HIDE AND GO SHRIEK – Late slasher from LA featuring a vague psychosexual subtext and a large furniture warehouse. HAGS is pretty thin gruel in one sense, as, beyond the boring usual and the themes alluded to, there isn't much of a narrative – bunch of all-Americans go to a big mall-like building and are picked off one by one. It doesn't offer much by way of gore, either. But still,I was quite smitten with it in some ways. Whatever it has to say about anything else, HAGS is all about seemingly vast, poorly lit spaces and glimpses of mannequins. The film might reek of a lack of budget, thought and care, but the flipside of this is gritty atmosphere... once it gets going and we're past the air-brushed 'going to the gym with a mullet' Los Angeles look, everything is overwhelmed by a labyrinthine space that seems irrational and nightmarish. Dunno how woke the makers were, but HAGS manages to intrigue and for the most part entertain.
RAGEWAR – Got this after it was mentioned by Dems Dike and Oncrat, and I wasn't disappointed (thanks, guys). It's a really strange portmanteau effort from Empire Pictures which is basically about a science tech guy trying to rescue his girlfriend from dungeonmaster Chris Morris in some kind of netherworld. It's split in sections made by various hands from the Empire stable of the day, and comes across as fairly slight and a bit pointless, but it's also as kooky as hell and is a lot of fun. There's a real vintageness about it all, from the overall look to the filmic steals, which are all pretty much coming from the direction of those bombastic fx-based fantasy movies popular in the early / mid eighties. Along with the D&Dness (there is a really heavy vibe of this whole thing being a snapshot of the undercarriage of male nerd psyche), there are some lukewarm nods to horror, although it sustains itself by means of wackyness alone really. Definitely recommended.
555 – Eighties shot-on-video horror about a really angry cop on the tail of a serial killer who dresses as a hippie. Everyone looks like they belong on a TV ad for a local car showroom, the latter being '555's spiritual home aesthetically speaking. '555' comes across as less a scrambled backyard outsider vision and more a stab at professionalism that went wrong, but in fairness to the director, the constant flow of static, middle distance ensemble shots might be a deliberate homage to the look of some low budget forties / fifties cop thrillers. The police procedural bits are saved from being boring by the cheapo video haze, which constantly reminds us that we're watching an unreal, slightly alien artefact. Importantly, the flat investigation plot line is coated in a thick layer of grime courtesy of some sleazy sex murders and a bit of gore. Together with the wooden, detached performances and the early house soundtrack, the overall effect is disorientating. Definitely a curiosity.
SCIENCE CRAZED – Speaking of curiosities, 'Science Crazed'. In case you hadn't guessed, it's really quite a strange film. As far as plot goes, it's about a mad scientist type who seems to have pioneered a technique that causes a woman to give birth to a fully grown monster. Said monster goes around killing people in the science institute where it was 'born', although the place also seems at times like an apartment complex. Some people team up with a noirish detective to track down the beast. Does this sound reasonable as a horror film storyline? Good, because actually nothing, NOTHING else about 'Science Crazed' is remotely sensible. I can't work it out. It plays like a parody of cliché horror made by pretentious art students who were probably also really into drugs. Reading about it leads me to believe that it was all quite a sincere effort, though. I don't know. That's not how it looks. All I can say is it's erm a bit 'non-linear'. Endless shots of corridors are interrupted by ridiculously protracted scenes of aerobic work-out, sequences loop and repeat themselves, monster-human interactions (filmed in quasi-expressionistic hyperstylisation) are slow and dream-like... seriously, it would be pointless to try to list every act of cinematic wrongness committed by 'Science Crazed'. But is it any good? Uh, I wanted more, but then I'm probably as f*cked as this movie.
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