THE CARPENTER – Weirdly arty semi-slasher goes in for light surrealism over body count, and at some point it had me thinking that if early Channel 4 commissioned splatter movies, had been Canadian and could access Wings Hauser, this would be the inevitable result. Woman recovers from a breakdown in a big house with a bad rep; her hubby is a real shit, and we’re meant to think that when nocturnal handyman Wings comes along he’s the embodiment of her internalised relationship with crap maleness. It’s difficult to see the credulity-stretching radical DIY kills as anything other than the projections of a fragmented psyche, but by the end we see that maybe there’s some supernatural stuff going down for real. Nothing here is really outside of the slasher sandbox when it comes down to it but there’s a strange serenity in the air that I really liked. I would’ve preferred Wings in full demonic flight (he reigns it in a bit here) but ultimately, despite the floaty atmosphere, it’s the kind of movie where only silliness can prevail; the ending, with the sisters laying into the structure of the house because smashing its walls in literally has the same effect on Hauser, is a hoot. Otherwise, dig those blissed out synths on the soundtrack and a preponderance of quirk that I would hesitate to call ‘somehow a bit Lynchian’, but then hey guess what I just did? But the more pressing question is, “where is this on Blu Ray, or even DVD?”
THE BOY FROM HELL – Brilliant oddball Japanese Monkey’s Paw variant from Mari Asato, actually a Hideshi Hino adaption, in which a surgeon reanimates her dead child – he comes back as a real sickly-looking whelp who reminds me a little of the tyke from the end of ‘Phenomena’. TBFH packs a hefty dose of brain frazzle into its 54 minutes, and is by turns goofy, psychedelic and deeply, genuinely horrific in a way that only certain strains of Japanese horror seem capable of pulling off. The dirt-cheap minimalist video aesthetic really works, its frequent bursts of crude gonzo visuals somehow vaulting towards the visionary. It might not be possible to fathom all of TBFH’s strange depths - the giallo-esque soundtrack is an easy enough ask, but don’t try to guess why the detective turns Pinocchio - but general freakiness aside, somehow it all comes down to the Frankensteinian pathos of a ghoul child who just can’t understand why the other kids run away. If this can’t cut through a jaded palate, nothing can. Do yourselves a favour and watch TBFH.
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