Little Otik (2000)

 

Director: Jan Švankmajer

Screenplay: Jan Švankmajer

Cast: Veronika Žilková as Božena Horáková, Jan Hartl as Karel Horák, Kristina Adamcová as Alžbětka, Jaroslava Kretschmerová as Alžbětka's Mother, Pavel Nový as Alžbětka's Father, Dagmar Stríbrná as Pani spravcova (the caretaker), Zdenek Kozák as Mr. Žlábek

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)/Canon Fodder

 

Jan Švankmajer’s tale of a couple who merely wanted a child, but cannot, opens with such strange images like the husband envisioning a fishmonger wrapping a baby up in newspaper outside the pregnancy clinic. Unable to have children due to medical sterility, the couple’s life takes a drastic turn when, as a sweet joke, the husband Karel Horák (Jan Hartl) finds a tree stump that looks like a child vaguely and dresses it up as one, only for Božena Horáková (Veronika Žilková) to literally take the carved and varnished stump as a literal child to his horror. After a contrived nine month pregnancy they fake, a be-careful-for-what-you-wish-for tale transpires when after this pregnancy the tree stump now christened Otik comes to life.

Švankmajer had nearly three decades as a stop motion animator before this film, working on shorts and even one music video for Hugh Cornwell named Another Kind of Love (1988), before he made his first theatrical film with Alice (1988), an Alice in Wonderland interpretation which is whimsical, if surreal and embraces macabre horror tropes, more so as he used real taxidermy animal and bones to create some of the denizens of his Wonderland. Švankmajer made his craft from his native Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic literally animating anything from paper furniture to paper, his later films after Little Otik going onto real cow tongues (Lunacy (2005)) to photo cutouts in Surviving Life (2010), and his work here embraces a macabre humour contrasting the tragedy that will transpire.

For the Horáks, children are what are important for their community in the apartment complex as much as they sincerely want kids, not just take the cat out on a leash for walkies. Whether a good thing or not, it is turned into an obsession that is not just that of Alžbětka (Kristina Adamcová), the one child in the complex lamenting the lack of other children, and overenthusiastic to the point of reading medical texts about sterility and “slow semen”. The set up is from a fairy tale, of the Otesánek by Karel Jaromír Erben which is retold in fairy tale illustrations animated onscreen, but it is streaked by Švankmajer as a card carrying surrealist skewering the weird ritual of proud parents and those around the Horaks who celebrate their consummation of parenthood. Alžbětka’s obsession is as an over inquisitive child, but her mother celebration of the fake pregnancy cycle in the first act is as odd when viewed from afar, as is Mr. Horák being congratulated at work with drinks. Children are a positive thing in the right context, an important moment for any parent even with adopted sons and daughters to undertake, but the ritual is seen as having existed for its own sake. With Mr. Horak’ early hallucinations of babies being everywhere before the tree stump is literally dug out, their wish for parenthood is arguably one as much pressured and forced onto people even when they wish and feel lost without this in their lives.

Švankmajer uses his career to prod at human behavior in its curiosities in the theatrical and short length films. Virile Games (1988) mocked the sport of soccer as a television event as much for an excuse for significant food consumption as much as violence, whilst Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), the theatrical film before this one, whilst sympathetic to its anthology cast was about sexual fetishes, done with the least conventional ones where his own hand crafted pieces for the film, like kitchen utensils like rolling pins fashioned to give pleasurable massages with artificial tongues, matched how all the pieces within itself showed these men and women painstakingly crafting the items and costumes needed for their elaborate sexual fantasies, even the man who dresses up as a papier-mâché bird creature to swoop on a woman who has a stand in he also built.  With Alžbětka’s father always watching adverts on TV and getting drunk constantly, or the really twisted joke you normally would never get, that the old man in the complex is a pervert eyeing up Alžbětka, you see Švankmajer turning ordinary Czech lives into his creations to scrutinize them, as he did literary sources. His obsession with food, the destructive act of eating and its strangeness, is the most prominent example of this from his entire filmography and perfect to see here, as Otik when he comes alive is very hungry and, as he grows, even the post man isn’t safe. Food has been one of Švankmajer’s obsessions for his whole career, continuing it even in one-off surreal moments here like nails being seen in a broth or a sentient breathing pancake.

This is one of his most robust narratives too, where the first act fully sets up the sick humored turn to Otik’s parents having to hide his consumed victims. Little Otik at that point definitely belongs to the horror genre among others as, stripping his food down to freshly bloodied bones by his crib, or guts and blood split on the glass of his bedroom’s windowed door, we will see Otik move from an incredible piece of stop motion magic to a giant practical suit and off-camera implications. Otik himself, let alone the rest of the animation in the film, is visibly the craft of a veteran animator (and all his collaborators on this production) who had four decades before the film to hone his skills, let alone is an acclaimed artist in his own right in various forms of materials shown in galleries over the decades after. Just Otik himself in his initial living version is the result of having to find and put together real pieces of wood visible for all the titular child’s mannerisms and facial expressions in his initial form. All the stop motion in general, whilst at this point in his theatrical career fully focused on making sure his human actors and their performances also suit, had to be painstakingly put together even for pure gags, with the knowledge Švankmajer’s trait of not using conventional items for the motion would have added new challenges for him and an animation team to work with. Even if giant Otik becomes an entity not shown fully onscreen when his parents finally lock him down in the coal cellar of the apartment complex, I see they depict his hands with real twigs that had to be painstakingly collected and likely led to multiple hands needed to accomplish the whole film.

Švankmajer is truly an artist but, whilst Alice is a masterpiece in its own right, the real turn by Conspirators of Pleasure and this film is that he fully embraced these longer films for being dramas too. Whilst Alice focused on one young girl in the lead and his stop motion, here he has a full cast and it feels he felt completely comfortable there too. Actors did exist in his short films, and one The Garden (1968) is entirely around people without animation its central focus, but you see here he found a new side to filmmaking he embraced as he made more theatrical length films which had longer stories. A corpse humour, even pure silliness, is found in the performances too to be as dynamic as the animation, the tragedy matched with the farce. He finds humour in, say, a man pretending to be the postman your child ate and post his mail deliveries at night, even if it leads to questions from far away onlookers of why the postman is late posting his mail. Or the nonchalant conversation that, if forced horrifically to cut your tree child to pieces, you can just ask your soused neighbor for his chainsaw with no questions asked.

Because of this, the story is as good, with its own twisted turns as, with the naivety of a child but her innocence causing as much harm, Alžbětka in the second half befriends Otik in his cellar confinement. Feeding the local pedophile to him is one thing the viewers will applaud, but when she has no qualms in debating to feed anyone including her family members to him, when she cannot get any food for him anymore, you see a nasty little parable about how childhood for all its innocence has a naivety which does not process the consequences of life and death. This can be revealed in as a subversion of proper etiquette but it also shows that, like with Otik himself, our perceived notion of the beautiful innocence of children is just as strange and deserves to be subverted as seen in both children we follow here, all needing to be resolved by the elderly female neighbor in the end. Tellingly the film ends before this inevitable finale to stop all this is seen onscreen, as Švankmajer has already told his parable in its fullest with the fairy tale sequences telling Karel Jaromír Erben’s original story. The parable is this strange tale of wanting a child regardless of the cost, and its sickly humored morals close us out before the unfortunately meeting of an Otik with a garden hoe because that was always inevitable, whilst the journey itself is the delirious and impressive ride we had just experienced over two hours.

The Lure (2015)

 

Director: Agnieszka Smoczyńska

Screenplay: Robert Bolesto

Cast: Marta Mazurek as Silver, Michalina Olszańska as Golden, Kinga Preis as the nightclub singer, Andrzej Konopka as the drummer, Jakub Gierszał as the bass player, Zygmunt Malanowicz as the house manager, Magdalena Cielecka as Divine Furs, Marcin Kowalczyk as Triton / Daedalus

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Stories)

 

With animated illustrated opening credits, we are introduced to The Lure, a Polish horror musical which caught a lot of interest, more so as it gained distribution through Janus Films/Criterion as a rare new release from some of the biggest names in distributing and releasing classics of cinema. It opens with two mermaids, Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Gold (Michalina Olszańska), taking interest in humans singing and dancing one night on the beach, joining in the singing and catching all off guard. Obvious, in folklore, mermaids in certain forms lured men with their beautiful singing to their demises, which is something director Agnieszka Smoczyńska and screenwriter Robert Bolesto are going to subvert in terms of the gender stereotypes. We will sympathise with these ones even if they are literal man eaters, but at this point, the trio of an older female singer, her musician husband, and the young male bassist instead decide to bring them on land to work at the restaurant bar they perform at as strippers and backup singers.

Set in Poland by way of an alternative eighties, where seventies disco did not die out, the world is grounded in reality in spite of the fantastical plot, clearly reflecting a fondness to this type of world of nightclubs from the director if not hiding the environments' moments grunginess and seediness, with a place where the older man running the club has no qualms with the mermaids working for him as long as he gets them to strip first to demonstrate they are mermaids. In this world, no one bats an eye to their clear unnaturalness, the two sisters able to grow human legs and wander the land as long as they do not stay too long from water. Even if they have Barbie doll anatomy, they look identical to everyone else if seemingly more naive from the off-set, and they re-grow their tales when in contact with water, which does well for business as spectacle. It emphasised a corporal fleshy scaly take on these folklore entities which does not hide from the sexual aspects at all in their desires and humans' desires for them. It is definitely horror too as these mermaids eat people, specially Gold who will eat men, even having a tryst with an older female police officer who finds the giant tail arousing.

The Lure is absolutely a musical too, with full songs and occasional dance numbers, such as one with a full dance chorus in a shopping mall as Gold and Silver are brought into the world of showbiz. This is all in mind that, whilst also depicting these two mermaids as outsiders being exploited and trying to figure themselves out in this world on-land, the film is explicitly a reinterpretation of Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid, the story recreated as Silver falls for the young male musician. It takes a more adult dimension in that the equivalent for full proper legs, as in Anderson's tale, is to have full human anatomy beneath the waist to be as physically loved let alone romantically, but the biggest lesson to learn from the film is never to trust men who ask you to drastically change yourself for their sake, as between his place as the lover of their female manager, or how he has a wandering eye anyway, Silver's story is going to be tragic especially as this follows the story of Anderson's tale that she will lose her voice. As proclaimed by the one merman Gold has a friendship with, Triton (Marcin Kowalczyk), a punk rock singer who literally bites the heads off animals on stage, he wanrs as well that, if Gold's love is unrequited, she will turn to foam and dissipate after a certain time after the heartbreak.

The difference with The Little Mermaid to this is that you do not expect the legs to be acquired through a back alley doctor who switches lower halves between two women to complete a tail/lower waist transplant surgery in musical song. Moments like this are why The Lure does stand out, with its wayward tone in shifting along with these strange and idiosyncratic characters even among the humans in the cast. In another film, it may seem abrupt for the mermaids to just be briefly disposed off midway through, in carpets into a body of water, when they are leaving a body count, only to be brushed under the carpet and everyone getting together, by way of a cold turkey musical number where the three human characters are emotional messes. Here however, it works within the logic of the film fully. All of it works as its own idiosyncratic form, tonally able to sustain itself with its combination of seemingly out of place parts, where the musical numbers work, with the music good, where the gore when it arrives fits especially with the sick humoured tone, and that it does have an emotional finale, even if it leads to the natural idea that guys who cheat on their girlfriends should be eaten instead.

Fugue (2018) caught people off-guard including myself, as a film less easy to sell for its cult appeal, a fitting title in atmosphere where we follow a woman who lost her memory reconnecting to her old environment, whilst The Silent Twins brought Agnieszka Smoczyńska to the United Kingdom in a drama co-produced with Poland based on the lives of a real pair of female twins. This is still a filmmaker who started theatrical length films in the 2010s, with The Lure as her debut, so the question of whether Smoczyńska will ever return to the tone of this debut is to be left on the table as a what-if. Suffice to say, having taken time to digest the film over multiple watching, I finally came to appreciate this interesting and idiosyncratic production which felt like all the best parts of a first theatrical film firing with ambition.

The Last Matinee (2020)

 

a.k.a. Al morir la matinée

Director: Maximiliano Contenti

Screenplay: Manuel Facal and Maximiliano Contenti

Cast: Luciana Grasso as Ana, Ricardo Islas as Asesino Come Ojos, Julieta Spinelli as Angela, Franco Durán as Tomás, Pedro Duarte as Mauricio, Yuly Aramburu as Maria Julia, Hugo Blandamuro as Hugo, Daiana Carigi as Maite

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

From Uruguay, this film is absolutely the creation of a director, Maximiliano Contenti, who loves horror films, and wanted to create a film in tribute to giallo and slasher films he has likely seen. As I will also nod to, as his filmography include non-horror films including documentary work on subjects like the Uruguayan jazz scene, this is a beautiful example of someone from a country whose cinema that is sadly ignored in the West bringing their own voice to the proceedings. "Beautiful" may be inappropriate for a film about a psychopath who kills is victims and steals their eyeballs, but as he is gleefully riffing on films which he proudly nods to in the film posters of The Last Matinee's central location, Contenti is still making a film as a Uruguayan creator and adding to the horror canon alongside the likes of The Silent House (2010).

As a premise, it is an easy one to start with for this Uruguayan-Argentinean co-production, that just when you think it's safe to go to a cinema, there is a serial killer in the aisles. Set in the capital of Uruguay, Montevideo, in 1993 on a rainy day, a mysterious man in black gloves eating the last pickle from a giant jar enters a cinema for its last screening of the night, all with terrible intent for his bloodlust and obsession with collecting eyeballs in that aforementioned jar. Already from the prologue, you get a good glimpse of the style of the proceedings. From the colour palette - bold primaries for a bag of sweets a kid leaving accidentally spills to the murky yellow walls on the stairway - to the neon, the world depicted is stylistic in an engaging way. The score, by Hernán González, fully nods to the fact this is a throwback tribute to older films Contenti has seen, evoking giallo and slasher films as a huge influence whilst being a tribute that helps the movie to have a distinct style.

The set up for potential victims is that Ana (Luciana Grasso) visits the cinema to greet her dad, only to be stuck taking the shift as the projectionist as her father is not medically okay to be doing ten plus hour shifts in the booth. Other characters among this slasher set -up is the kid who managed to stay behind to watch an illicit horror movie he is too young to see, the male and female couple who are awkwardly dating, the young adults already drunk on vodka outside, a girl called "Brooke Shields" in her attractiveness, and the old man who refuses to leave or pay because, out of reality, he believes he has already seen the films. With a real film playing within this one in a nice touch, Frankenstein: Day of the Beast (2011) with its director Ricardo Islas playing the killer himself, there is the growing tension as this figure is seemingly able to pick victims off in staff and patrons with the sick obsession with scoping their eyeballs out for trophies.

It is a really cool idea - horror films have metatextual nodded to their existence, and Contenti has a poster for one, Bigas Luna's Anguish (1987), which was famous for its scenes in a movie theatre, prominent in scenes alongside his first ever feature film Muñeco Viviente V (2008) and Dario Argento's Opera (1987). Unlike, say, Lamberto Bava's Demons (1985) however, which was a deliberately over-the-top film even in the horror canon, the tone is imagining a place in the dark or with people distracted where someone is carefully eliminating patrons quietly without anyone noticing. The film is more exaggerated than this, but this does provide a slow burn pace even within what is a pure style-for-style-sake horror tribute. It takes a while for actual gruesomeness to transpire, when two people get a spike between them to make their kiss more memorable, upping the violence and gore stakes, but the film is helped so much more because we are even setting up the small story beforehand. These characters get to exist to be someone rather than just pure cannon fodder, which was a problem you do find with a lot of original slashers where victims barely get any time to make their demises punch you in the gut. There is at least a sense of tragedy when people are killed here, even as archetypes, due to this pacing choice.

Also, even if confined to said cinema, it is already a pleasure to see a film from Uruguay just in terms of how the cast talk to each other, even the diegetic sound of cinema adverts and decor to set up the time period. Later in his career, Maximiliano Contenti would make another film about the capital of Montevideo, Hot Club de Montevideo (2023), a documentary about the titular club opened in 1950 dedicated to having jazz performed. That one detail really does suggest a great deal about him as a creator, how The Last Matinee itself like quite a few modern horror films is a tribute to the past. In terms to the choice of chronological setting, beyond removing mobile phones from the plot line, it also feels like a time, set in 1993, when he would have been around the age to have already been bitten by the bug of horror cinema in general as a man born in 1984. Even casting Ricardo Islas as the killer feels like a more profound choice as, whilst the flood gates for horror from Uruguay definitely grew from The Silent House onwards, some of the earliest from the eighties onwards were Ricardo Islas' own directorial work, making him a pioneer whose casting here feels even more beautiful as a nod of respect of his career as an innovator. Again, when he gets to eat an eyeball at one point and menace a child, that may not seem appropriate to use the term "beautiful" for, but with my admiration for The Last Matinee for these reasons, and also being a great piece of pure piece of ghoulish horror film making, it works in an appropriately perverse way.

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

 

Director: Tony Scott

Screenplay: Shane Black

Cast: Bruce Willis as Joseph Cornelius "Joe" Hallenbeck; Damon Wayans as James "Jimmy" Dix; Chelsea Field as Sarah Hallenbeck; Noble Willingham as Sheldon "Shelly" Marcone; Taylor Negron as Milo; Danielle Harris as Darian Hallenbeck; Halle Berry as Cory; Bruce McGill as Mike Matthews

Ephemeral Waves

 

Shit, we’re being beaten up by the inventor of Scrabble!

I have no idea why I hated The Last Boy Scout back in the day. I guess I was not vibing to these types of action films. We had a lot of them in the family DVD collection, among the early Warner Brothers ones where they released them in cardboard DVD cases, and alongside not really appreciating action films for what they were, I likely dismissed this film outright too for being offensive rather than carefully pinpointing what aged in films from the past. The Last Boy Scout, and Shane Black’s more profane and witty storytelling, vibes for me more now even if arch, part of a solid film from a fascinating era when Hollywood movies could be very adult in tone.

The first scene really is a highlight to a production that, to my surprise, was an absolute nightmare to even get to the finish line as a final production, melding Black’s snark, Tony Scott’s skill as a director, and great Hollywood production value, a grim existential breakdown of a football player who, in the rain during a game, brings a gun on the pitch. And it is Billy Blanks, a wonderful cameo from a b-movie star, usually in martial arts films from this period, which he can be proud of and stands out more as a scene if you recognize him. I come to this film too as an unapologetic Tony Scott defender, always with the sense of him being an underdog even next to his brother Ridley, and that sequence the best in here showing his skill. Top Gun (1986) was propaganda, but it is beautiful to look at whilst the melodramatic and eighties lush tone adds the work where the story and its soundtrack win you. (Even all the jokes about its homoerotic tone (if by accident) adds to this to make it more rewarding). Days of Thunder (1990) is a melodrama, only rather than what were once called “women’s pictures”, it is about male NASCAR racers with Tom Cruise and Michael Rooker’s love-hate relationship as the leads a proto-bromance. The run of films with the likes of Domino (2005) and Déjà vu (2006) that ended Tony Scott’s career, which I need to return to, showed he how interesting a director he was when he went full bore into visual experimentation, some of the most unique of the time and genre, and with Déjà vu’s science fiction premise, producing one of the most unique and mind bending car chases using a form of split screen Brian De Palma would be proud of.

Among these films, The Last Boy Scout is more conventional even next to The Hunger (1983), but this is in mind to how much this film struggled to get finished. Alongside the script from the original Shane Black version being drastically changed, as expected with all script revisions, Damon Wayans and Bruce Willis were hostile to each other, producer Joel Silver steered it to the more conventional action scenes, and Tony Scott’s habit of shooting extensive footage took multiple people to edit it all into final results¹. He however was staying his ground on what he wanted to shoot, so this film if it has an auteur, even if compromised, is his and Shane Black’s together, and you can still see the virtues of both in this. Here Scott is the traditional stylist to a modern day noir, made at a time when Shane Black was a low end in life and feeding off pulp crime paperbacks¹, taking the broken down detective from them and making Joseph Hallenbeck (Willis), the detective at his lowest among others before him crossing with James "Jimmy" Dix (Wayans), a disgraced American football star, finding themselves forced together over one of the former’s protection jobs. This leads to a conspiracy with the US football league and politics, whose flaw in not being fleshed out is explained by how the film went through a long process in being actually completed. There is a lot more cursing than in traditional film noir but humour is literally a self defensive weapon in Shane Black’s world, an effective self defensive maneuver multiple times including “your wife” jokes being able to leave someone defenseless to a broken bottle to the neck. Alongside the setting being Christmas, an obsession for Black, and this feels like his work to the point even Danielle Harris, playing Willis’ thirteen year old daughter, gets one liners.

The interesting thing is knowing, whilst an action film at heart which Joel Silver steered more towards the one liners and action, this has a vein of melancholia in its macho bravado which is explained by the place Shane Black was said to have at the time, one of great depression at a time when he was not part of films with his scripts. This is a film where the one liners are literally self defensive not just to villains but against male anxiety and angst, hiding behind snark to cope through the likes of addiction and the loss of loved ones, With credit to Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans, despite tensions on set, they were two perfect casting choices for a Shane Black script. Willis in particular, in mind to his career’s very erratic history, including the turbulent time even here with Hudson Hawk (1991), is someone capable of a great deal in his roles, someone who could balance pathos and comedy perfectly with his work, taking what was a generic noir protagonist and making him have flesh in this case.

The film would in delicious irony be accused of being woke nowadays. This is lost a little in how much the film plays it safe with car chases and action scenes, the film turned into a production for the box office first, but with Willis’ back story as a secret service agent fired due to a corrupt politician, and corrupt politics and gambling the central themes, it is amazing even if shooting people are the answer in these films how many would not fly in certain parties minds nowadays in how suspicious of authority they are, a film noir trope Shane Black definitely took the heart. Whether it is one of the best of this time is with the caveat that, once you known how nightmarish the production history was, you can see it in the plotting pace, but so much does work. Some of the dialogue is un-pc, which has not aged the film well when they appear, but alongside how rare they are, most of the film shines instead. For a film I was once dismissed, even its inclusions as an action film, including twists involving an unfortunate accident with a helicopter blade, stand out because in spite of the chaos making this film, it gelled together as a rewarding film with too many good one liners, too much interesting pathos and Bruce Willis dancing a jig in the least expected of times.

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1) Who killed The Last Boy Scout? Bruce Willis, Shane Black and the making of an action masterpiece, written by Owen Williams for The Telegraph, published 31st May 2016.

The Lion Has Seven Heads (1970)

Director: Glauber Rocha

Screenplay: Glauber Rocha and Gianni Amico

Cast: Rada Rassimov as Marlene, Giulio Brogi as Pablo, Gabriele Tinti as the American Agent, Jean-Pierre Léaud as the Preacher, Reinhard Kolldehoff as the Governor, Aldo Bixio as the Mercenary

Canon Fodder

 

Shot in the Congo during a turbulent history, liberated in 1960 from Belgium, and in 1971 about to enter a dictatorship, renamed Zaire, until 1997, Lion has enough material to deal with the issues of colonialism and abused power. I will admit I was disappointed, as someone who saw Glauber Rocha's acclaimed trilogy of films in his home country of Brazil which blew me away at a younger age - Black God, White Devil (1964), Entranced Earth (1967) and Antonio das Mortes (1969). I still have admiration for a deeply flawed experiment with a noble heart, but it is flawed. Lion, originally called Der Leone Have Sept Cabeças, with the title an amalgamation of languages, is a director whose country was going through a dictatorship at the time, going to an African country which suffered through colonialism from the West, and visibly seeing the parallels from two different Third World nations of the turbulence of power and control.

This is a stream of consciousness from Rocha, which feels appropriate as, with the Republic of Congo formally a colonial country, you can dissect all the history with greater ease than trying to use a regular story framework. Though the emphasis on non-local foreign actors poses one of the biggest issues with Lion, it certainly feels apt to begin with Jean-Pierre Léaud as a mad priest, first introduced in a shredded and dirtied white robe, losing his mind with a wooden mallet in hand and talking of the whore of Babylon from the Book of Revelations to a befuddled group of local women. Alongside imaging how fascinating his career has been, able to go from this to Jacque Rivette's Out 1 (1971) just from a couple of films in a rich decades long career, Léaud is the one figure I would have kept even if I would entire rewrite the film's structure. As the literal import of Christianity to the country and continent, he is both captivating in how he commits to the role but apt, alongside cynically being a bankable actor for a very avant-garde film, appropriate as a character to have, dealing with those who joined the colonisation of Africa as a whole continent under the belief of noble causes, only to be left deranged by the truth. There is a lot you could unpack if playing to a series of sketches as this at times, and in mind to all the themes to unpack, it feels apt to see such sketches and the liberation of this fictionalised version of Congo as a sudden cloud burst of emotions.

Rocha stages the film like series of theatrically performed images and emphasises this point - the anti-colonial protestors carrying their own that have been slain, to the white soldiers wandering to-and-fro in choreograph in a scene with guns. This is clearly inspired by Jean-Luc Godard as well, with the Dziga-Vertov Group era felt here the most, all part of movements who found narrative a way to lie and not able to carry themes of great political weight to viewers, a symbolic essay form used within them even if this one still retains plot beats to thread them. Ironically, this style is far more difficult than stories, or even surrealist subversions of narratives which still flesh out the depth of characters and/or the scenarios.  

One of the biggest issues, which Godard's Dziga-Vertov films had, were how naive and simplistic they came off being without the sense the simplicity being on purpose. With Lion set around a revolution, its leader trying to amass locals and tribes to free themselves, alongside the evil white colonialists, none of the film does not try for the complicated and difficult issues of a revolution. Central to this is instead the comically broad villains who without moustaches to twirl instead of just maniacal. They, as I will get into, still work for me as pure evil, whilst a lot of the bigger concerns is the lack of priority in the figures meant to overthrow them, including the wife of one of them Marlene (Rada Rassimov), who is there to have Rassimov be nude for large portions of the film as the whore of Babylon stand-in. There is also the Latin Revolutionary, in capitals for emphasis, which raises the issues with Lion being set in Congo but not really telling the tale of its people, as this figure becomes integral for multiple scenes, including Léaud dragging him around with the mallet, when they should have been given to other characters.

As this is directly telling you what the meaning is, you really get a very simplistic work at heart, the earnestness of Glauber Rocha accidentally using his setting as a mere pretence for a film which could have been shot anywhere. Slithers do work, and open up the idea if this had focused on the local casting, as Rocha is not a fan of peaceful revolution, a jaded man in terms of where his country of birth originally was. The closest thing to peaceful here involves making a puppet first president, which becomes one of the strongest sequences. Though he has a wonderful saxophone trio with him for speeches, this black local presidential figure is tellingly depicted having bought a new suit like an 18th century French dandy, including the white wig, as a satirical nod to the idea that anyone can be bought by the colonial invaders. The revolutionary, the local leader and not the Latin exile, has some of the more interesting filmed theatre scenes, and should have been the central focus of the whole film and scenes which are instead given to the Latin figure. Be it being circled by dissenters, or his speech to a local chief explaining his string of miseries being unfair and unnecessary, and you see here what Rocha could get into, an equivalent to the raw energy Antonio das Mortes beautifully hit in using Western tropes, but here using more theatrical avant-garde pacing instead for a change of pace. This could have been the more experimental take on revolution, but the character who should have been the hero is a minor figure in his own film, which causes immediate issues.

What this accidentally becomes is Rocha the tourist, and whilst it does involve the least expected nude crucifixion transpiring in the final scene, I think the best moments of The Lion Has Seven Heads reflect its comically evil white colonialists for what they represent, mining all the resources and eating fruit off a dead local, contrasted against the actual country and citizens. Contrasting these broad, ridiculous monsters with their over-the-top acting and exaggerations from the Western nations against the real people of the country the film was shot in, seeing the real scenes of the local tribal dance rituals, and the local women looking on in amusement at Jean-Pierre Léaud screaming at the sky performance, is some of the more striking images. They show the figures that should have been central but were marginalized, whose scenes are all serious and thoughtful in contrast to the manic lunacy of the non-Congo figures that would have made a perfect contrast. I am glad to still see Lion, and as time goes on, I hope to grow a fondness for its virtues to admire here, but it is with having to accept this felt like a production compromised by how it was put together.

The Last House on Dead End Street (1973)

 

Director: Roger Watkins

Screenplay: Roger Watkins

Cast: Roger Watkins as Terrence "Terry" Hawkins, Ken Fisher as Ken Hardy, Bill Schlageter as Bill Drexel, Kathy Curtin as Kathy Hughes, Pat Canestro as Patricia Kuhn, Steve Sweet as Steve Randall, Edward E. Pixley as Jim Palmer, Nancy Vrooman as Nancy Palmer, Suzie Neumeyer as Suzie Knowles, Paul M. Jensen as the Blind Man and Ken Rouse as The Whipper

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)/An Abstract Film Candidate

 

This makes you look just like a vampire... that's what we are...

One year in prison for drug possession, and Terry (played by the director Roger Watkins) is sick of it all, deciding a course to making ritualistic snuff movies as a response, this beginning one of those true one-offs in that Roger Watkins' film came, seemingly vanished, and returned in its battered form as a strange piece of cinema history heard of in speculation and infamy for years. The story of Last House on Dead End Street began for me with an actual official release, not a bootleg, with the 2006 Tartan Film DVD release in the United Kingdom, part of their failed "Grindhouse" label series. Barring some Jess Franco double bills and obscurities like Bloody Malory (2002), it was not a success and was near the end of their existence when they closed their doors in 2008. Considering they, since the VHS era, were important in cult and art cinema, including their sub label "Tartan Asian Extreme" being a huge part of the push for the likes of South Korean cinema in the 2000s, the Grindhouse label was a fascinating idea, but LHoDES was an idiosyncratic choice even back then. Not helping was its messy preservation as a film heard of and not seen despite the whispers about it, even having to use video footage to include the entirety of one of its goriest scenes, at a time before cult physical media releases emphasised preservation even of films which just survived being lost. Even in terms the decades after, Vinegar Syndrome included it as an extra to one of Watkins' adult erotic films Corruption (1983) as an extra on the Blu Ray, requiring one to search for it as an Easter egg, but they merely had plans for a proper restoration for its own release.

The irony is how, under eighty minutes, not a lot actually transpires in terms of elaborate plot but so much is clear in the little character interactions, with what is witnessed being incredibly striking. It has to be factored in that, in the lore of its production, Roger Watkins with this his first film made a much longer production, called The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell, originally from 1973 and based loosely on the Charles Manson cult¹. A maelstrom of issues came as time passed - including a lawsuit from one of the film's actresses, battles with producers and distributors, and the film being out its creator-writer-lead-editor's hands² - and as the film I know it as, as for everyone else, was released officially in a truncated form in 1977 with a title clearly sold on the back of The Last House on the Left (1972) and its notoriety.

What plot is still here can be summed up as thus: Terry's work crosses paths with Mr and Mrs. Palmer, Mr. Palmer a struggling pornographer who cannot get his work sold, as his distributor does not what sensual "art" but something more extreme. Thinking Terry's work is faked despite the truth, they cross paths in selling the latter's work and becoming the next stars when Terry feels he has been ripped off.  Shot in a verité form, it also evokes the adult films which Roger Watkins reacts in film, in mind as well that the plot of this develops meaning knowing his career would enter adult cinema too.  Before his career went to making films in the format of adult cinema, something feels pertinent to how, in the context of this world onscreen, there are conversations about stag sex films not selling anymore and everyone becoming desensitised to extreme content, loaded in meaning here. There is the tone of the films talked of and seen film with film, including a sex scene which feels like porn without any explicit shots and barely any nudity baring the prominent close up shots of buttocks, but this subject matter emphasises the sense of ennui on the material, where shot after the end of the sixties and when the wave crashed miserably, this feels like the ideals of love have horrifyingly died and decayed. One scene, one of the most notorious we will get to, involving Mrs. Palmer participating in an extreme ritual for her sexual gratification is contrasted against her husband, at complete ill ease, alone in a room grimacing as he hears her at the party in the next room. It turns out to be one of the moments, surviving in this truncated form, that manages to hold power as a quiet moment, the sense of a man struggling in a career which is devolving in more and more immortal sleaze against his will as the films are no longer selling.

This is a rare moment in what becomes a discomforting production in content and tone, where its battered existing versions add to its disconcerting mood. Large portions of the production are the actors voicing over the footage, LHoDES nihilistic and weird whilst contrasting its series of ritualistic murders to the sense of alienation felt by the cast, from Terry falling into his most violent fantasies to one of his female followers coming from a dull, unhappy marriage with a man that will lead her to willingly join this cult in senseless murder. The cameraman is initially angry Terry has returned into his life and, after the horror he is shown having recording a blind man being strangled, he will eventually become a willing participant to the atrocities. Within the ritual recordings themselves, Terry has his crew and he wear masks, from transparent ones for the women which distort the face to one Terry and others share which is a full plaster piece from ancient Greek theatre. There is also emphasised repeated dialogue especially in the murder sequences that, post-dubbed, add more to inherently disturbing moments. Already the film is unsettling before it gets to the finale, an entire prolonged string of murders involving mock surgery and deer hooves which made the film's legacy.

Where this gets more strange and infamous are the scenes which are bizarre even next to other horror films. One is a scene you would never be able to get away with now, that aforementioned ritual at their party where Mrs. Palmer "performs" for the guests and for her kinks, involves putting on black face makeup and being whipped in front of her guests, a scene where there is no way around this and it cannot be comprehended. It exists now as a scene which you cannot defend but is so weird that, after rightly criticising it, it feels bizarre even next to the rest of the film, as if it just appeared in the film reels without warning, and inexplicable once the discomfort is experienced. The other involves deer hooves, a sexual subversion scene where a man is forced to go down on a woman with a severed deer hoof in place of anatomy in her jeans, which is not problematic but is so out there, with loaded sexual debasement and scumminess, it will not take the power away from the scene even talking of it. This is not even factoring in that, without these scenes, this is still a discomforting film to witness. The scene which involved a VHS copy to preserve its full gore in the UK DVD, a surgery without anaesthesia, is what you expect in terms of post-Herschell Gordon Lewis in terms of gore and real animal organs being used, but alongside even a scene of a blind man being strangled off-screen, the entire tone to LHoDES is disconcerting from the use of voice over for dialogue to the lo-fi production shot in New York among rundown buildings and improvised props. It feels legitimately grimy and evil in tone though I know this is fake.

The question remains whether this is actually a good film or not. It feels truncated, barely any characters and barely a plot barring the themes talked of earlier, suggesting how this was clearly a longer film cut to shreds. A piece at the end tidies the plot up, [Spoilers] a voice over explaining everyone was arrested [Spoilers End], felt in this misanthropic work almost like a contrived Hail Mary to not relish the nihilism, or at least pretend to not. Even the title, whilst evocative, does hide in the shadow of another notorious work, and it leaves one with a film in The Last House on Dead Street which lingers in the mind but with its own form scarred and likely compromised by the power it may have possessed. It is a compelling piece which retains power, but you could, if not able to appreciate its virtue, easily dismiss it as a terrible film, something poignant in my first knowledge of the film, and that Tartan Film DVD, came from a British DVD review magazine which trashed this as a one star review including in its presentation for the surviving form. The legend, and what actually is onscreen, is truly unique, so it deserves its place in the history of cult film, but alongside the moments you can accuse as tasteless, it is nasty experience even if that was Roger Watkins' intentions and to be considered to view requires caution.

Abstract Spectrum: Disturbing/Eerie

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

======

1) He knows audiences want violence, written by John Dalmas for The Journal News and published on April 18th 1973, page 10.  Retrieved 7th October 2019.

2) This Is Where It All Ends: Roger Watkins’ ‘The Last House On Dead End Street’ (1977), written by Brett Wright for Split Tooth Media and published on October 29th 2020.

Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

 

Director: Jeff Burr

Screenplay: David J. Schow

Cast: Kate Hodge as Michelle; Ken Foree as Benny; R.A. Mihailoff as Leatherface 'Junior' Sawyer; William Butler as Ryan; Viggo Mortensen as Eddie 'Tex' Sawyer; Joe Unger as Tinker Sawyer; Tom Everett as Alfredo Sawyer; Miriam Byrd-Nethery as Mama Sawyer

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) Re-Review

 

The relationship I have had with Leatherface has been not a great one. I think finally that is changing, taking this film as its own work, without the baggage of Tobe Hooper's first two, as a huge fan of the second as much as the first, and aware that the films after, not The Next Generation (1995) but those after, were not spectacular and make the original four together far more appreciated in their quirks. Neither did it help that director Jeff Burr's later film Devil's Den (2006) did not win me over as many of a straight to DVD horror film from a time before I softened on them, which in a previous review of Leatherface I wrote wanting to throw a show at him for.

Leatherface is trying, after the satire and eighties new wave music of the second film, to be grim and serious without over-egging it, as came to be with the reboot cycle. Gore ended up being removed infamously, and then added back in for the DVD release, an alternative ending being directed. This also suffers from what all horror films which gained a franchise did, trying to continue when the premise of the first film back in 1974 which makes sense for a one-off film only. Tobe Hooper wisely, miraculously, figured out a sequel by making its of its time and a black comedy, and with mind there was a 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake I had never even heard of until writing this review, the problem with trying to recreate the film first was never its simple premise - that being chased with a cannibal with a chainsaw will always terrify a person - but that it was a nightmare cacophony of images and sound from an independent film production where the director and crew were stuck in the middle of nowhere, in hellish heat with the smell of real rotting animal meat driving them to their limits as they were filming it.

This had the additional problem, proudly riding in with a Lȧȧz Rockit thrash metal song of the title name, of coming into the world on the cusp of the 1990s. It feels stuck as a franchise film at a time when horror cinema was slowly changing, one with great odd one-offs but where many franchises were slowly dying, and without Tobe Hooper in the driver's seat, it was unfortunately a "franchise film", not taking risks. Only now, I appreciate what it is, as a thrill ride of a morbid kind, but this is "conventional" for the genre, even if this is gristly and has a wonderfully morbid sense of humour midway within it. And it is weird to say this is conventional for the franchise, considering Leatherface is caked in grim and unmentionable liquids, one of the most openly provocative of the first four films in tone and dialogue especially. Whilst not as intense as the first or second, it is just deliberately unpleasant in tone as the plot involves sexually perverse and racist cannibals, but there is still a safe film secretly in its heart that, unlike the second film, you do not get into twisted parodies of Ronald Regan politics or the chainsaw literally being suggested as a phallic metaphor. As the 2003 remake will attest to, that for all the gore and nastiness you can put into a movie, you can still have something staying within the confines of a mainstream horror movie.

Thankfully, there was something to appreciate now in its own icky thrill ride way. The story is basic - a heterosexual couple of Michelle (Kate Hodge) and her obnoxious boyfriend Ryan (William Butler) find themselves stuck in a trap with the Sawyer family of chainsaw cannibals, and there is not a lot to say beyond this barring that. This new version of the Sawyer family has new family members, and there is the delightful sight of Ken Foree, as a survivalist named Benny, who adds a factor as the competent guy who, even if he cannot catch a break, least adds someone with combat skills in this scenario.It has a credible, menacing atmosphere of isolated desert highways and swampy woodland that is befitting the material, where everything feels rusted, old or crusty without it coming off as ridiculously glamorous in a sick way. Some of the grimness, admittedly, can be heavy handed but I have come to admire things I had looked down on upon. One great example of this is Tom Everett's misogynistic, peeping tom gas station owner and sociopath, all in mind that he is having to work against the fact Bill Moseley as Chop Top from the second film is the best the franchise ever got for strange Sawyer siblings in humour and as a character.

The sense of danger is appropriate everywhere else for a film which is to entertain primarily, even over its plot, but made with a desire to not pull its punches. Jeff Burr is someone I wish to return to with a greater openness to the career of a director, as with many in this region of genre cinema, whose career is fascinating just for the tangents - between having a late era Vincent Price in one of his earlier films, From a Whisper to a Scream (1987), to being involved with American Hero (1995), a full motion video game originally meant for the Jaguar CD, a now-rare add-on to the doomed Atari Jaguar videogame console, which never got a release until 2021 as a fully finished curiosity for gamers and people like me. He clearly came to this realising, in mind to the legacy of the first Chainsaw film, he wanted to keep the intensity of the film's reputation, as a film which paradoxically has little onscreen gore but was a cacophonous nightmare, by upping to the intensity in what we get in Leatherface. It blurs the line between entertainment, a New Line Cinema production, and an extreme horror film right down to recreating the ran over armadillo from the first film, replacing the immaculate (but somewhat absurd) taxidermy creation to a realistic animatronics one that, in a really curious touch, is played with pathos as Michelle and Ryan accidentally run over and have to put out of its misery.  

At first, it can make the strange mix of different types of film work. The sense of horror and underground culture is starting to bubble up to the surface, the gore loving horror film fan and music genres like death metal having grown up at the time of the second film or so, found here even if with thrash metal and still having a censored theatrical version as a compromise. The gore is still strong, even when there is cutaways, alongside its intensity in general mood. Helping this is that again, the Leatherface family is still as interesting as before, one of the best points of this franchise. Tobe Hooper realised with the sequel's curious tone to humour how they are centre to the tale, both as credible threats but that their personalities are over-the-top and sickly funny. By this point, like marking out the timeline for Highlander sequels, the family tree for this clan is not worth trying to map out, whilst Leatherface was thankfully at a time before Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) where the timeline was entirely mauled trying to reboot the franchise. Each version in each of the first four films as different entities that the scripts all wisely allow to stretch their legs and express themselves as different groups. Particularly as the leads, excluding the great presence of Ken Foree, are really one dimensional, this is a film where its expectations of stalk-and-chase scenes and the horror moments meant to sell it are far less interesting than the dark humour and the eccentricities when we get to be with the family.

This is a matriarchal clan, a squabbling yet close one who's nicely decorated home comes from an older Americana only with more dead animal parts and a homemade skull crushing machine in the kitchen, a disturbing concept at play too with a little girl amongst them as a born sociopath with a knife hidden in her dolly. Some would have found scenes in this still, if they hated Texas Chainsaw Massacre II's broad comedy, "betrayed" the original, such as Leatherface trying to learn from a speak and spell machine only to always type "FOOD" on the screen, one of those bizarre and fun character pieces this franchise early into itself found only to sadly lose in the films after the Millennium. Then of course you have Viggo Mortensen as Tex, first the handsome cowboy who you would understand completely wooing Michelle from an obnoxiously written boyfriend, but is also as great as a gangly, weird loon later on. The same year as Philip Ridley's The Reflection Skin (1990) where he had a main role, these offer a picture that he would become a hugely reliable and talented figure, with less of the potential embarrassment with Matthew McConaughey in the fourth one by vividly showing how good and varied an actor he is just from this simple horror role.

All of my issues with Leatherface before were that it was a fool's errand after the first two sequels that three and four could be able to recreate their structures and scenes from the first film without the comparisons being made. Here when Leatherface chases a woman through the woods with a chainsaw it becomes one of the scenes where the film does feel its weaknesses, merely the fate outside its own hands that it cannot match the first. Moments appear throughout the film, like the subplot of a previous female survivor still rooming the area in a near catatonic state, trying to add more to the same plot remade here from before, but its plotting as a horror film, as much as its action beats of fighting and setting people on fire, are far less interesting than being allowed to spend time with the Sawyer family at the dinner table. This is one of the issues with these films where the protagonists we are meant to be in the shoes off are bland ciphers, when here the Sawyers are more interesting being perversely wholesome for a bunch of homicidal psychopaths. Yes, there are parts of them which are still deliberately evil, such as the violence or the marks of racism in their dialogue, which does further another flaw of the film that, with these figures more interesting to watch, the attempt to be extreme at the same time does jar considerably.

The clash between being a greasy, cruel movie - where the heroine has to have her hands nailed to chair arms rather than tied on and dialogue at one point with gruesome implications of sexual violence - and a mainstream horror sequel is still there, a film which was lucky enough to be able to have its tone because this franchise could be sold, but it comes with all the compromises of being a film for the mainstream in that it cannot take the risks the second film did. This film had a trailer parodying Excalibur (1981) and Arthurian legend by having the Lady of the Lake of Arthurian legend, who gave King Arthur the legendary Excalibur sword, thrust out the lake a chainsaw for Leatherface, and for all the good things I now appreciate about this third film now, that trailer does connect to its clear flaws as well. The film that would have been the best from this time, but would not have been allowed to be made, would have continued the sick sense of humour of before fully, pure gorgonzola in a good way rather than just a film I just appreciate with a fondness for how far a lurid film can be appreciated.

Lurking Fear (1994)

 

Director: C. Courtney Joyner

Screenplay: C. Courtney Joyner

Based on the serialized short story by H.P. Lovecraft

Cast: Jon Finch as Bennett; Blake Adams as John Martense; Ashley Laurence as Cathryn Farrell; Jeffrey Combs as Dr. Haggis; Allison Mackie as Ms. Marlowe; Paul Mantee as Father Poole; Vincent Schiavelli as Knaggs; Joseph Leavengood as Pierce

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

He was nice to goldfish…

Two women, sisters, are locked in a building arming to protect them and the child of one from what is outside. Their concern is well heeded as there is an entity trying to get after the baby with horrible intentions…tragedy strikes when one of the women is pulled through the hole the abomination made, leading to a bloody mess.

This is the prologue; a set up to a Full Moon Production adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s serialized 1922 work of the same name. This is a very loose “adaptation” truthfully, Lovecraft’s tale of a local monster hunter obsessed with the macabre in a 1920s setting finding himself involved in a curious series of gristly massacres with monstrous results. Whilst also showing a hint of Lovecraft’s unfortunate racism, sadly to be expected alongside his very idiosyncratic use of description, it is however a macabre and compelling piece. Like the beautiful ring that is rigged with a fatal trap you can never disarm, most Lovecraft stories come with the issue that, a true one-off in talent, the man himself was as mortally flawed as you could get, which is almost ridiculous in this story’s case as it is casual racism off-the-cuff. The story itself in entirely the basic set up of a perverse family lineage that lead to troglodyte like figures who eat other humans, something timeless regardless of setting, something which has a befitting Americana morbidness to it and could be found as far forward Bone Tomahawk (2015), and is not an issue to see here if for budget reasons to set in the then-modern day.  

His tale is a different animal to Full Moon’s, which is fun but does open up how I have not really come to appreciate Full Moon truthfully. Only getting into their back catalogue long after my adolescence, their films are not opaque or complicated, not necessarily even weird, competent and frankly distancing for me in how they play their stories completely straight. This is a type of film, as I eventually came to enjoy the movie for what it is, entirely for its simple pleasures, not for reinventing the wheel. Lurking Fear is in the same scenario as the source, though this is thankfully a tale, around people trapped in one location, which brought in a few character actors too. A man imprisoned for four years, guided by Vincent Schiavelli for a brief cameo, inherits from his criminal father the other half of a map which takes him to Lefferts Corner, place of the original source material, and a cemetery where his father stashed away money in one of the graves. Criminals, led by Bennett (Jon Finch), are following behind him, but for those living in Lefferts Corner, they are a nuisance as they themselves are dealing with a band of baby eating, flesh devouring monstrosities living under the graves in caverns in the cemetery. It is here where the film is helped as, whilst basic for me, there is fun to be had with a solidly made horror tale with a crew of memorable figures.

Whilst it was only afterwards the film ended I recognized her, it was a delight to encounter Ashley Laurence again, famously the lead of Hellraiser (1987), a working actor as everyone else here who, with the figures Full Moon signed up to these films, had name recognition. Here as well you can also time stamp when the film was made as, playing the surviving sister who took the loss of the other badly, Laurence plays her character of Cathryn as a Sarah Conner. This is marking how Linda Hamilton, reprising the role of Sarah Conner for Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), a huge blockbuster at the time, was playing a character who had transformed into a hardened figure capable in context having prepared for the robot apocalypse in firearms and survival skills, a feminist figure and also one as seen here that other films were happy to evoke. Jeffrey Combs is thankfully here too, playing a doctor helping Cathryn, grizzled from having to treat the wounds of those who managed to surviving lurking fear attacks with only face disfiguring scars from their claws. Whilst a stereotype, the context makes it completely understandable why the doctor who drinks here is an alcoholic from the nightmare he has survived so far.

Add a pregnant young woman and a priest, and Lurking Fear pretty much goes from A to B as a plot. Full Moon are sticklers for telling their plots, and neither are they like horror films from even lower budgets or non-professional groups where “quirks” can accidentally slip in. Lurking Fear was entertaining, undeniably, but the moments which shone here were when there were a few eccentricities allowed to slip in. Jon Finch by himself was one of them, playing the gangster boss, an English actor whose accent stood out among the cast and whose role ended up with some additional camp to the proceedings. His is a fascinating get for the production very later into his career. The lead of Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (1971), a Hammer Horror and Shakespearian alumni who wandered into this, who plays his small role with a glorious amount of ham only Combs is getting into. Combs is eventually breaking out the communion wine and asking God forgiveness for this act, but still manages to be more straight laced than Finch, who thankfully managed to get dialogue, despite being the callous villain of the piece, that allowed him to start throwing out pithy remarks. The premise is far closer to Key Largo (1948), the famous film noir of people trapped in a single location which has likely influenced so many horror films without many realizing, than the original Lovecraft text, but there is a considerable amount to this film where it became entirely as enjoyable as it was because of the actors involved. I am not wishing to forget Allison Mackie, the mirror of Ashley Laurence on the villains’ side of the cast, someone who I swear had a prominent role in something that immediately made her recognizable to me, but sadly seems to have had a career not as prolific as it should have been considering she gives it her all here. Even Blake Adams, sadly the male lead who is cursed, as most do, with being the least interesting figure among character actors and figures like Ashley Laurence getting a lot to chew on being tough, still gets to throw in with the sarcasm and is not bulletproof from the monstrosities onscreen. As a horror film too, this gets suitably macabre when the creatures, a family mutated by inbreeding as the source text had them, are living underground among the corpses in a necropolis hellhole of caverns, with all the fake but appropriately morbid corpse and bone props the production could get their hands on.

It is not a perfect film, which could be seen as the worse discredit one could get, neither super negative or positive, but considering that I have had a cold reservation for Full Moon films I have seen, this one was fun, which in itself was entirely what the company has built itself upon, and why they have such a diehard following as the decades have passed. Certainly with its eye towards crime storytelling as well, this feels different as well from something like Subspecies (1991), and this is where one of the coolest back-story details comes into play in regards to its director-writer C. Courtney Joyner. He is a figure whose career as a regular collaborator with Full Moon Productions shows the positivity the company has, in how Charles Band its figurehead has directors and figures producing films for them over decades in various roles, but he also has this enticing second career in terms of westerns. As a writer of western texts, both actual western stories but also documents on western films, including audio commentaries on westerns like Blue Underground’s 2013 release for Grand Duel (1972). Knowing this adds a nice flourish to Lurking Fear, as whilst this is not an exact adaptation of the original Lovecraft text, he clearly added touches that are crime based but could easily, with its isolated rural location, have explicitly Western frontier vibes in the modern day. Little details like this will make me come to appreciate a film like this, and I had already really enjoyed Lurking Fear as the film it was.