PREY - A family involved in a corrupt pesticide business goes hunting in a forest full of mutant killer boars and predictably gets munched on by same. Good, well made French flick which is enjoyable but sadly doesn't share the intensity of the nouveau Gallic splatter we saw back in its mid noughties heyday. Still worth a watch though.
DARK PLACES - Micro budget horror involving a crack addicted prostitute seeking refuge from the authorities after she (maybe) kills a punter. She ends up at a kind of S&M parlour / shooting gallery run by the sinister 'Luther' and... well, not all that much happens, but this didn't stop me really quite digging 'Dark Places', which drifts along in a narcotic blur, full of trippy edits and cross fades which yell "I've seen 'Requiem for a dream', I can do non-linear!"... some people will find this film and the way it's shot really irritating, but I found it hypnotic and addictive, and, although in many ways it can't overcome its no-budget, it does seem genuinely grimy and bleak.
CURSE OF PIRATE DEATH - More micro budget horror. Wow, this is totally how it's done. It's a sprawling semi-historical epic featuring latter day kids being stalked by an undead pirate from back in the day, made by someone with a camcorder which, going by pq alone, must too hail from 'back in the day'. It looks, feels and tastes so reekingly poverty-stricken... but it works. Everything from the pitiful 'make-up' worn by the ghost pirate to the blank, tongue in cheek self consciousness of the 'performances' seems right on. There's some butchers left over type gore, a dodgy professor who uses sexual blackmail against her students, really bad historical re-enactments, loads of wandering around, hysterical dialogue, etc etc. Just see it.
THE JAR - Very weird almost forgotten mid eighties flick which fully deserves the descriptor 'dream-like'. A guy almost knocks over an old guy, takes him back to his apartment, finds a jar with a kind of demonic foetus in it when old guy disappears, goes into a weird trance state during which blood erupts from the plug hole of his bath, has an awkward relationship with his neighbour, tries to destroy jar when he realises bad things are happening, resumes awkward relationship with neighbour, goes back into trance whereupon spiked ball impacts upon his face etc etc etc etc. The filmmakers were obviously going for a highly 'symbolic' feel, but what exactly do the various goings on in 'The Jar' symbolise? There may be some kind of 'guy trying to deal with his sexuality' subtext, but mostly this is a senseless albeit entrancing meander through a realm made up of one part mid-eighties video fodder, two parts film school dissertation.
FRIGHTWORLD - Starts with a blitz of freaked out gore imagery, and for a while I had my hopes up that 'Frightworld' might turn out to be a slightly more technically accomplished version of the likes of 'The Mutilation Man' or some such... sadly, after the credits role it degrades into another bunch of people wandering around in an enclosed space waiting to be offed by a killer. BUT, there are some highlights and good points along the way ie. lady wanking 'at' some sinister clowns, shitty dialogue-driven hysteria, good set, some OK gore, bad video effects representing 'dark forces'... not quite the catch it could've been, but I didn't turn my copy into an ashtray after viewing, either.
GOTH - The ongoing micro budget saga continues with 'Goth', which I suppose is the kind of movie people expecting to watch a 'proper low budget horror film' automatically pan - I on the other hand thought it was great, entertaining and surprisingly sleazy. A psychopathic goth chick meets a wannabe-goth couple in a club and takes them on a drug fuelled rampage in a strangely driverless truck. Meanwhile, one half of the goth-lightweight couple has an agenda of her own. Along the way are multiple killings, forced sex, aforementioned driverless truck which for some reason I can't get out of my mind (it's not even a plot point), some rules about being a goth and a massacre at someone's birthday party. Very good.
HELL HATH NO FURY - Low, low budget anthology (with one piece by Ryan Nicholson and the others mostly by, er, Vince D'Amato) which is spun around the idea of women extracting their revenge, mostly from men, in various horror-related ways. I really liked it, it's actually got quite a bizarre feel to it, with one or two episodes and some aspects of the wraparound story being particularly mind boggling - this is alongside a preponderance of bad taste moments (I find it quite amusing that this is featured on Lovefilm with an '18' certificate, whereas a cursory glance at some of the contents on display would confirm that 'Hell Hath No Fury' has never been anywhere near the BBFC). It's witty, self aware and referential, and if, like virtually all of its micro budgeted brethren, it can't transcend its technical limitations, it can make up for them by being batshit weird and by throwing in a mutilated hard on or two.
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