BEYOND THE GATES – 'Beyond the Gates' shares similarities with a few recent indie horrors in that it seems to set itself up almost as a relationships drama before throwing in the bloodbath. 'Honeymoon', 'We Are Still Here' etc all do something like that, and there are other examples too. In this case, BTG opens with two brothers who are clearing out their dad's abandoned video store, a real relic stuck in the VHS era. Dad disappeared under strange circumstances, so things are difficult. But they get even more difficult after the brothers find an eighties video role playing board game type thing in their father's office and it turns out to be a portal into a supernatural realm where the usual bad stuff lurks waiting to happen. 'Beyond The Gates' is an interesting flick and is definitely worth a watch. I don't know how successful it is compared to a film like 'Spring', for example, where the horror is worked into the drama quite subtly, because BTG feels more like a crude cut and shut, bringing together something quite poignant and well-rendered with something much coarser – you have to admit, there is an aspect of 'never the twain' if you're trying to relate well observed nuanced indie drama to garish eighties-inspired horror, and that really shows here. I for one quite like that in itself, sort of, although it does make for a slightly jarring experience. And I have to say that, despite the presence of Barbara Crampton as the witchy host of the video game and some pretty good gore, the horror aspects are overshadowed by the build up, which is all about unspoken antagonisms, shadowy pasts and the melancholy of returning to your home town. This is carried really well by the players, with all of the main performers doing good here. If you can get your head around the tonal shift from downbeat drama to over-ripe gore, I'd say 'Beyond The Gates' is one to check out.
EVIL DEAD 3: ARMY OF DARKNESS – Yeah, back to that comedy horror thing. I don't like it generally, especially when it's broad. Black comedy's one thing, but you can't play horror for laughs. However, I've contradicted myself too many times over the years on this point to be unabashed in saying I really like 'Army of Darkness'. I guess it's the level of invention – Sam Raimi's movies were always crazily imaginative back then, and there are some great moments here, like the eye-in-the-shoulder homage to 'The Manster' or whatever, a mere drop in the ocean of a myriad other such visual gags, most of which I can't recall as it's a pretty fast paced flick whose zaniness never really lets up. For the uninformed, Bruce C has been zapped back to medieval times where he has to confront the same dark forces at work in parts one and two, except that this time there's a whole battalion of them. He might not be as iconic in his 'grooviness' as he was in 'Evil Dead 2', but Ash can still work some magic with that stump of his, and his battle scenes with loads and loads of stop motion undead are pretty impressive. And that of course is the bigger part of the draw here – it's just a movie about mashing up skeletons. That's pretty cool – what horror nerd wouldn't want to be in that position, you know, “I've just blown $xmillion on a Ray Harryhausen wet dream”. There's something charming and infectious about those kind of enthusiasms, even now.
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