Soul Survivors (2001)

Dir: Stephen Carpenter

A preposterous goody-two-shoes college girl (Melissa Sagemiller) kisses her ex (Wes Bentley) then feels so guilty that she freaks out and accidentally crashes her car, killing her current boyfriend (Casey Affleck). Heavy drama, right? But wait! It's worse! Things are no longer what they used to be. Shadowy masked figures lurk in doorways. Everyone talks cryptically about "letting go" and "finding freedom". Her best friend starts wearing goth make-up. Could it be that someone's already dead/dying? I'm not spoiling the film, honestly, because this SURPRISE TWIST is made inarguably obvious some 20 minutes in, which leaves the remaining 61 to be squandered on moralising, sentimentalising, listening to bad 90s college rock and behaving with increasing implausibility as our heroine sleepwalks her way to the inevitable, mawkish conclusion. If it's worth watching "Soul Survivors", it's purely to remind yourself that as bad as horror can be now, it was worse in the early 2000s. *

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. **

The Eye In The Labyrinth (1972)

Dir: Mario Caiano

Weird giallo in which a beautiful but seemingly unemployed woman with no friends or family (played by the wonderful Rosemary Dexter) investigates her boyfriend's disappearance. The search takes her to a weird villa populated by a dizzying array of misfits, hepcats and scumbags, all of whom appear to have a motive for bumping him off. Between the surprise transvestites, child perverts, drug barons and retired gangsters, the plot is convoluted to say the least. It has more red herrings than a sith fishmonger but, despite best efforts to obfuscate with weirdness, the final twist is blindingly obvious from the opening scenes. Sure, the cast is interesting, there's a nice black streak of humour and the Argento-esque camera-play is lively but this isn't quite enough to make the preposterous plot fly. One for the completists. *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

Black Magic Rites (1974)

Dir: Renato Polselli

(aka The Reincarnation of Isabel)

I'm not even sure where to begin with trying to explain this. There's a witch/vampire called Isabella who gets burnt at the stake in some nebulous past where everyone wears funny hats. 500 years later, a cult of old dudes in red morphsuits try to ressurect her by killing naked virgins in a castle. Maybe? It's hard to tell because half of the actors play multiple roles and, thanks to fit-inducing editing, no shot lasts for more than a second or two. There's constant fire, psychedelic lighting, whips, chains and abundant nudity from some pretty ladies, yet somehow the total lack of coherence and technical ineptitude makes this near-unwatchable. The denouement includes 3-way sex with a podgy vampire who can't stop blinking, two naked girls prodded by pensioners with sticks for what seems like forever, a hunchbacked Donald Pleasance lookalike thrown into a snake pit with only two snakes in it, and a peculiar vision of Hell that's all red lycra and girls chained to stepladders. This film was lost for decades and, watching it now, it's not hard to see why. It is like staring directly into the mind of a complete lunatic. EL BOMBA!

The Last Broadcast (1998)

Dir: Stefan Avalos / Lance Weiler

Ah. The infamous micro-budget film that "The Blair Witch Project" allegedly stole its ideas from. There are obvious similarities - a film crew heading out into the woods to investigate a supernatural being of local yore - but the presentation of the 'found footage' is very different. In this one, the conceit is that of a documentary being made about the filmmakers and their premature demise. It's well-structured and engaging for the most part as it leads up to the exciting discovery of a damaged videotape that may or may not contain the actual murders. However, "The Last Broadcast" blows it with a catastrophically stupid, gratuitous twist that's way over-complicated and renders most of what we've already seen either meaningless, confusing or just plain incoherent. Amazing how 75 minutes of excellent low-budget filmmaking can be let down so heavily by just 5 really dumb ones but this is an example of just that. You'll feel cheated so don't say I didn't warn you. **1/2

Triangle (2009)

Dir: Christopher Smith

This film sucks more balls than opening up the airlock on an in-flight billiards tournament. Melissa George and her vapid friends disappear into some kind of paradoxical void presumably caused by their complete lack of charisma but it’s never really explained. There’s a boat involved. Actually, no, there’s a very poorly rendered CGI sea and some dire sets made to look occasionally like a boat. There’s a nod to the fact that director Christopher Smith has, at some point, watched films like “Donnie Darko” and deluded himself into thinking he could do something similar. There’s a graceless aesthetic (washed-out colours, shutter-speed fuckery) and a lot of derivative gimmickry. Even excusing the fact that the plot doesn’t make a lick of sense when you think about it, Smith doesn’t try to temper his nonsense with anything distracting like, say, characterisation. This is strictly one for those who thought his first movie, "Creep", was too challenging for them. It'll pass their time pleasantly while they’re recovering from the DIY brain surgery.

Nightmare City (1980)

Dir: Umberto Lenzi

Truly atrocious Italian zombie fare that hits new lows even for a subgenre reknowned for them. I love, say, Fulci's trash as much as the next guy but Lenzi's shot at the formula is nothing short of embarrassing. A winged Trojan horse full of zombies arrives at a city airport in the form of an unmarked plane. They burst out, running, jumping and using weapons to trash their rather too athletic way through the population. The zombies just look like people in mud packs; their faces are made-up but not their necks or arms, although these other things are visible beneath their cheap shirts and dodgy cardigans. They move way too fast (I HATE running zombies - HATE HATE HATE) and there's just no story or characters or, well, anything to tie together all the scenes of incoherent, barely watchable mayhem. Attempts are made to intersperse the dime store gore with Mel Ferrer camping about in an army uniform, but this is not of interest to the sane. The ending - an unapologetic "it was just a dream" scam - should be illegal. Dull, dull, dull. EL BOMBA!

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. *

Calvaire (The Ordeal) (2004)

Dir: Fabrice Du Welz

Listen? Do you hear that? That hollow, scratching sound? Fingernails on wood? Ah yes. You do, because here, folks, we are truly, desperately scraping the very bottom of the barrel. The plot of "Calvaire" involves a travelling cabaret singer whose van breaks down in the countryside during bad weather. He is obliged to accept the hospitality of a weirdo innkeeper named 'Paul Bartel' (a clumsy and perplexingly lateral reference) and next thing you know, he gets brained by a car battery, wakes up in a dress, tied to a chair and being given a curious new haircut. From thereon, we're forced to endure about an hour's worth of torture and the obligatory, obviously thwarted escape attempts. I don't know about you, but I'm way beyond bored of mindless sadism and people being tied to chairs now. This one offers nothing new. In fact, what little story there is becomes so pointless, incoherent and ridiculous that I wanted to throw a brick through my TV screen. How on Earth they expect the viewer, after sitting through such a slow, excruciating movie to somehow believe in such a clichéd, far-fetched primary-school level 'twist' ending is beyond me. Even a cameo from an unrecognisable Brigitte Lahaie doesn't save it. Who is funding this nonsense? MAKE IT STOP.