Fear Island (2009)

Dir: Michael Storey

Haylie Duff, Aaron Ashmore and their pushing-30-but-pretending-to-be-college-age friends take a boat out to a secluded island with no telephones, where they have a delightful holiday in the sun, then go home feeling rejuvenated and serene. What? No, I'm kidding of course! They get picked off one by one in a variety of imaginative ways, courtesy of a black-gloved killer who's lurking in the woods! Hoorah! There's not a high special FX budget sadly, so instead we have snakes in the cupboard, dogs in the hot tub, nails in the jam jar, nailguns in very much the wrong hands, impromptu premature burials and an ice-bucket o' blood. This is all told in flashback while an angry boneheaded detective works with what little he has (one traumatized witness and some sketchy evidence) in order to uncover the killer's identity. The mystery has a couple of holes here and there but it's quite lively and the final twist, while not a surprise, is entertainingly executed. "Fear Island" obviously isn't a great movie but for a made-for-TV teen slasher, someone's really put their all into making it about as good as it can get. It's very tame and daft as a bag of toy monkeys but it's colourful, fast-paced, occasionally even funny. You could do a lot worse for a Sunday afternoon hangover viewing. **1/2

Demons Never Die (2011)

Dir: Arjun Rose

A group of depressed high schoolers make a suicide pact and decide they'll all "go out in style" at an upcoming party. However, a helpful masked gentleman dressed in black shows up and picks them off one by one, thus removing the need for it. This is obviously an odd, slightly contradictory premise for a slasher but - in fairness - the script initially manages to sell it. The characters, while a little stereotypical, are passable and the dialogue is nice and naturalistic. It tackles a few heavy teen issues (suicide, bulimia, depression, grief, etc) in a slightly crass, surface-level way but that doesn't seem too troublesome until everything goes to pieces in the final reel. This combines direct scene lifts from "Scream" with gimmicky hand-held footage and a completely confusing, hideous misfire of a twist ending that devalues the whole thing. One of those "you'll never guess because it makes no sense" types. The movie was apparently made for £90,000 so you can forgive the ugly washed-out videography a little but there's no excuse for the dodgy writing. *1/2

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. **

Anthropophagus (1980)

Dir: Joe D'Amato

Even the makers admit to being a little embarrassed about this extremely dark exploitation flick but I'd have to argue its virtues with them. It may seem like standard fare as a crazed cannibal (played by the film's screenwriter, George Eastman!) stalks a group of hapless tourists around a remote Greek island, and it may be pretty gross and sleazy in parts (I mean, yeah, homeboy eats a foetus) but I think it's been done a disservice by those who regard it as just trash. Maybe it's time and nostalgia that have improved it but I actually think "Anthropophagus" is a damn fine, slow-burning slasher. The atmosphere is moody and although the gore doesn't really start in force until some 70+ minutes into the movie, there's a feeling of dread constructed perfectly by the cast, locations, photography and yes, even the script. It's pretty tight and the killer's back story is original and weird enough to work. The truly stunning Tisa Farrow stars as the terrified but headstrong heroine and her performance is emotional and greatly underrated. Even Eastman, as the killer, is seriously scary in his weird face make-up and bald wig, and the ending he writes for himself is as black as they come. Still shocking some 30 years on. ***1/2

Killing Spree (1986)

Dir: Tim Ritter

Classic trash from the early age of the straight-to-video shocker. It's easy to take "Killing Spree" for granted nowadays since it spawned a legion of no-budget imitators that continue to pollute the shelves to this day but there's a charm to this that endures. The marvellously-named Asbestos Felt plays Tom Russo, a working stiff who snaps under the dual pressures of his dead-end job and his wife who appears to be screwing up to three handymen a day. Unfortunately for Tom, the victims of his titular spree are coming back to life faster than he can kill them... Splatter ensues. The film's got a fun DIY ethic and, considering the now-unimaginable constraints these guys were working under, it's amazing they made anything watchable at all, let alone something as entertaining as Killing Spree. While slow to start and roughly made at times, the cast is charismatic and it's hard to not get some joy from the outrageous dialogue ("You screw my wife, I screwdrive your head!" / "Take your pink faggot hat, you stupid country motherfucker!") or inventively gross-out gore FX. **1/2

Behind the Mask : The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)

Dir: Scott Glosserman

Post-modern slasher film in which a documentary crew follows a serial killer as he chooses and stalks a new group of teenage victims. Although it owes a little to the superior "Man Bites Dog", the twist here is that, rather than being a straight killer, our titular Leslie Vernon is a horror movie slasher. There are some truly laugh-out-loud hilarious sequences where he deconstructs all the familiar film tropes for the audience and explains of the difficulty of things like running really fast but making it look like you're walking. Writer/director Glosserman has obviously watched a lot of movies and his film works both as a clever pastiche and a suspenseful slasher in itself. It won't change your life but it's fun, whip-smart stuff that turns the Fourth Wall to rubble - basically the film that "Scream" could've been if it only had a brain. ***

The Ferryman (2007)

Dir: Chris Graham

A group of yachters in peril when they pick up a Greek sailor in distress, who's played by the dwarf from "Lord of the Rings" and speaks like some kind of croaky Welsh rasta. He's all kinds of evil and has cheated death for thousands of years by continually swapping bodies, which he does by stabbing people with his magic dagger. There's so much potential here to be "The Thing at sea" but it fails miserably. Every time he swaps bodies, he immediately starts running about, spouting misogynistic wisecracks and megalomaniacal threats, which makes it obvious which body he's inhabiting at any given time. It also makes it very silly and draining to watch after awhile. The film is also, despite an okay budget, atrociously acted and directed; flaws which just become more critical as the film lapses into absurd melodrama. Yes, it's gruesome and nasty but just too stupid and badly made to work. The whole ludicrous mess culminates with a heavy metal cover of Chris DeBurgh's "Don't Pay The Ferryman", which probably tells you all you need to know. *

Reeker (2005)

Dir: Dave Payne

Very dodgy US indie effort about a group of partying teens who end up stranded at a spooky motel in the middle of the desert, whilst on their way to a rave. The game is soon afoot and they start getting picked off by a mystery killer. The twist? You can't see him; but you can smell him! Hence the title. All the requisite cliches of the genre are out in force and, whilst the gore FX are decent, I just felt as though this was a horror movie for people who've never seen a horror movie before. All its tricks and turns were so patently obvious it made me want to scream for all the wrong reasons. The frequent attempts at black humour were ill-timed and poorly delivered enough to feel downright uncomfortable and the CGI 'fumes' used to denote the killer's stench just looked ridiculous. This one started off with about two and a half stars, but just kept worsening with each increasingly ludicrous and predictable plot development leading up to the catastrophic, verboten twist. Pants. Big steaming pants. That's what you can smell. *

Punk Rock Holocaust (2004)

Dir: Doug Sakmann

It's the Vans Warped Tour 2003. Less Than Jake tell a story by the fireside about the worst band ever to play the tour. They were called Brutal Enigma and "they weren't even punk rock; they were industrial or synthpop or some shit". They got kicked off the tour and no one ever heard from them again. Now, a masked killer is picking off bands and fans en masse. Could there be a connection? Could there also somehow be an even more fiendish plot at hand, involving zombies, supernatural powers and Satan Himself (who may or may not be played by Lloyd Kaufman)? Indeed there could. I warn you now; this film is utterly mindless. It's made for about a dollar, horribly shot on video with hyperactive editing and a high level of stupidity. On the other hand, it's great fun if you like punk rock and splatter. Not only are there some gloriously inventive death scenes (the way in which Bowling For Soup meet their unfortunate end is a work of genius) and a relentless triple-figure body count (hardcore gore approxmiately every two minutes) but also a ton of killer tunes from the likes of Rancid and Tsunami Bomb, and sense of demented fun that feels entirely sincere. As if this wasn't enough, there's also a certain guilty pleasure in watching rubbish bands like Simple Plan and The Used die horribly. The moment in which Andrew WK gets electrocuted onstage is a Godsend that should've happened long ago. But yeah, "Punk Rock Holocaust" requires a lot of beer, your brain in a jar and a love of good obnoxious music to fully work, but what can I say? This is clearly my puerile idea of a fun time. ***

Crawlspace (1986)

Dir: David Schmoeller

Empire Pictures funded nonsense with Klaus Kinski as a mad Nazi landlord who spends his time crawling through the air vents of his building, spying on female residents, beheading rats, applying lady make-up, watching Hitler rallies on a projector, playing Russian roulette and killing people indiscriminately. In fairness, Kinski is a blast in this and his creepiness carries the otherwise abysmal movie single-handedly. The screenplay is total balls, although I did learn a lot about women from it. Did you know that, when alone, women will cut peepholes out of their bras in front of the mirrors and perform studio quality renditions of bad 80s ballads on the piano? Or that, when in groups, women will hold slumber parties in which they all drink tequila milkshakes, giggle about boys and jump up onto tables shrieking when they see a rat on the floor? Educational value aside though, the film bites. A lot of it feels improvised and even at 80 minutes, it's one Hell of a slog. Although it's almost redeemed by a lunatic scene in which the sexagenerian Kinski, dressed in an old man's jumper and full face make-up, finds a metal sheet on wheels and propels himself through the air vents as though bodyboarding, for what seems like about 10 minutes. A wonderfully inventive and unintentionally hilarious moment. EL BOMBA!

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Dir: Marcus Nispel

Insufferable and vapid remake of the 1973 film which replaces anything of interest with generic, overcooked stalk-n-slash fodder. Teens in a van get stranded in a fairly nondescript location (they don't even try to make it look like Texas) and, one by one, they're hacked to bits by a lummox in a mask. The script here is one-dimensional and dismal. They even give Leatherface a lame back story in which he gets bullied at school for having a skin disease. Most shockingly of all, they unmask him (sacrilege!) and, uncannily, he's a deadringer for Stephen King! The whole film is so dull and unengaging that even the chase scenes feel like they're moving in slow motion. The set design is flat and unoriginal. The lighting makes everything feel washed out and gives the film a sterile atmosphere. The gore, whilst squishy and unpleasant, is needlessly cruel and this humourless mean streak running through everything feels more puerile than shocking. A perpetually braless Jessica Biel is the only thing at all appealing here. Everything else made me want just smash up the video case, take all the tape out and wear it on my face like a mask of celluloid. It'd be much better use of my time than actually watching the wretched thing.

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 Texas Chainsaw Massacre : The Next Generation (1994)

Dir: Kim Henkel

This perplexingly banal send-up of the series from its original creator pits a group of swiftly disposable teens against a bizarre new family of chainsaw-wielding murderers. That's really all there is, plotwise. Renée Zellweger runs around and screams. Matthew McConaughey runs after her and screams even more (by Christ, he's such an irritating hack actor; how on Earth did he get famous?). Some guy called Robert Jacks plays Leatherface, but he doesn't do a lot besides scream, run around and, uh, dress up as a woman. In drag, he's a deadringer for Kelly Osbourne; this is probably the scariest part of the movie. Otherwise, it's predictable, moronic stuff and devoid of thrills, gore or even the laughs it seems to be striving for with its, um, eccentric brand of black comedy. I have absolutely no clue what the ending (featuring a time-travelling Marilyn Burns cameo) is supposed to mean, but I detect it's some kind of surrealist private joke that the audience hasn't been let in on. Maybe I just don't understand the subtle nuances of Kim Henkel's Texan humour, but this is 83 minutes of my life that I will never see again and that saddens me a little. *

See No Evil (2006)

Dir: Gregory Dark

Hardcore porn veteran Gregory Dark goes 'straight' and surprisingly nudity-free to deliver this testosterone-fuelled monolith of a slasher and it's (quite literally) eye-popping stuff! There's very little in the way of plot; a bunch of teenage miscreants are sent to do community service in an abandoned, tumbledown hotel, only to find themselves being picked off by a psycho (Kane, the wrestler) who wants to pluck their eyes out. It's alarming in that there's a strong element of 'cheering for the bad guy' at work here, as Kane injects his role with black humour and the kids are all so dislikable, but "See No Evil" is a surprisingly first class effort within its subgenre. It's extremely gory, sarcastic, spiteful and nasty; a hi-NRG tour-de-force of misanthropic macabra that walks the tightrope between horrifying and hilarious. Not bad going, considering the risible storyline and fit-inducing edit job. This one almost earned a full four stars, just for the post-credits punchline; one final, jet black shot of gallows humour that had me in hysterics. It's certainly worth staying 'til the end for. ***1/2

Raw Meat (1972)

Dir: Gary Sherman

Mind the doors! This one's a gory old Brit-horror about a cannibal ghoul living in the London Underground system. The ever-wonderful Donald Pleasance excels himself with a star turn as a no-nonsense (or all-nonsense, depending on how you look at it) cockney copper hot on the cannibal's sticky trail. This fairly straightforward police/slasher story is made hugely enjoyable thanks to some great acting, an unusual setting, eerie photography and one almighty streak of black humour (Pleasance is side-splitting). Also it's super-cool to see the shot-on-location footage of early-70s London in all its sleazy, sordid splendour. Watching "Raw Meat" makes you wonder why any idiot would've put up money for a big piece of poo like (the verrrrry similarly themed) "Creep" 20+ years later. This one's just fine as it is, thanks. An underrated diamond. ***

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. **

555 (1988)

Dir: Wally Koz

Ultra-obscure, shot-on-camcorder slasher that gained brief notoriety upon release thanks to its marvellously lurid ads in the back of Gorezone/Fangoria magazines. The plot concerns the exploits of a necrophiliac hippie (all love beads and bellbottoms) on a killing spree. He's being tracked by a pair of tough-talking cops who address everyone as either "bastard" or "asshole" (depending on how much they like you) and bumble around while the body count rises... Legend has it that Wally Koz (assisted here by Roy Koz, Linda Koz, Sophie Koz, Wally Koz Sr. and "Mom" (she is credited for "catering", bless)) made this movie on the back of a bet that he could make a better splatter movie than most of the rubbish being churned out by the 80s video market. In fairness, I'd've given him a beer (or whatever the stake was), as this a valiant try. The script is focused enough to be decent pulp (with an acceptable twist ending, no less); the dialogue is gloriously coarse ("Listen, you Irish cocksucker! I'm so good a lay, no man has ever got rid of me!"); the acting (clearly just Wally's buddies) is hugely enthusiastic all round; even the bargain basement gore FX are occasionally impressive (and always very splattery). I'd love to see this issued as a DVD with a commentary from the entire Koz family, as I'm sure there are some great stories to tell. Kind of sad that no one involved with the making of this has ever been heard from again... ***

2001 Maniacs (2005)

Dir: Tim Sullivan

Pastiche/remake of H.G. Lewis' "Two Thousand Maniacs!" (1964) that somehow manages to lose both the menacing atmosphere and the ghoulish sense of fun from the original. The plot remains virtually identical - group of hip young things on a road trip take a detour and get gleefully slaughtered by jovial redneck sadists - but the new screenplay is abysmal. For one thing, it's dull dull dull - the pacing and structure are non-existent, replaced instead by dreary, predictable jokes, limp excuses to show off rubbish splatter FX (strangely even less convincing than the original) and brain-numbing fratboy dialogue. With its mix of goofball toilet humour and gory death scenes, you get the feeling this film was aiming for a tone similar to "Cabin Fever" (indeed Eli Roth reprises his role from that film for a brief cameo - the only laugh-out-loud moment in the entire thing) but there's no wit, verve or originality to pull it off successfully. Some star turns from the genre royalty involved (Robert Englund, Johnny Legend) and a few weird cameos (Travis Tritt, Giuseppe Andrews) fail to enliven proceedings and it even makes gratuitous nudity seem unappealing by the end. Although the budget's probably about equivalent to what Lewis worked with on the original, "2001 Maniacs" feels as joyless, cynical and vapid as any Hollywood remake from recent years and is best avoided. The nu-metal cover version of "The South's Gonna Rise Again" at the end tells you all you need to know about how much effort and imagination went into this. *

Bloody Birthday (1981)

Dir: Ed Hunt

OK. I have my limits. Some things are just too weird and unsettling even for me. "Bloody Birthday" manages this without even being good! On one hand, it's an utterly generic example of early 80s small-town stalk'n'slash fare. The twist is that the ones doing the stalking and slashing are a trio of ten year old kids. To be honest, you don't need to have any creative skill to makes these kids creepy. Christ, the LEAST creepy of the three looks like a minature Ron Perlman with a Hitler Youth hairdo! Shudder. So by the time they're strangling folk with skipping ropes, bludgeoning them with baseball bats, shooting toy arrows at point blank range into their eyeballs and pouring ant-killer into the icing sugar, you'll be reaching for a bucket of soap and water to wash your brain out with. Sadly, the movie itself is dull, flat and tediously played out, so the only real reason I could think of for recommending this would be as something to show to anyone you know who's feeling broody. It will probably make them think twice about having children or indeed ever going near anyone else's again! *

The Dark Half (1992)

Dir: George A. Romero

A lacklustre adapation of an even worse Stephen King book is one of several unfortunate misfires that the normally excellent Romero unleashed in the late 80s/early 90s. Timothy Hutton (from "Revenge of the Nerds"!) plays Thaddeus Beaumont, a mild-mannered author who writes hyperviolent crime novels under the pseudonym of George Stark. When Beaumont decides to move into 'serious' writing he 'kills' off Stark in a publicity stunt and soon finds that his alter-ego has somehow manifested himself into a real-life pissed-off entity that's on the loose, slicing and dicing everything in sight. There's a nice idea at the root of this about how all writers of dark fiction have a 'demon' inside of them but it's almost impossible to portray this convincingly without it all becoming hammy and unfeasible. Using words like "folderol" and "psychopomp" does not necessarily make a screenplay intelligent and in this case, such excruciating dialogue only serves to make what is already a po-faced and overlong movie feel like someone is slowly squeezing your head in a vice whilst reading extracts from "Finnegan's Wake" in your ear. Timothy Hutton's pair of performances (as both writer and demon) are actually good but most everything else, from the bland direction to the "huh?"-inducing craptastic finalé are not. *1/2