THE DEVIL’S MEN – Seventies trash sees Pleasance on a Greek island, battling a Minotaur cult. In the past, I allowed others to convince me that ‘The Devil’s Men’ was a load of toss, so I always avoided it. Turns out they were wrong, and so was I. TDM is not as lip-smackingly pulpy (nor as bonkers) as something like ‘Psychomania’, but its tendency to derail into scenes of people wandering around and investigating is offset by a few cards up its sleeve. The menacingly droney score by Brian Eno lends the film an almost undeserved feeling of otherworldliness and is pretty much the best thing about it. Other stuff isn’t quite so sublime, but delivers the schlocky goods; the nicely arranged tableaus involving cultists and sacrifice, and the Whovian silliness of that talking, fire-snorting papier mache Minotaur statue monster or whatever it is. Obviously there’s also the attraction of seeing Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasance under the same roof. Quite enjoyable, making the blu-ray probably worth a punt for those interested.
TOO BEAUTIFUL TO DIE – Paired with ‘Nothing Underneath’ on the recent VS release, and I think this is probably the better half. It ticks more of my boxes anyway – gratuitous, music video-esque stylisation, overbearing eighties fashion, visual classiness surrendering to badfilm crassness. Like the other film, it’s set in Rome’s fashion / music community, where models are being iced by a Giallo-type with an over-elaborate weapon. It outstays its welcome when it gets bogged down in ‘the investigation’, but mostly pretty good IMO.
THE SEED – Three women hang out in a big house with a swimming pool. Somewhere along the line a weird alien crops up along with a slew of body-horror, a lot of it pregnancy-related, and the tone ratchets into hysteria. I thought ‘The Seed’ might be a bit cute in its attempts to pit casual sass with revolting goo, but eventually its incessant strangeness wore me down and won me over. It’s freaky. So – a hit.
THE DARK – This is a pretty good film. It’s about an odd, corpse-like girl who strikes up a partnership with a child who seems to have been kidnapped and indoctrinated by an escaped con. Themes of abuse and co-dependency are handled thoughtfully, and hang like a fog around the more trad genre elements of pretty in-your-face gore and a wonderful woodland atmosphere. A petty gripe, but maybe they could’ve tried again with that title.
HELLBENDER – From family-sized film industry The Adams’s comes ‘Hellbender’, about a witchy mother / daughter duo who spend their time rocking out goth-metal style at their woodland retreat. Drama, along with a bit of splat and black magic, ensues when daughter makes a break for independence. Very good I thought, and in some ways it reminded me of those slightly arty seventies horror flicks like ‘Dark August’, where a surface uneventfulness gives way to an atmosphere that builds through the lingering unease of long, still shots. Recommended.
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