The Ring Virus (1999)

Dir: Dong-bin Kim

It's very difficult to review this Korean adaptation of Kôji Suzuki's "Ring" novel so late in the day. Having seen the Japanese "Ring" series, the American remakes and the myriad knock-offs that polluted the shelves of the Horror section for the best part of a decade, I feel I know the story too well. A cursed video tape. You watch it and die seven days later. A single mother watches it by mistake and must find out how to break the curse before it's too late. Bring on the soggy dead girls. "The Ring Virus" doesn't offer much in the way of newness in 2012 but this is a shame because, taken on its own merits, it's actually one of the better offerings in the whole dreary cycle. It's really nicely shot (without all the washed-out blue that poisoned many of the other films in this vein), has a decent, coherently crafted script, a few eerie moments (although the special FX in the famous ghost reveal scene are maybe a little ropey) and even a couple of the more daring elements from the novel that were left out of the Japanese version. It's just a shame I didn't see this one first, 12 years ago, before I knew the story inside out. **

A Dragonfly For Each Corpse (1974)

Dir: Leon Klimovsky

A Spanish take on the then-popular giallo craze, "A Dragonfly For Each Corpse" sees a subdued Paul Naschy (who also wrote the script) playing a medium-boiled cop (he knows kung-fu and thinks all hookers are "garbage" but wears an apron while he cooks and loves presents) on the trail of a serial killer in Milan. There are some amusingly weird red herrings here, including a Nazi, a gay dressmaker, some hookers and a transvestite, as well as a few crazy deaths (death by golf club and death on a ghost train are both fun) but the mystery is quite weak by the time it reaches its lacklustre conclusion. A shame because there are some enjoyable elements. At times, the film almost feels like an intentional send-up of the genre (especially when Naschy is seen boiling pasta, eating salami out of the fridge and making coffee in a Bialetti kettle) but there's enough gore, nudity and fashionable outfits to make this a passable, though by no means essential, giallo. **

Beyond Dream's Door (1988)

Dir: Jay Woelfel

A student named Ben Dobbs (Nick Baldasare) experiences bizarre nightmares and finds that the lines between the dream world and reality are blurring in this micro-budget, Lovecraft-influenced, experimental horror. He hallucinates giant red monsters, armless janitors, creepy kids with plasticine eyes and topless girls with amazing 80s hair but what does it all mean? Who knows? Director Woelfel clearly has talent and ambition in abundance. The film is superbly shot, considering the money they obviously didn't have, and there are some great ideas here, but they over-reach beyond the script's ability to present them coherently. Granted, the film's nightmares-within-nightmares structure was always going to equal a degree of abstraction but the total lack of characterisation is probably the main sticking point for me. It's very tough to engage in a plot like this when no one has a personality (especially tough given some of the ropey acting) and without that connection, there's not enough to propel the plot forward at a satisfactory pace. It's a shame because some of the imagery is fantastic and a lot of love and hard work has clearly gone into making the best film they could, given a lot of limitations. **

The Black Cat (1990)

Dir: Luigi Cozzi

This oddball unofficial sequel to "Suspiria" and "Inferno" finds Cozzi going vaguely post-modern on our asses and having a pair of filmmakers try to script a "Third Mother" film to cash-in on the success of Argento's classics. However, all this attention lavished on the Mother of Tears (a whole four pages of screenplay, apparently!) is too much and she is SUMMONED! The filmmakers begin to see her glowing-eyed, maggoty visage everywhere and they start to drop dead (and/or explode!) one after the other. This should be quite a simple premise but Cozzi packs his script with an array of increasingly weird twists and turns that eventually render the film impossible to follow (especially when time and space themselves start to bend for the climax), albeit oddly entertaining. It's a kaleidoscope of crazy lighting, splattery gore (Cozzi visibly has a love for watching people explode from the inside out and, y'know what? So do I!), multi-coloured lasers, eighties haircuts and Caroline Munro in her lingerie. So yeah, it's not right, but it's okay. As usual, Cozzi's rabid enthusiasm for the genre covers up a good many problems that could punch holes in less spirited efforts. Also, this is a lot more coherent and watchable than the real "Mother of Tears" wound up being. **

Etoile (1989)

Dir: Peter Del Monte

Extremely bizarre Italian fairytale/thriller from the 80s stars Jennifer Connelly as a ballet student who flies to an unspecified European city (Budapest? Rome? Vienna? Seems to be a little of all three) to audition for some kind of Suspiria-esque school that has "get the fuck out!" written all over it. Things get weird when she becomes possessed by a long-dead ballerina, stalked by a creepy old guy (well, two creepy old guys if you include horribly miscast "handsome" lead Gary McCleery) and forced to perform in some sort of ghost version of "Swan Lake". There are some incredible ideas in "Etoile", it is filmed beautifully and the ballet backdrop is always one I appreciate in a horror film, but it's way too muddled, unstructured and incomprehensible to work. There are several annoying dead end subplots (including one with a manic, screaming Charles Durning buying and selling clocks for no discernible reason) and Connelly and McCleery's total lack of onscreen chemistry kill their scenes together but it's actually worth sitting through all the nonsense just for the truly insane final reel. I don't want to give away the twist but it's one of the most glorious "WTF!?" moments I can remember. Not a great film but wow, what an ending. For an idea as batshit outlandish as that, I'm willing to forgive a multitude of sins! **

The Killer Reserved Nine Seats (1974)

Dir: Giuseppe Bennati

Incomprehensible giallo which tries to blend as many subgenres as possible in order to achieve an optimum level of confusion for the viewer. It starts out as a kind of drawing room mystery. Ten rich assholes who hate each other congregrate in a theatre that's been abandoned for a hundred years after a series of unsolved murders. They're picked off one by one by a black-gloved killer in what appears to be a Harpo Marx mask (!) but there's also a gothic element in play here; hidden doors in the wall, family curses, candlelit corridors and torrid melodrama (even a little incest!). To cap things off, they start hearing voices that can't be recorded on tape and seeing a strange man who materialises (and disappears as quickly) in random places to spout nonsense. This all leads to a bizarre, almost Fulci-esque conclusion in a hidden labyrinth beneath the theatre. The sets are great, there's one particularly shocking death scene and it's all peppered with copious nudity but Bennati's offbeat direction is too scattershot to pull it all together. Ultimately, the slipshod way in which the film tosses aside even its own internal logic in favour of twisting the meagre plot further towards obscurity wrecks what could've been a far better movie. File under "obscure and interesting curio" instead. **

Satan's Blood (1978)

Dir: Carlos Puerto

(aka Don't Panic!)

This atmospheric and low-key piece from the 70s starts with a young couple, Andres and Ana, being accosted in the street by a pair of swinger-looking types named Bruno and Berta. Bruno insists that he and Andres went to school together but Andres has no recollection of this. In order to see a photograph that Bruno swears he has from back then, Andres and Ana drive out with them to an isolated house in the country and terrible, terrible things ensue. On one hand, Satan's Blood is original, creepy and actually rather harrowing in parts and the limited but uninhibited cast work well with their roles. On the other, it seems to purposely abandon logic, plausibility or any kind of explanation for the horror in favour of an abstract, nightmarish approach. The film plays like one long anxiety dream and, sadly, that's not an altogether good experience. Rather than being tense, it's just somewhat stressful for the most part. I praise it for its mood and the fact that I probably won't forget it in a hurry but I can't say I genuinely liked it. **

Torso (1973)

Dir: Sergio Martino

I guess it's a giallo but "Torso" feels more like a proto-slasher, as a slow-moving masked killer picks his way through a group of nubile students at some kind of art college in sunny Perugia. There are a billion pervert red herrings to choose from and plenty of naked girls to distract you from thinking too hard about the killer's identity until the end. "Torso" is clearly some years ahead of its time - its influence and innovation can't be denied - and it's mostly well-directed (bar one massive goof with a mirror) but it hasn't aged that well. There's plenty of bargain basement gore and nudity (I mourn that Tina Aumont remains tragically clothed throughout) and the scenery is great but the plot's just too thin (and the killer's motive too tiresome) to drive it any further. Also the final fight sequence is so hilariously choreographed (director's instructions could've been "flail camply then fall over!") that it takes the sting out somewhat. **

Devil's Nightmare (1971)

Dir: Jean Brismée

Dated gothic chiller in which a group of seven tourists find themselves careening around the candlelit corridors of a creepy castle at the mercy of a sultry succubus (Erika Blanc, in various states of undress). As cool as that sounds, there's not much to rave about in "Devil's Nightmare". The plotting is slow, the murders are kinda hokey (although I have to admit, the "drowning in gold glitter" one is flamboyant and original enough to warrant mention!) and the touted-all-over-the-sleeve lesbian sex scene is not as exciting as several overheated IMDB reviewers would have you believe. There's the odd touch of class here and there (each of the seven tourists represents one of the Deadly Sins if you're paying attention) and the atmosphere is nice but it's mostly quite dull, uneventful stuff. If you're going to watch it for anything, Daniel Emilfork's super-spooky turn as Satan is the best bit but otherwise this is a time-filler at best. **

The Iguana With The Tongue of Fire (1975)

Dir: Ricardo Freda

Obscure giallo that's every bit as baffling as its title, this one finds the ubiquitous black-gloved killer throwing acid in people's faces then slitting their throats (because, y'know, just the one simply wouldn't be enough). Unusually, the killer's at large in Dublin which, while it does make an interesting change of pace, means that everything looks a little grey and chilly compared with the bright, hot, colourful Roman climes typical of the genre. The mystery here is pretty dismal with the final reveal being more of a "huh? who?" than an "ahhh! them!" but there are one or two nice touches. The detective's batty mother - a half-deaf, half-blind Miss Marple type - is great and has all the best lines but there's also some decent gore and nudity to pass the time while the parade of red herrings are wheeled out ad infinitum. Still, I'd say it's only really worth bothering with if you're a hopeless giallo completist who just can't help themselves. That'd be me then. **

Witchery (1988)

Dir: Fabrizio Laurenti

(aka Ghosthouse 2, La Casa 4, Witchcraft)

Ropey late-80s Italian chiller in which a sexy virgin (Leslie Cumming, whose tragically short film career consists of just this and the even worse "Zombie 5 : Killing Birds") gets trapped on a haunted island with a witch, a pregnant girl (Linda Blair!), a rich old couple, some creepy real estate agents, a kid with the most annoying voice EVER and... (wait for it)... David Hasselhoff. What the Hoff was doing in this is beyond me but it marks either the high or the low point of his career, depending on how you judge things. There are many dubious aspects of "Witchery" - it's slow, badly acted, cheaply made and not entirely logical - but I have a soft spot for the sheer weirdness level. The gore FX are nasty and imaginative, it almost manages to be spooky at times and there are a few trippy, messed-up ideas buried beneath the more obvious ones (ie: while it's no surprise that Linda Blair's character gets possessed, it certainly feels new when she hallucinates two witches roasting a foetus on an open fire!). I'd never try to say this was a GOOD movie but it's easily watchable B-Grade fodder and there's much worse out there. **

The Nesting (1981)

Dir: Armand Weston

An agoraphobic author moves into a haunted (former) whorehouse in this early 80s potboiler. All the staple haunted house elements are present (breaking glasses, strange noises, disappearing furnishings, etc) and although the conceit of agoraphobia provides a nifty answer to the perennial "Why don't you just leave?" question in these movies, there are few other surprises. The twist is signposted from very early on and while it's not a terrible one, it all feels a little bit TV Movie Of The Week. What's bizarre is that this is the only "straight" feature by the mysterious and enigmatic (and now dead) hardcore porn director Armand Weston. Perhaps he was intentionally playing it very safe in order to launch a mainstream career (if so, it didn't work) but, sadly, I think a large dose of nudity (of which there's almost none) and gore (of which there's little beyond one pretty mean sickle-in-the-face moment) is exactly what's needed. Especially for a haunted whorehouse movie! It's all very sweet and sincerely made but, sadly, there's not a lot here that's memorable. As a bonus, there are some quotably bad one-liners though ("You're too crazy to be crazy!" and "You wanted to type on my typewriter!" being two examples). **

Zombeak! (2006)

Dir: Sam Drog

This killer "chick" flick's as low-budget as they come but there's an endearing enthusiasm to it that almost helps it fly (no pun intended). Some Satanists are trying to bring about the coming of the Devil but they get interrupted by local rednecks out to kick evil's ass. As a result, it all goes cock-eyed (no pun intended) and the Devil winds up in the body of a sacrificed chicken. This lively and inventive premise is enriched by some very funny dialogue ("This blasphemy! It's like razors in my brain!") in the first half but sadly loses its way a little when the gore kicks in. The chicken puppet itself is great fun at but most of the splattery stuff is very, very bad CGI. It's a shame because, in a film like this one, the red stuff has to be the pay-off and here it's woefully lacking. I'm sure there are legitimate budgetary reasons for using CGI but I can't begin to imagine how a few Super-Soakers full of corn syrup would cost more? Still, there are way worse movies out there. At least this has some cool ideas and a cast who seem to be having a ball with it. **

1408 (2007)

Dir: Mikael Håfström

A hack writer of ghostly guide books (John Cusack) checks into a supposedly haunted room at a New York hotel, with intent to expose it as a hoax. Needless to say, it isn't a hoax and, before long, the clichés are wheeled out in their droves. The room goes hot! The room goes cold! Hark! The sound of infants crying in the walls! You know the drills. It's actually done rather well for the first forty five minutes or so and there are even some nicely orchestrated jump scares. Sadly, as you'd expect from a Stephen King adaptation, it all goes a bit too far in the final reel and loses its understated subtlety in favour of screen-saturating CGI, convoluted dream sequences and faux-philosophical sentimentalism. Like the movie "Dead End", it builds up so many creepy ideas that it paints itself into a corner from which it can only escape via a massive cop-out. There are worse movies and it's nice to see a traditional ghost story on the big screen again, but this won't change your life. What I mostly took away from it was that I want to get my own little Samuel L. Jackson that lives in my fridge and talks shit at me. **

I, Madman (1989)

Dir: Tibor Takacs

Quirky 80s horror sees a bookstore clerk (Jenny Wright) becoming obsessed with a series of old, obscure pulp novels from a mysterious author called Malcolm Brand. The more she gets into them - most notably a graphic tale of self-mutilation called "I, Madman" - the more she notices that friends of hers are dropping dead in ways taken straight from the books. The basic idea here is not a bad one and there's one particular twist that had me going, "ooh, that's NICE!" at the screen, but it all falls apart in the final third and fails to tie up in a coherent way, instead descending into cliché and silliness. There's some cool stop-motion monster FX (what did you expect from the guy who directed "The Gate"?) and Jenny Wright looks great in nerd glasses, but the script is too sloppy to really work. **

The Guardian (1990)

Dir: William Friedkin

William Friedkin's long-awaited return to the horror genre has been justifiably forgotten over time and is almost never mentioned in the same breath as "The Exorcist". This may be because it's complete nonsense about a bonkers druidess nanny (Jenny Seagrove) who feeds babies to a big tree somewhere out in the Hollywood hills. It never properly gets explained and since this heady concept is revealed within the first five minutes, there are no surprises nor any tension as the movie progresses. The dialogue and characterisation are both below par and there are one or two monumentally stupid moments resulting from the slipshod direction (including an hilarious shot, where it looks like a guy twhacks a woman over the head with a two week old baby (he actually just slaps her but the continuity and the camera angle are both way off)). Still, that's not to say the film is without merit. You just have to be feeling tolerant. Jenny Seagrove spends most of her screen time naked, which is no bad thing, there are gallons of entertaining gore (not to mention an inventive use of a chainsaw), there are even one or two creepy moments; and, call me a sucker, but I can't totally hate a movie in which a hot naked girl painted green flies through a living room and gets spontaneously dismembered by invisible forces. You just have to suspend disbelief completely and sit through some of the most painful stupidity ever committed to celluloid to get to this good stuff. **

Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1990)

Dir: Jeff Burr

The family that slays together stays together in this grim, sadistic entry in the notorious cannibal slasher series. Plot doesn't really add much to the set formula; yet more hapless travellers get hunted, tortured and killed by the insane Sawyer family in the usual bloody fashion. That said, the first half of film is surprisingly creepy. Jeff Burr's direction is taut, assured and stylish, and the screenplay ticks along nicely. It's only in the second half that it all falls to bits and becomes generic stalk'n'slash fodder, symptomatic of everything wrong with the subgenre in the late 80s; a howlingly inappropriate heavy metal soundtrack, half-cocked wisecracks every other line, endless footage of people fleeing through darkened woods, etc. You know the drill (or, in this case, the saw). It's a damn shame. All the misguided black comedy attempts (a gold-plated chainsaw? puh-lease!) throw a wet blanket over the spooky atmosphere and the plot simply isn't strong enough to sustain itself. The tacked-on ending sequence (thanks, New Line studio bosses!) makes absolutely no sense at all. A shame. There are some nice touches here but, like much from its era, the film smacks of wasted potential. **

The Crazies (1973)

Dir: George A. Romero

A plane carrying a biological weapon crashes near a Pennsylvania town, releasing a highly contagious virus into the water supply. Next thing you know, the inhabitants have gone bonkers and are killing one another, setting fire to their houses and having sex with their kinfolk. Much like Romero's zombie films, the plot depicts a fight for survival against not only the crazies, but also the shoot-to-kill military goons out to control the epidemic by any means necessary. The script is characteristically paranoid and loaded with angry allegory but, unfortunately, it never quite engaged me and just felt a bit uninvolving and loosely structured. There's frenetic editing, a lot of brutal action and explosions, but it still drags. I'll give it a bonus point for having so much of Lynn Lowry in it, but otherwise this is fairly average by Romero standards. **

The Boy From Hell (2005)

Dir: Mari Asato

A demented Japanese gore film, based on a manga by the ever-crazy Hideshi Hino, tells the twisted story of a doctor (Mirai Yamamoto) who loses her son in a car accident (he is decapitated by a passing lorry while leaning out the window!). On the advice of a witch, she kidnaps a terminally ill child from the hospital and slits his throat with a giant fang over the grave of her own dead lad. This, of course, brings her beloved back as a hideously deformed zombie boy who develops a habit for eating his peers alive. Although loaded with inventively surreal imagery, as expected for a Hino adaptation, "The Boy From Hell" never quite takes off. It seems to strive for a blackly comic poignancy, kind of like a sick "Frankenstein" retelling, but the lack of substance (and occasionally even sense) lets it down. It's fast paced enough, with sufficient cartoon gore to hold the attention throughout some of the more derivative plot devices, but by the time it finished, I was left wondering what the point was. By Hino's standards, this is astonishingly tame too. **

Flesh For The Beast (2002)

Dir: Terry M. West

A group of scruffy, disposable paranormal experts are called in to investigate supernatural activity in a haunted house. The house has a creepy owner called Stoker (ha) who's patently hiding something but he offers good pay if the team can cast the evil spirits from his home. The result of this, following half an hour of endless wandering the corridors (lit mostly by actors with flashlights - nrrgh), is that our heroes encounter a bunch of naked sirens who turn into rubber-faced ghoulies when provoked. Although the viewer gets treated to copious nudity and several zillion gallons of cartoony, El Cheapo gore (think Fulci on a shoestring - intestinal tract upchuck and all), the script isn't original or interesting enough to sustain interest in the interim. It plods. The dialogue is often clunky and feels full of lines primarily written more for the trailer than the film itself ("Where are we going?" / "Into the bowels of Hell!" etc). The structure is very rigidly set in the tried-and-tested formula, which means all the chat is fairly incidental anyway, half-baked justifications for the next sex/death scene. Granted, you could do way worse than this for your buck, but it's disappointingly generic stuff nonetheless. **