FROZEN SCREAM – Think you know 'bad'? Like me, you've probably sat through plenty of turkeys, some merely dull beyond redemption, some so horrendous they carve out a microuniverse of their own. This is definitely one of the latter – it's been a long time since I saw something so random. 'Frozen Scream', although previously available, has been recently issued by Vinegar Syndrome as part of a Renee Harmon double bill, its companion piece being 'The Executioner Part 2'. Whereas the latter has its flea ridden post-dubbed charms, it has nothing on 'Frozen Scream', a freaky relic which is poorly made to the point of collapse. It's about... well, I'm still not really sure, but basically there's some stuff to do with scientists working on some kind of immortality process, some cowled ?zombies?, a religious cult, and lots of those bad movie staples, people wandering about and talking a lot. Except in this case, those long talky scenes are disrupted ad hoc by random voice overs and characters who are introduced from behind – yeah that's right, the most logical move ever when bringing in a central player is to feature the back of their head for their first two minutes of screentime. This kind of thing is definitely symptomatic of the film's overall 'approach', one which takes in events that go nowhere and characters who drop out for no reason. The acting is predictably awful, in parallel with the direction and the editing, but all this ghastliness is subverted by that most seventies of horror film phenomena, the trippy, dream-like visual that nearly opens the door to a different movie. There's a lot of that in 'Frozen Scream', which emerges as a warped, unworkable amalgam of unintentional weirdness through incompetence, and deliberate, actually effective, dreamy strangeness. Definitely a must-see for fans of the epically awful and bizarre.
DEMONOID – Samantha Egger is chased by a severed hand in this schlocker from '79. Stuart Whitman is also slumming it, here as a priest who ends up sticking a sharp object through one of his own mitts after it becomes possessed. The five fingered beast at work in this film has something to do with a demonic statue from down in a Mexican mine and is obviously supposed to be a supernatural entity of some kind, although it has to be said that rational exposition isn't 'Demonoid's strongest 'hand'. At times it's a bit hard to tell what's going on, and why. It goes for a certain seventies aesthetic – flat, nearly TV movie-esque, but punctuated with some more genuinely atmospheric or eerie moments and elements of stylisation, such as the synthesiser bits on the soundtrack and the full blooded opening, where cloaked figures hack off the hand of a semi-nude. The rest of 'Demonoid' isn't quite as exploitative as that latter stuff suggests, but it's still as crazy, and the whole thing whirls past in a frenzy of car chases, pointless conversations and delirious hand action. Great stuff, for me at least. Out recently from Vinegar Syndrome, and well deserving of your attention if you like this kind of bilge.
SILENT NIGHT – It's not xmas anymore, so sue me. This is a loose reworking of 'classic' eighties slasher 'Silent Night, Deadly Night', although in truth it has little to do with the latter other than referencing a few pivotal moments (the antler scene from the first one, for example). It's about a small town cop following the trail of some festive homicides – there's an element of 'which santa did it?' before all the feverish speculation gives way to that hoary genre touchstone, the urban myth, in this case that one about the evil santa with the flame thrower (no, me neither). This kind of material is vulnerable to a slightly arch approach let's say, but, whilst there was a blackly comedic aspect to the proceedings, I think 'Silent Night' did admirably well in reigning this in and relegating it to a couple of gore gags and the hilariously out of place Malcolm McDowall, who with a kind of stoic grace spat out lines which at times seemed deliberately contrived to sound as though they should come from anyone's mouth but his. Aside from this merriment, 'Silent Night' actually came across as pretty mean spirited and grimly sadistic – good. Some of the kills were quite vicious and a surprisingly dour tone held sway in between blood lettings. I'm a fan of the original, and I really liked this one too. An example of little finds that come courtesy of other labber's reviews (cheers, Dem).
BLOODY BIRTHDAY – The 'killer kid' sub genre has to be the most mean spirited of horror specialisms. No wonder that the classic examples of this tendency are all quite subdued – 'The Innocents', 'Who Can Kill A Child' etc. 'Bloody Birthday' isn't as classy as the aforementioned, and seems more akin to its evil twin, 'The Devil Times Five', in that it's part of the wave of seventies exploitation horror (spiritually, at least – it was put out in 1980). Like 'Demonoid' it's got that typically flat, 'TV' type look that rarely does anything stylistically interesting, although this in itself has a distinctive feel to it, perhaps especially nowadays. Content wise, it's about a trio of psychopathic ten year olds who were all born “at the time of the eclipse” - one of the other characters is well into astrology, and thinks they're all messed up due to the absence of Saturn in their natal charts. Anyway, the kids basically murder a bunch of people one by one, giving the film a slight slasher vibe. It's not gory or overly sleazy, but it is fast paced, and there's just a nasty, mean minded callousness about it which would seem out of place maybe in a film today – for example, one of the trio, a piranha faced little girl, charges boys from the block to peep at her sister who thinks she's alone in her bedroom. It's always been one of my fave seventies trash flicks, and looks great on the 88 Films re-release.
 |