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Old 8th October 2014, 11:00 AM
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Frankie Teardrop Frankie Teardrop is offline
Cultist on the Rampage
 
Join Date: May 2011
Location: Leeds, UK
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THE SCAR CROW - A lame but frequently quite entertaining UK horror outing. A quartet of awful, 'lad' type Brit-wankers (Nuts readers usually herald a really shit movie experience and a rapid resort to 'eject' button for Frankie) are on some kind of corporate field exercise and find themselves lost in the wilds of southern England. They stumble upon a farm where three young women greet them in Elizabethan speak. The latter are witches, and have something to do with a scarecrow based on the undead remains of their incest fixated perv of a father, whom they murdered 'back in the day' several centuries ago. Gore and mild sleaze follow at a reasonable pace. 'The Scar Crow' is pretty rubbish, but, as I've spelled out, it does have its plus points, and, beyond the awful performances and badly scripted developments, certain images linger (a torso nailed to the scarecrow's support frame... the scarecrow entering a Brit-dick's abdominal cavity... nasty Dad being inappropriate and lechy). And also, most scarecrow movies turn out to be rubbish for some reason (can you honestly think of many that aren't? - 'Wizard Of Oz', 'The Dark Night Of The Scarecrow', and, well, 'Scarecrows' are the only ones that spring to mind), so it earns a couple of extra points for at least distinguishing itself from the forgettable majority.

PHANTOMS - A Dean Koontz movie adaption, 'Phantoms' is a straight ahead, no nonsense (OK, actually plenty of nonsense) mainstream B-movie that is as unoriginal and uncomplicated as it is enjoyable. An apparently deserted township soon reveals itself to have been taken over and assimilated by an unknown menace. People run around. Ammo gets fired. Tentacles fly. Peter O' Toole turns up. I like the way it pretty much dives into the action, although the first part sustains more tension than the second, when the military hit town and 'The Thing' references begin to mount up. It's not overly gory, but does offer a decent fusillade of fx (doggie bladder etc etc a la, again, 'The Thing). It has that nineties kind of slick, linear stylelessness about it, but 'Phantoms' hammers its no-frills-but-some-thrills message home without too much flab or that many lulls. Not one for the time capsule, maybe, but ample entertainment if you can spare ninety minutes of existence.
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