HALLOWEEN HORROR BINGE ROUNDUP #6
Hey Dem, thanks for those tips, plenty to ponder there.
Meanwhile...
15/10/21
CAT PEOPLE – This might even have been one of my seven-year-old self’s first VHS horror experiences, although the version I had in my mind had been spliced in with another early viewing, Argento’s ‘Inferno’. I have to say that my imaginary mind-movie Brundlefly would beat ‘Cat People’ hands down, at least this P Schrader remake. It’s not that I’m against a big budget bad taste studio horror rehash of that sacred ethereal noir – it’s just that it didn’t quite deliver on its seeming promise of schlock, perversity and gaudy eroticism. Undeniably well made with great aesthetics, but it needed to ramp it up. Maybe I’m being a bit harsh.
SHALLOW GRAVE – Bad cop gets nasty backwoods. Reassuringly grainy in a way that only VS can deliver, this is a low budget obscurity from 1987 that aims for suspense rather than kills. It doesn’t have the chops to pull off the kind of dark atmosphere it seems to grasp for, and makes an uneasy transition over from a familiar sort of slasher style set-up to its grimmer, more serious second act. In its favour, the roiling atmosphere of the small town is convincingly rendered, as is its twinning of authority and inevitable brutality. Years of sexily done neo-noirs from surer hands have maybe raised the bar on this kind of thing, but it remains an interesting curio.
16/10/21
NAIL GUN MASSACRE – Cheap ooze from the bottom of the pile, ‘Nail Gun Massacre’ is DIY all the way. It’s the most threadbare, yet silliest, power tool horror I can think of, at least out of the ones shot on celluloid. ‘Shot’ in this case means finding the most static angle, the flattest composition, pressing record and letting style be damned, although the near-verité approach sometimes yields a strange otherworldliness in combination with the main maniac’s cackhanded one-liners (mostly inaudible) and the blurts of echoey laughter on the electronic soundtrack. There’s occasional ugly sex and rubber nails sticking out of treacly torsos. Pretty ace if you dig awfulness.
DEATH SHIP – Passengers escaping a sinking vessel end up aboard a passing battlecruiser – “whew” in a way, but then it turns out that this apparently deserted hulk has a Nazi surprise waiting in store etc etc etc. ‘Death Ship’ is another odd one. It seems to ‘work’ as a combination of very well rendered atmosphere – the ship is convincingly spooky, and the cinematography really brings this out – and quite badly mismanaged ‘horror bits’, most of which have the hokiness of a shit Halloween fun park ride (showers of blood, whispering corpse faces, eating gobstoppers will make you die of radiation etc). It’s quite a heady concoction, veering from quiet menace to bladder-testing stupidity in the sieg of an heil. George Kennedy glowers as the possessed captain whilst at one point a light bulb appears to double as the manifestation of Nazi supreme supernatural menace.
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