THE KINDRED – Late eighties tentacle fun about a genetics experiment in an abandoned house, complete with slight shades of “The Dunwich Horror” (sort of, seeing how I’ve developed a tendency to slip in Lovecraft references everywhere these days). A solid B pic, although its workmanlike finish fails to conceal a few dodgy effects along with a tone that sometimes doesn’t hold up. Someone who looks like Paul McGann is a very standard male scientist hero; Rod Steiger lurks on the threshold before raving like a cry baby when everything explodes at the end. During the build-up, tendrils burst out of a watermelon. ‘The Kindred’ features a few effective scenes (in one, a screaming woman is transformed by gills that tear her flesh open), but, back to that wavering tone; the film is undermined by a melodramatic screechiness and an insistence on heading down a very standard route. It’s enjoyable, but convention snuffs the moments of intensity, making the dollop of goo at the end a bit less of a treat. The film has its fans. They’ll be happy to shell out big time for the newish Synapse blu ray, I guess (I watched an old knackered VHS version). It’s not overly stylised, but maybe it’ll play better in a superior format, considering all the stuff I’ve dismissed when I’ve seen it via cruddy analogue video / DVD, only for it to spring to life in HD. I tend not to be cynical about that, I think it’s simply that film is a visual medium and a better presentation usually enhances.
GIRLS NITE OUT – A rewatch, to find out whether the upcoming blu ray might be worth getting. Seeing it again, I’m not surprised I’d wiped it from memory. We’re in familiar slasher territory on a campus full of rowdy studes, where a sinister back story unfolds when a now-crazed alumnus escapes from the local psyche ward and etc etc etc – sounds OK? Part of the problem is that, for a solid half hour, ‘rowdy studes’ is all we get. Then someone is stabbed and a bear costume is stolen. And then… more students hanging out, but then also an unforgivable swerve into plodding police procedural during the home run. It’s enlivened by a few quirks, a dab of blood and not much else besides the weird ending. Hal Holbrook tries his best to look dignified through it all. A disappointment really, because who doesn’t want to get behind a film in which a maniac dressed as the college football team’s mascot bear (!) goes around whispering cryptic proclamations to a radio DJ, or prefaces a fatal encounter by hissing “bitch! Bitch! You whore!” But GNO is from the same place as ‘Killer Party’, all tease. The effective moments never reach beyond their moment. I would say it’s worth sticking around for that weird ending, but I’m not sure it is. Apart from that, the slim pickings of eighties nostalgia and a few bits of oddity might not be enough to warm even my cockles. “Be mellow. Be Happy. Get High,” says college DJ Harry Kaiser at one point. Yeah, you’d be better off just doing that.
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