Horrorthon 2007 (Part 3)

Sunday kicked off with SUMMER SCARS, the latest low-budget Welsh horror from director Julian Richards. Richards was the man responsible for DARKLANDS, a Welsh variation on THE WICKER MAN which saw its director's cut screened at last year's Horrorthon. The earlier movie was an absolute turd, though I can happily say that SUMMER SCARS shows a lot of improvement.

The premise concerns a group of Welsh youths messing around in some woods who are befriended by a seemingly sound older chap (Kevin Howarth). It soon becomes clear however that he's dangerously unhinged and a fun afternoon for the young scamps soon turns into an unforgettable orgy of terror. The terror itself stems not from any supernatural shenanigans or pantomime villainy - instantly rendering it a cut above the dross that was DARKLANDS - and instead relies on the uncomfortable horrors of real life. There are some genuinely uncomfortable scenes - for the characters and audience alike - and with a tighter script and talented cast it is a vast improvement over DARKLANDS which, you may have guessed by now, I didn't think much of.

I skipped out of the next screening (a couple of new episodes of the MASTERS OF HORROR television series, in particular Stuart Gordon's THE BLACK CAT and Joe Dante's THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION). It's not that I wasn't interested - heck, I'd bought a ticket - but rather that there was another film I wanted to see elsewhere. But you'll probably hear about that, and one other, in a later blog entry. If I remember.

So the next screening I took in at Horrorthon was the BFI's brand spanking new, fully restored print of Hammer's DRACULA, the film that made Christopher Lee the star he is, even if he doesn't like to talk about it. Then again, with STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES stinking up his CV, maybe he'll be happy to go back to talking about DRACULA again. But I digress.

Mad as this sounds for a horror lover like myself, I'd never seen this movie. In fact, I'm not sure I'd seen any of Hammer's adventures of the infamous Count before this one. I've really only seen a few Hammer films, although I think I may actually have seen more on the big screen than the little screen - unusual since most of them were made before I was born. But I digress. Again.

The film holds up remarkably well for its age - Lee looks as creepy as ever, and the make-up is better than the previous day's FRIGHT NIGHT, made almost thirty years later - and James Bernard's score is almost as iconic as the cape and fangs. Some of the acting is a little camp, some a little stiff, but it's forgivable in a bonafide horror classic. And importantly, this new print means that not only is it being seen on the big screen where it belongs (hurrah for horror films finally and belatedly getting the treatment they deserve) but it's also probably as nice as it's looked since it was first released. Lovely.

Next on the agenda was the surprise movie. Last year it had turned out to be the no-brainer SEE NO EVIL, which was hardly classic but at least a diverting hour and a half. This year was more disappointing than that.

As the opening credits rolled, there was a groan from the Dublin audience as the Irish Film Board's name appeared. As soon as I saw this, I moaned to myself "Oh no, it's SHROOMS, I already saw this at the Edinburgh festival". Now I should emphasise that I thought this only inwardly to myself; however, in a rather creepy coincidence, a young Irish lady sitting a few seats away from me turned to her friend and said almost exactly those very same words. Spooky. Far more spooky than anything in the film to be honest.

If you read my report of this movie from its Edinburgh screening you'll know that I thought it wasn't that bad. I must confess to having changed my mind on this viewing however. Perhaps it's because there was no novelty value in it, having seen it before; perhaps it's because I was swayed by the clearly negative reaction to the film by an Irish audience; or maybe now that I was watching it a second time I was able to more closely analyse its flaws.

Whatever the reason, I'm afraid to say I'm going to alter my opinion. I was almost tempted to go back and edit my Edinburgh blog entry but no, I'll leave it there so as to show that I'm prepared to admit when I'm wrong. And I was wrong about SHROOMS. I'll not be too hard on its predictability, since you could say that it's easy to call something predictable when you've already seen it. There's no getting away, however, from the fact that the characters are not an interesting group, some of the dialogue is just plain terrible and all in all the film just doesn't stand up to repeated viewing. I mentioned the lack of Irish accents previously; well I'd go further than that this time. The film goes out of its way to hide its Irish origins, to the point where it almost seems ashamed of it. On more than one occasion there were groans of disapproval from the Irish audience (the real indigenous people, rather than the inbred hicks of the movie).

This lack of Irishness is something I find particularly galling since, in its reluctance to deal with genre cinema, Irish cinema has a lot in common with its Celtic cousin over here. When something as rare as an Irish (or Scottish) film comes along that actually seems to embrace genre filmmaking, it would be nice for it to do so while embracing its national identity too, or else what's the point in having a national film industry? One of the joys of SEACHD: THE INACCESSIBLE PINNACLE (which I've covered here before) is that it is a uniquely Scottish film that embraces Scottish culture and history and weaves a story out of it; far more interesting to someone like me than giving good money to someone to make a film that could have been hacked out by any old Hollywood dud.

Sorry, my SHROOMS discussion appears to have gone on longer than intended. I'll save the rest of the Sunday movies (along with the ones on the Monday) for my next blog entry.