THE STRANGENESS – I know I always wheel out the ‘people wandering around in the dark’ trope when I’m in the middle of a review and feeling slightly irked (by the movie, or maybe just by the fact that I don’t have anything very interesting to say), but ‘The Strangeness’, well, it’s THE ‘people wandering around in dark’ movie. That darkened, shadowy wandering itself could almost have been the film’s true theme, cos it’s pretty much all that happens. Prospectors in a mine shaft are… Wandering Around In The Dark on the lookout for gold (or something), until a big Harryhausen-esque Cthulhu slime phallus monster has a go at them. Note back in time – guys, you needed to include a bit more of the latter. For all the non-event, ‘The Strangeness’ still manages a certain atmosphere courtesy of its location and scrungy early eighties 16mm aesthetic. This rough-hewed real-indie charm bypasses elements (ie the boring ones) which would have me reaching for my DVD player had they been present in a slightly more polished affair. I’m a sucker for a bit of grain and bad lighting, it seems.
RUSH WEEK – I’m a forgiving soul when it comes to eighties slasher trash. I can watch stuff like ‘Rush Week’ till the f*cking cows come home, but I’d be the first to say that it probably isn’t very good. It’s another campus based horror where someone with a mask is moidering some frat boyz (and girlz). A bit of a cheat this one, as there really isn’t much blood, and the array of potentially exploitative elements (such as the naughty photographer’s necrophilia ‘speciality’) never progress beyond the tease. However, old punks will get their shiny little tear’s worth of nostalgia in with an impromptu appearance by The Dickies and a couple of others, and it’s all fairly well put together.
BEYOND TERROR – Strange Spanish flick seems to condense early eighties continental street-hustle vibes with something that looks like it might have stepped from the furthest recesses of De Ossorio’s fruit cellar. A small gang of hoods is on the lam with kidnappees in tow – they make the mistake of burning down the house of someone involved in black magic, then come a cropper in the ruins of a haunted church. I really enjoyed ‘Beyond Terror’, having seen it (and, it saddens me to admit, dismissed it) on an awful bootleg years ago. The restoration by Cauldron is very good, and now a film that has never been served by home based media is watchable at last. ‘Beyond Terror’ is at its best when the crime element makes way for a subtle pile-up of weird imagery and atmosphere (exemplified by a scene in the gang’s careening car on the way to the ruins, when eerie, celestial music pours from the radio). There’s also quite a lot of other eccentricity, such as sacrilegious in-church wanking before a be-cobwebbed undead-heavy gothic blowout at the end. Disjointed and uneven but fascinating and mysterious, it’s nice to see ‘Beyond Terror’ finally getting its due to some extent.
DEVIL TIMES FIVE – I’ve seen DX5 a few times over the years, and strangely enough my impression of it seems to change from viewing to viewing. The last time I saw it, I didn’t like it. I changed my mind again when I watched an upgraded version on blu-ray the other day. Maybe it was just my mood, but I found the film mysterious and intoxicating. It’s about some nasty kids who terrorise some nasty adults in a house that happens to be surrounded by acres of snowy wilderness. The claustrophobic atmosphere is also quite off-key and has that ‘seventies semi-art house’ feel about it. I liked the slippery dialogue, the devious characters, the arbitrary malevolence of the psychotic kids, the dreamlike feel of it all. That there is no-one to route for lends the film quite a doomed, nihilistic accent. Very recommended.
CASTLE FREAK – Whatever possessed the re-animators of Stuart Gordon’s ‘Castle Freak’? I mean come on, what the f*ck was the point, really? Maybe they realised they were already on to a winner, relatively speaking, given that no film could be as dismal as the original ‘Castle Freak’, even its remake. Am I exaggerating? Maybe, I’ll never like the original though. But this one boasts a fair amount of lubricious splatter, sexual violence, and attempts to inject a bit of Lovecraft in a rubbery tentacular way. Pretty good, all in all.
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