A BLADE IN THE DARK – A late giallo from Lamberto Bava. It's about a musician who's been asked to soundtrack a horror movie in a house with a past (and a murderer, natch). One 'interesting' thing about it that it's an early example of a horror film going the meta- route, or being quite self-referential. Not in the same way as wannabe mind blowers like 'Detention' or 'Last Cabin in the Woods', nor exercises in stylistic sass like 'Scream', but still it's about film, about the mechanics of making a movie, there's a film within a film etc etc – someone's even strangled with a strip of celluloid. Visually, maybe it takes its cue from 'Tenebrae' in some ways in that it turns away from the colourful pop-psychedelia of seventies gialli and embraces a cooler, more austere feel for the eighties. There's something quite eerie about the vast, sterile looking modern house in it, and the film does well atmospherically, building up a sense of brooding menace that crystallises out in some brutal killings. There's also something slightly strange about it all, something chilly and abstract that I can't put my finger on. Maybe that's just down to the combination of atmosphere and the ideas, which make the whole thing seem game-like in some sinister, covert way, almost metaphysical. On the downside, it does mess things up a bit in its latter half and becomes slightly baggy and uninvolving in places, plus there's a well worn resolution to everything which makes sense as a filmic reference, but still seems a bit tired. Good overall, though. I was going to get the 88 Films release, but noticed that my Vipco disc looks pretty good still.
HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP – A Roger Corman rip-off from the early eighties, 'Humanoids From the Deep' has sexually inappropriate sea monsters who look like they're from a dark version of Pertwee-era Dr Who. The combination of exploitative nastiness and clunky prosthetics promises to be a winner, but has to contend with a lumbering plot about the politics of salmon fishing in a small American town. The boring bits are worth trudging through to get to mean spirited mutant attacks and a messy monster birth scene. Stylistically it's a bit flat, but it still has that gritty, dour early eighties feel to it in some ways.
THE PIT – Very strange film about an alienated twelve year old geek who's also a budding sex pest. He's often found perving at his childminder, or engineering highly unlikely blackmail type scenarios which involve getting his neighbours to strip before their front room windows. All this aside, the bigger deal for anyone in this film with an interest in self preservation is that there is this Pit. It's out there in the forest and is full of primeval beings who are about to discover the great taste of human flesh – and the kid knows about it etc etc. What a weird one. I'd seen it before, and felt the same way about it after this latest viewing, namely that it struck me as simultaneously a bit uninvolving and grimly attractive. Or maybe just disjointed, odd and flummoxing. One thing that gets in the way a little is its flatness. It has a TV movie type aridity to it, and sometimes films like this from the late seventies and early eighties can make that work in a numb, dissociated way, but here I didn't like it so much. The first hour drags a little whilst we're introduced to the kid and his brewing nastiness, but at least it's peppered with head scratchers like the guessing game the film seems to be playing around the nature of that teddy bear (does it really talk to the kid, or is all a hallucination? No, it's real, but so what!). The mayhem is concentrated at the end. The upside of all of this for someone like me is that 'The Pit' is just, well, f*cked up. Ultimately, not a very likeable movie perhaps, but a must see for anyone interested in how casually skewed genre filmmaking could get in the not too distant past.
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