Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop  SATAN’S PLAYGROUND – I really like the films of Dante Tomaselli, especially ‘Horror’. ‘Satan’s Playground’, a forest based slow crawl into satanic territory, is less weirded out than his previous two, but it’s definitely worth seeing. It’s not very graphic, but carries itself more through atmospherics. Another instance of many going on about someone “capturing the essence of seventies horror” etc etc – I can see where they’re coming from (a bit), but it’s a far cry from the latter day wannabe grindhouse trend. Really looking forward to his latest, ‘Torture Chamber’, which arrived the other day.
THE JEKYLL AND HYDE PORTFOLIO – You can tell you’re in for something special from the opening credits alone, which run across a badly made collage of felt tip pen drawings of infamous murderers covered in red paint. It gets even better, with acting so stiff, dry and dead it’s practically mummified, random frog dissections (I’m assuming they weren’t killed by the makers), electronic soundtrack noise and bad edits… no, I’m not being sarcastic, I love this kind of shit. Unfortunately there must always be a downside to such splendours, and the film does tend towards padding, of either the “walking around, waiting for things to happen” or the “let’s throw in a really boring sex scene, again” variety. ‘The Jekyll and Hyde Portfolio’ will definitely be of interest to anyone into zero budget regional American indie horror from the seventies. It reminded me very slightly of Andy Milligan, but don’t let that put you off.
LOVE LETTERS OF A PORTUGUESE NUN – Another Jess Franco number from that Dietrich collection. It’s basically a nunsploitation flick set around the time of the inquisition, and follows a teenager in the grips of a corrupt church. Franco always really loves to have a go at Catholicism, and LLOAPN is no exception. It’s also an interesting example of the director’s more serious, subdued style… there are moments of sleazy intensity, but it does feel slightly ponderous at times. Apart from occasional longeurs, also, I have to ask – Jess, what were you doing with that devil costume? The satanic ass-shovelling of a terrified novice is one thing, but somehow that demonic gravitas just doesn’t happen when you stick a horn on the forehead of a middle aged guy in a red catsuit and ask him to toddle away.
F – From the director of ‘Hellbreeder’. I really like ‘Hellbreeder’ – this may be down to my love of lost causes, because I’m pretty sure that it sucked on so many levels. And yet, despite or because of its ‘badness’, it had a certain surreal intensity. ‘F’ is a much more polished piece of filmmaking. It takes place in a school after hours, where a burned out teacher has placed his estranged daughter in detention. The school is beset by ghostly hoodie kids with blacked out faces. I thought ‘F’ was pretty good, actually – it manages to sustain a bit of tension and atmosphere, and goes for an early Carpenter / J-Horror kind of thing. Given the nature of its antagonists and theme of urban strife, it manages to avoid being as precariat – dissing as other examples of the Hoodie Horror subgenre, maybe just by being elusive. Probably the best thing about it is Brit TV stalwart David Schofield, who plays the pathetic lead with aplomb. Also, I liked the fact that it doesn’t attempt to explain and really doesn’t make much sense. But guys, even Frankie Teardrop has a limit, and that ‘ending’ – did they just run out of film?
THE DENTIST – I’m not a great fan of Brian Yuzna and I always think his films will be a bit pedestrian, but then I usually find something to like about them. ‘The Dentist’ is good, solid B-horror from a time (the nineties) when the genre wasn’t really doing much. I have over the years come to quite like that ‘direct to video’ feel of a lot of late eighties /nineties stuff. A certain slick, synthetic linearity. Maybe it’s just nostalgia. Anyway, ‘The Dentist’ is about, you’ve guessed it, a dentist who loses it and does some bad stuff to people’s mouths. As with a few other Brian Yuzna films, there are some Cronenbergian ideas which are watered down and left in a very standard meat and potatoes set up, with none of the chilly ambience or thematic resonance of the doyen of medical horror’s work. Actually, even the whole oral horror thing isn’t pushed as much as I thought it might be here. Still, there’s some gore, mean spiritedness and sleaze and a good performance from the lead, plus some nice stylistic quirks at points which made me want to grope for some dead sophisticated cinematic reference point which just wasn’t within my grasp, so I’ll fumble it and say “Hitchcock or Lynch or something” and hope that makes some vague sense. Anyway, ‘The Dentist’, I enjoyed it. |