QUEEN OF BLOOD – The follow up to 'Blood for Irina' by ex-Fangoria guy, Chris Alexander. Like that film, 'Queen of Blood' seems to be going for a Euro-ambience as it unfolds its tale of... some kind of vampire, I guess, who wanders around in a forest and kills a few people. Note my flagrant misuse of the word 'tale' in that last sentence, because 'Queen of Blood' has no real narrative at all (and no dialogue, for that matter). Oh well, I'm not going to change it now. 'Queen of Blood' will probably not be for everyone, and maybe especially not for those who like a bit of story to go with their visuals. The film does manage to build up a hypnotic quality through repetition, and the central image that gets thrown at the viewer time and time again is that of Irina the vampire (Shauna Henry, who has a really haunting face) ripping out the throats of her victims to a backdrop of droney electronic music. She's either doing that or mooching about really slooowly. Oh, and that guy from Skinny Puppy's in it too, as some kind of unpleasant preacher type figure. If none of this sounds very inviting, it quite possibly isn't, but lovers of freaky weirdness should give it a go because after a while it does feel quite 'narcotic'. It's aesthetics are a bit knackered though, with a cheap digital harshness in place of the lovely seventies saturated graininess that maybe went on in the filmmakers' heads. Or maybe that just makes it even more 'interesting'. Again, a film that I probably can't recommend to all comers, but the curious might get their reward (or might feasibly never want to watch anything that isn't by Michael Bay ever again).
DR JEKYLL ET LES FEMMES – I'd waited ages to see a 'proper' version of this Walerian Borowczyk film, so of course I rushed down to the video emporium like everyone else when I heard Arrow were putting it out. Then I forgot I had it, then I found it again the other day and so I watched it. For the unfamiliar, 'Dr Jekyll...' is a sexed up and darkly psychedelic variant of the fabled RLS story and would fit in quite well sandwiched between Herzog's 'Nosferatu' and Zulawski's 'Possession' as part of a trio of early eighties horror flicks made by non genre Euro arthouse directors. Like those other two movies, the emphasis is on dreamy unreality. Visuals seem to matter more than plot, and making an impact with images more important than having anything sensible to say. But why would you expect 'Dr Jekyll...' to say anything sensible? It's by Walerian Borowczyk, and he's directed a horror movie! Although 'Dr Jekyll...' feels quite threadbare, it knows what to do with its meagre resources. It squeezes the original into one claustrophobic location, which is shot in a kind of shimmering soft focus. These kind of stylistics get us through the talky bit at the beginning, which is still pretty weird however, featuring as it does a glowering Patrick Magee, not to mention the archdeacon of bad Euro vibes, Udo Kier. Kier is Jekyll, and, after he slips himself some of that potion (and, it seems, takes a chemical bath), he's Hyde too – his version looks strangely like a weasely Ian Curtis impersonator with a huge knob. There are some truly hysterical scenes, like the one where Magee's daughter appears to ravish a sewing machine whilst taking it up the arse from an enthusiastic Mr Hyde. The music really stood out for me as well, an ominous drone that sounded as if it'd come straight from an early record by Cluster or some other German experimentalists. See it! Definitely!
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