THE DEVONSVILLE TERROR – From Ulli Lommel. His ‘The Boogeyman’ is still probably my favourite slasher movie, daft as a brush though it may be. And then of course when he was Fassbinder’s protégé he made his most genuine claim to cinematic excellence, the undeniably haunting and beautiful ‘Tenderness of the Wolves’. I don’t know why he’s so loathed as a filmmaker – even the video trash he poured out in his latter years is dotted here and there with quirky, weirdo little films ie ‘The Raven’. ‘The Devonsville Terror’ is from back when movies were shot on celluloid, and is definitely one such quirky, weirdo little film. I really like it. It’s hard to explain what’s good about it. Not all that much happens in it. Basically, a small, isolated town replays its own history of violent witch-hunting when a new (female, urbane, distressingly ‘other’) teacher arrives. The film feels really static after its basic set-up is established, but instead of this being boring it somehow goes Zen and empties out into a hollow, cavernous space that gradually fills with strange characters, odd and maybe inconsequential goings on and just a really weird tone. Donald Pleasance is around – he does f*ck all apart from pull worms out of his arm and mumble about generational curses. Oh, he also hypnotises a couple of people. I don’t know, maybe this is a lazy comparison, but because of the small-town mystery angle, the air of foreboding and the quirkiness of the characters, it made me think of ‘Twin Peaks’ reconstituted as a VHS era horror knock-off with a rubber animatronic demon head at the end. Which, all told, is my kinda movie.
NIGHTMARE BEACH – Late Umberto Lenzi flick (or maybe not) about a slasher in motorcycle gear terrorising a bunch of none-more-eighties spring break party goers. Backstory has to do with the leader of local motorcycle gang The Demons, who fried in the chair after he was set up for murder… I mention this because the killer’s MO, mostly murder by electrocution delivered by bike, seems a bit ludicrous. Well, it all does, really. Though it all feels more American than Italian, if that makes sense, in that things like bad dubbing appear absent. ‘Nightmare Beach’ ticks a lot of boxes for me, but I have to be realistic and admit that sadly my mind has already condensed the good bits into a better flick than truly exists in real viewing time… which is a shame, because, even if you discount the lame kills and the fact that countless rampaging party scenes soundtracked by bad hair metal ultimately pay diminishing returns, the essence of the true hideousness of the eighties is laid bare here. Plus, there’s never an excuse not to watch a John Saxon movie.
AFTER DEATH – Aka ZFE3. When it comes to ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’, I prefer the sequels to the original. ‘After Death’ isn’t the hot mess that was ZFE2, but it’s still a lot more compelling than Fulci’s overrated plodfest. If you want to know what ‘After Death’ is about, forget it, man - you’ve got it already. There’s an island, there’s some zombies, there’s some stuff about voodoo and some people get eaten. It’s a trashy rip-off, and it knows it. Good for it – there’s something authentic about its unabashed cheapness, but, more to the point, it makes good on its promise of crass thrills. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a dollop of congealed fat splattered beneath the counter in a fourth tier KFC rip-off joint, but it bounces along the way you want it to and manages to somehow stay absorbing despite a good eighty percent of it being shots of people hiking through woods. There’s decent gore (mostly at the beginning and end) and lots of fight scenes involving zombies who look a bit Kung-Fu. In its essence it can be nothing more than hokey entertainment, but there are patches where it manages to be inadvertently creepy as well as amusing – some of the stuff shot in the caves, the sound of the dead rising in the distance, the slightly claustrophobic air at points. The constant electro-boogie in the background makes it infectious for me. All in all, a winner.
HACK O’LANTERN – Forgotten eighties horror that transmits a seriously wonky vibe. I can’t tell whether I liked it or not, so that interests me for a start. It’s about a family in thrall to its pumpkin truck-driving occultist granddad, an obnoxious dude who has the manner of a vaguely camp toad about him. The clan’s sullen, trout-faced son is about to undergo some satanic induction because it’s Halloween, whilst his clean cut copper brother goes on dates with his sister’s friend and tries to foil evil – this sets the stage for a weird combination of slasher flick and skewed family saga. ‘Hack O’Lantern’ is full of tedium and hilarity, but even more so just plain randomness – see, for instance, a dream sequence featuring an eighties poodle metal band and a laser-eyed vision of Kali, although perhaps a more typical example of its kookiness is a scene where a guy of uncertain relevance delivers five minutes of sexist gags to a crowd of appreciative onlookers from an odd-looking Halloween party, never to be seen again. Huh? Basic narrative sense? Expecting that quality seems unrealistic when it comes to ‘Hack ‘O Lantern’, which is after all the kind of movie where a bout of graveyard sex is soundtracked by music that sounds more suited to the bit in a nineties pet-based drama where a child picks up a lame puppy. Predictably, soaking up the incessant craziness is a lot of talk, most of it stilted and really boring. A bit of sleaze and gore is the icing on this cake of wholehearted dung. Hard to tune into in some ways, but I’d take it over ninety percent of what gets tossed out these days.
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