to be called a short film but a "mini-film" by Eugène  Green, an American born French director whose work I wish was more readily available and seen. Green is an idiosyncratic auteur, but in this day and age you can split a few of them off, not all of them, into two categories - those who can get films or even a Netflix/Amazon Prime series in the current day, and those who are still thankfully productive but whose work exists in film festivals and/or their home lands rather than available for a country like the United Kingdom. Green is definitely in the later camp, heavily indebted to Robert Bresson, but if he did a Nicolas Winding Refn and made a crime TV series I'd be compelled to witness it just to wonder how he would go about making one.

That's definitely a joke to consider seriously as the only conflict I have ever seen in one of his films is in Le Monde vivant (2003), a reinterpretation of fairy tales where the brave knight wore jeans, his trusted lion was played by a dog, where he rode a motorbike and the tropes of fairy tales were retold in a matter-of-fact realism. (Though Green, in the one overt piece of conflict, still had a confrontation with a giant see only from the furry shins down). Green's also neither as nihilistic as many directors and openly spiritual to the point of religious; not the Kevin Sobo way mind, but the introspective one who has clearly read the Bible and religious texts; one with a light contemplation of what those ideas actually are meant to be. (In this case, he even plays off the divide between Jesuits and Jansenism as ideologically apposed sects of Christianity for a really esoteric joke). He can be humorous and light-hearted, yet with his very unconventional style and numerous high art references, Green's a tricky one for some to "get", but he never comes off as pretentious or elitist, too softly spoken in his films and warm for this accusation to stick.

The trademark is that, inspired by Bresson, his acting from actors is very minimalistic, though not as extreme as, say, Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet who practically minimalized acting to the point of non-actors reading off texts in still shots in a film like Workers, Peasants (2001) against woodland trees. The only film to get a British theatrical release, A Portuguese Nun (2009), was testament to this through How Fernando... does take a huge risk when, for a considerable chunk of its mere twenty six or so minutes, it devotes itself to its opening credits, still scenes of the Portuguese location to a song of existential emotional angst that is beautiful.

After this, the film gets a bit more idiosyncratic; Fernando Pessoa, played by Carloto Cotta who has already making a name for himself playing the simple child like footballer of Diamantino (2018), is a real poet of considerable high regard in his homeland but, as transpires here when a merchant desiring to import a Coca Cola stand-in to Portugal and have him write an advertising slogan for it, did also desire to go into business for financial success. In fact, the story this mini-film uses is real:  slightly different, Pessoa did write a slogan for Coca-Cola in 1928, "First, it is strange. Then it gets into you", only for Coca-Cola to be banned by the Portuguese authorities, and Coca-Cola was banned in the country until 1977.

Fernando here, by way of a doppelganger based on one of his real life heteronyms, does come up with the perfect ad caption - "First you will be surprised, then you will be possessed" - but that just helps the subsequent banning of the drink by government officials. On one hand, as this is where Fernando himself realises he has saved Portugal, this could all come off as a cheap swipe at American consumerism. What complicates it is twofold. First, the government officials are clearly played for comedic effect - they literally consider the possession literal, so they hire a Jesuit priest to exorcise a bottle, probably one of the strangest versions of such a scene you will ever see. Even if Green is entirely against the "United-Statesian" import, he's aware enough to prod at his own characters' absurdities at the same time.

Complicating this further are the references. There's the notion of the "encoberto", which Fernando is referred to including by himself; the Portuguese king Don Sebastiao at the end of the 16th century disappeared during the 1578 Battle of Alcácer Quibir in northern Morocco, only to develop a mythological status that he would come back to help Portugal at a time of need. Fernando does so by pure accident, and whilst it's a good thing in the end, probably the bigger concern in theme is when the merchant admits it was a bad idea to try to mix poetry with commerce. Fernando Pessoa here learns that his greater virtue is to stick to poetry rather than helping a drink he even thinks tastes disgusting be sold for commerce. Even if the advertising text was potent, and the poster itself is too, a cameo by Green himself as the artist, in context rather than appreciated as art they're disposable and suppressed. The real Fernando Pessoa certainly wasn't known as an advertising slogan writer, as one of his best known poems about a specific form of melancholy, The Bell in My Town, where the past and the future are the same, is heard at the beginning before the opening credits.

Altogether, a new Eugène Green work is always appreciated, a director I wish was better known. Short enough to see repeatedly, the slogan is apt for the entire feature itself, and having been able to watch the mini-feature multiple times for the review, there's a lot of subtext that can be found and dug up in such a simply told work. And again, cola exorcism is something you don't see every day.

From https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w780/j2VSIJVjX1LNzxqqdr2gD0e72cK.jpg

Haunted Castle (2001)

From https://images3.static-bluray.com/
products/20/47276_1_front.jpg

Director: Ben Stassen

Screenplay: Ben Stassen and Kurt Frey

Cast: Jasper Steverlinck as Johnny; Kyoko Baertsoen as the Mother; Harry Shearer as Mr. D

A work like Haunted Castle, an IMAX 3D presentation which got a British DVD early in the medium's existence and is long out-of-print, is the kind of motion picture work whether it is held as good or not that will sadly be forgotten. There is an innate issue in motion picture history of what to do with these types of films - the "gimmick" films, not taking into considering the motion pictures that run with amusement park rides, which this explicitly evokes by Hell's transport system as a rickety tram system, but even in regular cinema itself. The inherent issue is that what large companies spent large amounts of money on to create in specially designed cinemas cannot be easily recreated for the home - the death of 3D television, or absence in the United Kingdom for less harsh words, is an example to this, and even something as simple as "Odorama" with scratch and sniff cards is an expense only Criterion of all people will invest in for their release of John Waters' Polyester (1981), a tribute/parody of this gimmick where you can now smell dog shit by the card included with the Blu-Ray.

This is a shame as, whilst a flexible viewer of cinema, I honestly think even the fact that I've seen very few films on a cinema screen is itself missing a part of the medium's power even though I am flexible with my cinema viewing on TVs and streaming. I am not a purist, but if even repertory screenings are an elusive thing for me where I am, what does one do with gimmicks (Cinerama, the long lost Earthquake (1974) system of Sensurround etc.) which require a lot of tech unless you can fund a budget to allow anyone to see this pieces. Even something as simple as John Carter (2012), which I saw in the cinema in 3D, is going to be difficult if you can't afford the equipment, or its pointless to without more films to use it for. Whilst the memory is precious, it's an inherently asinine ideal that it'll be more precious without chance to see it in the same context, as I'd still create a new memory and gain new perspective if I could see John Carter in a cinema in 3D again, a potential to build on a work in layers lost due to tech being cumbersome to acquire. Sadly the cost to run many properly is also factored, in the case of Haunted Castle, with the age as this short forty plus minute work would be viewed obsolete today.

Admittedly, its director Ben Stassen, who founded nWave, has this film mentioned in the catalogue of productions on their website, so there is some hope that. Ben Stassen himself, before we get to the film itself, didn't disappear into obscurity either though many might not recognise the name. Starting in IMAX/sideshow experience films, he worked his way up to the modern day with animated films The Queen's Corgi (2019). He's also a pioneer in 3D, a Belgium producer/director who's founded company nWave worked on many large-format spectacle films before changing to computer animated movies. Admittedly this might mean that Haunted Castle is better preserved as mentioned, but if Stassen ever found out about this itsy-bitsy review I hope he still appreciates someone dusting an old title in his filmography off and letting a wider audience know of it.

As a film Haunted Castle is a theme park ride, literalised as Hell's basement for musicians who've sold their souls to Mr. M (Satan if voiced by the same man who played Derek Smalls in Spinal Tap befittingly) right down to a Ferris Wheel that carries people across over the chasm over fiery hell magma. To be honest, call it a simplistic pleasure but it was catnip for me, the notion of immersion something I appreciate even in simple amusement, in this case propulsion through our lead character, a musician whose mother was a famous singer, through this strange place like an exhibition.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/74d1w_yisjQ/maxresdefault.jpg

The premise is that said son searches for her at the titular castle, which is simply an excuse for his journey where he experiences the sights of everyone who signed their soul to the Devil, even if that means their bodies are disposable for torture. Whilst this is a spectacle film, it does get surprisingly dark for a PG rated film, reaching a scene where in mirrors everything from acid baths to Saw franchise death traps can be recreated as long as you don't show the actual aftermaths to them. The pretence of a plot, following a male character, means you occasionally see him, real actors (including singer Kyoko Baertsoen as his mother) superimposed to the computer animation, whilst most of it is from the perspective of first person.

Haunted Castle was designed originally for 3D as well, originating from a period long after the fifties created the format and the brief eighties period died out, long before the reattempted version from the late 2000s intermittently still with us, where I'd naturally understand why the format would probably be more common in this type of spectacle ride instead. This is entirely part of the idea of multi-media in general, the issues with preserving this material notwithstanding an entire spectrum of ideas including even 4D cinema which raises a lot of issues; one simple issue is that for many, they can be viewed as entirely anti-cinema in turning the medium into just thrills and little else, but is a fascinating territory to consider for the open minded.

One factor already mention that will hurt Haunted Castle for many is that its animation is obsolete, not 8-bit or 16-bit from videogames, which is still trendy nowadays, but beyond that to later consoles and advancement stuck between uncanny valley and severer dating in effect. I love it, but in the gap between Playstation One and Playstation Two, animation if not stylised will always date. I love this type of animation however for this reason, not for irony but entirely in the same mentality of the vaporwave musical/internal culture of how it develops a dreamlike substance as it becomes more dated. Haunted Castle, watching the 3D version without equipment and putting up with the image being partially blurred where props were meant to stand out, eventually sucked me in as an imaginative experience in lieu to what it was meant to be.

In fact, I find animation like this in general, computer animation or very abstract work, even some great timeless creations, sometimes bad aesthetic, far more engaging for me over live action cinema, in a sense like the aforementioned living dreams which are felt as fully formed, surreal experiences. And trust me, for that surreal mood, the fakeness of this work now helps Haunted Castle a lot in that department too. The film does end on a flat note admittedly that undercuts this, where the lead doesn't prove himself to be a great rock star in the slightest in his flat vocal delivery and a bland pop rock song played in the concert we watch at the end. It's a slight moment, and a reminder that in 2001 we had a lot of terrible music. This isn't even a slam against pop music, because I am sure if you dug somewhere there'd be something more bombastic from the time.

It does however make up for this in the general ghoulishness of the material preceding it, a sense of surprisingly macabre sensibility that is to be admired. At least in terms of an entertainment spectacle, now that the 2000s is now old, this has the curious charm that one finds when one encounters a toy from a previous decade, their personalities grow by the style and very videogame-like appearance. And the spectacle itself is gleeful, be it a robot band being slowly picked off by a crown of wrecking balls suspended over them or the reason Satan now really likes to torment opera musicians more than anybody else. It is eerie, not broad despite envisioning the tram system of one of Hell's soul storage units as a malfunctioned and rickety rollercoaster ride, but eerie in tone even if it's never scare, just a ride.

Abstract Spectrum: Immersive/Eerie

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/74d1w_yisjQ/hqdefault.jpg