DEATH GAME – Basically midlife crisis reconfigured as waking nightmare, ‘Death Game’ demonstrates that bathtub threesomes come with strings if you happen to be a lecherous walrus who’s just thrown open his doors for two psychotic waifs. I’ve seen this once or twice over the years and have never found it less than haunting, the way it slides from edgy chamber piece to something approaching delirium; one moment it’s cat-and-mouse with Sondra Locke and Colleen Camp, the next it’s bent itself into a phosphorescent hell, an underworld descent with Seymour Cassel as crap Orpheus who ends up covered in gunk from his own larder as the demented duo circle him like screeching harpies. I’ve always been impressed by how creepy Locke looks in this, with her not-quite-emaciated appearance and unwavering leer, and that’s exactly the sort of thing that ‘Knock Kock’, Eli Roth’s decent but generic remake, sorely lacked. ‘Dead Game’ is a different kind of film in a very different league, one of those strange seventies movies that pitch halfway between grindhouse and surrealism, and in that sense it shares some common ground with things like ‘Seizure’. Lots of re-releases fall short of the kind of hype they attract, but ‘Death Game’ is highly and effortlessly unsettling. Various subtexts might apply, but the screwy ending rams home one angle – karma sucks, be kind to pets.
WARLOCK – Julian Sands is the 17th cent sorcerer who thinks a notorious grimoire will make him all-powerful – Richard E Grant is the mere mortal with a fur coat and a slightly strained Scottish accent. A timeslip happens, and they end up in eighties LA. ‘Warlock’ mashes together some larger than average names with a few genre tropes from around the time – there’s a weirdly heavy debt to ‘Terminator’. It’s quite fun watching Sands and Grant stumble from one action set-piece to the next, although the effects are drecky for the (I’m guessing) budget, not that that’s a problem watching it nowadays. Didn’t quite click with me, but there’s some amusement to be had.
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