GFF09: ONE EYED MONSTER

Isn't it just typical? You spend your life waiting for a film about a psychopathic, dismembered phallus going on a killing spree and then two of them appear at once.

Hot on the heels of Frank Henenlotter's BAD BIOLOGY comes this low budget horror comedy in which a group of youngsters head off to a remote cabin to film an adult movie only for an alien to turn Ron Jeremy's fame into a crazed monster.

You can't make a film like this and not have it be tasteless, but as far as it goes this film is a lot less crass and misogynistic than BAD BIOLOGY. Many of the gags are genuinely smart rather than just relying on the obscene ridiculousness of the situation and the cast look like they're having a blast making it.

It's just as stupid and cheap looking as Henenlotter's effort but by dropping some of the nastiness in favour of some characterisation, ONE EYED MONSTER just edges it in the battle of the killer... nope, sorry, I just can't believe I'm even writing this.

GFF09: THE UNBORN

If you've been to the cinema recently, you may have noticed a large poster for this horror film (produced by Michael Bay... sigh) featuring an attractive young lady in a pair of ill-fitting panties. It would be all too easy for me to suggest that this was done because this by-the-numbers slick-but-empty badly-acted piece of crap is not going to be remembered by most of its target audience for anything else except that young lady in her underwear.

So easy, in fact that this is exactly what I'm going to do.

Gary Oldman, you were in THE DARK KNIGHT for God's sake... can you really be this desperate for a quick buck?

GFF09: GRACE

In this indie horror flick, a woman's pregnancy turns nasty when her baby, having apparently been stillborn, suddenly comes back to life and... well, you know it's not going to be good.

The horror genre is not exactly light on films about kids going bad, from THE OMEN to JOSHUA to... actually, now that I mention it, I notice that JOSHUA came out on DVD recently and it's been retitled THE DEVIL'S CHILD, with a wee banner saying "aka JOSHUA" underneath it. AKA? AKA? It's not AKA anything, that's the film's sodding name. One of the best things about JOSHUA was its subtle approach to the material, something echoed in the name of the film. Why not just go the full way and call it something like THE REALLY EVIL CHILD WHO WANTS TO MURDER DADDY or some such crap?

Sorry, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, familiar territory, etc. GRACE tries to bring something new to the table here but unfortunately that something new is just taking the usual story and making it more unpleasant. Some of you might think this is a good thing - after all, a lot of horror has gone off in this direction of late - but for me it's a cheap trick which adds nothing and ends up doing more harm than good.

Granted, I'll admit that as much as I like gory, nasty horror there are some things I don't like seeing and one of them is violence involving pregnant women. GRACE, with its combination of this and baby-based horror just left an unpleasant taste.

The film, which was made for a low budget, is very slickly done and that disappoints me even more. I'd love to see the director Paul Solet work on a better script because he's clearly blessed with both a love of horror and a lot of talent but sadly GRACE is just plain unpleasant, and not in a good way. His abilities and those of the lovely and talented Jordan Ladd are sadly wasted here.

GFF09: I SELL THE DEAD

It's directed by Dubliner Glenn McQuaid and it seems to be maybe, possibly set in Ireland (Ron Perlman even sports an Irish accent) so I feel justified in attaching the Irish film label to this one, even though it's really an American one. The time the film is set in is equally vague, but it looks kind of Middle Ages like.

Dominic Monaghan and Larry Fessenden play a couple of grave robbers who spot a way to make a bit more money but, as you'll have guessed by the fact that this was part of Glasgow Film Festival's day-long Frightfest event, things go horribly awry.

The old favourite of having a man on death row (Monaghan) telling his incredible story to a priest (Perlman) has been done before but there's something grim about it that always lends a bit of weight to a horror film. Sadly a bit more weight is what this film could have done with.

There are some good gags in the script and the leading duo have some chemistry, but by and large the film doesn't sustain the gag ratio successfully enough for what is essentially a comedy film with horror trappings.

The budgetary restrictions also leak through in many parts of the film. Clearly made for little money, the film feels too claustrophobic in places. I don't mean that in a good way either, I just mean that all too often it feels far too much like the film has been made on a tiny soundstage - even when it's on location.

Credit to McQuaid though, he does do a grand job of getting a lot of the moody lighting and smoke-draped countryside just right, creating a perfect homage to the old Hammer films and sundry other British imitators of the '70s. It's a shame then that the US location work eventually overwhelms the mood of the piece, with a beach-set showdown involving some zombie-like creatures destroying the atmosphere that McQuaid worked so hard to generate. For most of the running time it's an effective Hammer tribute but the beach scenes just make it feel like another American made-for-DVD cheapo.

That may well be the case too, since I don't see it troubling a cinema any time soon. If you're getting friends round for a late night film romp, you could certainly do a lot worse than this likeable little movie but in the end it's a film that never quite overcomes its humble resources.

GFF09: DOROTHY

DOROTHY, or rather DOROTHY MILLS if you want to give it the name it seems to have been released under in other territories is an Irish/French co-production. I mention this not just because of my enthusiasm for Irish cinema but because it perhaps sums up what a mixed bag this film is.

In the lead, we have Carice van Houten. Now I thought she was terrific in Paul Verhoeven's BLACK BOOK - not only did she did she manage the impressive feat of still looking sexy while covered in excrement, she turned in a terrific lead performance which carried the whole film. Having not watched anything she's done since, I was glad of the opportunity to catch her in some rather different material.

So, a Dutch lead actress, playing an Irish woman. Okay, interesting. In the supporting cast we have the wonderful Scottish actor Gary Lewis, again playing Irish. Van Houten ends up sounding like a curious Irish/American kind of thing while Lewis sports a kind of Ulster/Scottish hybrid accent. Both good performances, mind you, just a little odd.

That's in keeping with the film though. The story isn't terribly new (woman turns up in small town, weird things happen, hostile locals, dark secret from the past, etc.) but it's an enjoyable mash-up of horror staples. Again it contributes to the mixed up feel of the film - at times it wants to be Hollywood teen horror, at other times it's more in keeping with the traditional WICKER MAN style of story. You know the one, outsider stumbles across weird rural community who do things differently.

Good use is made of the sparse Irish landscape, the cast is solid enough and director Agnes Merlet manages to get some good tense scares out the material. As much as the film is a passable way to spend the time however, the real reason for watching it is Dorothy herself.

I must confess that when young Jenn Murray was nominated at the IFTAs for her performance it passed me by. I'd never heard of her, never heard of the film and my attention was focussed on some of the more well known material. Shame on me. As the teen girl haunted/possessed/whatever by the spirits of, well, loads of people, Murray packs as much emotion and versatility into the role as it can possibly allow. It's thanks to her incredible efforts that an otherwise fairly average horror film becomes extremely engaging indeed.

The downside is that the film suffers whenever she's not around, although van Houten and friends manage a reasonable job of keeping things ticking over. But the star of DOROTHY is Dorothy.

FrightFest: Glasgow Film Festival 2007

The FrightFest programming on the Saturday kicked off at lunchtime with a screening of THE TRIPPER, a throwback to 80s slasher movies directed by David Arquette. It's an affectionate homage to a much maligned genre and it positively glows with nostalgia; it also recreates the atmosphere and plot contrivances of a typical 80s slasher movie too, but remains tongue-in-cheek without being outright spoofery.

The plot, as with all such movies, is pretty simple. A bunch of youngsters head into the country for a music festival and end up falling foul of a mysterious killer who picks them off one by one. There are a few familiar faces in the cast - Jason Mewes of CLERKS fame plays himself as always, Arquette pops up in a cameo as a redneck and Paul "Pee-Wee Herman" Reubens puts in a hilarious turn as a music promoter.

The film is a riot from start to finish - mad, unadulterated fun with a decent helping of gore and violence (in a funny way, naturally) but the real star of the show is the premise of the killer himself. I don't want to say any more in case I spoil it, but let me just say it's very 80s, very political and very, very funny. HALLOWEEN was never like this. I've no idea when this is likely to hit cinemas, but when it does be sure to see it with a crowd for maximum enjoyment.

Maximum enjoyment is not a phrase likely to be associated with documentary/horror hybrid S&MAN (which is pronounced as "sandman" in case you're wondering). It follows a filmmaker's attempts to interview a young low-budget filmmaker who appears to be stalking victims and killing them before selling the videos to fans of extreme horror.

The film is dull from start to end, and the look at the kind of extreme, low-budget shockers being produce by the depraved minds of the horror underground just reminds me how little interest I have in them. I won't even mention the people responsible as I've no desire to spread the word about their work.

THE MESSENGERS is an American film, but from the Asian horror masters the Pang brothers. Unfortunately, this effort proves to be just as uninspired as the numerous American remakes of Asian horror have proven to be. I used to like Penelope Ann Miller so it's a shame to see her slumming it in a turkey like this - it's full of cliche and predictable "frights" (I use the term loosely) and can best be described as horror by numbers. I gather it was a number one at the American box office but frankly that just reflects the downside of the current interest in horror - that people after their horror fix will happily watch anything in the hope that it'll be the next SAW. This isn't. It's not even for adults.

TURISTAS (which, we were told by FrightFest honcho Alan Jones, will be released under the new title of PARADISE LOST) is another attempt at grabbing a piece of the HOSTEL market. Youngsters trekking through Brazil find a lovely, secluded beach, get up to all manner of drunken antics and then fall foul of a bloke who runs a secret organ-harvesting operation that likes to prey on tourists.

This film is another failure. For large parts of the film, we are expected to simply admire how good the young folk look in their swimming outfits on the beach, underwater, etc. When the horror starts, it's simply a pale imitation of the other similar films that have gone before. Ever since SAW and HOSTEL enjoyed the success they did, it seems horror consists of a person being rendered helpless and tortured in a supposedly shocking manner, preferably in a dimly-lit, dingy little room, before making their action-packed final-reel escape. Whoopee. I defy anyone with even a passing knowledge of horror to be surprised at who lives and who dies. I had it pegged from early on and I'd be surprised if nobody else did.

I've no doubt that when it's released it'll do some reasonable box office but it's not particularly demanding fair and even on the level of exploitation it's not a real winner.

Praise be then that we managed to finish the day with a brand new print of classic video nasty MOTEL HELL. This sleazy little effort is a hilarious (sometimes deliberately so, sometimes not) tale about a dirty little motel that makes a bit of money on the side from a rather unusual meat product.

It's totally barmy, it's bad taste, it's over the top, it's everything that was great about late 70s and early 80s nasties and, best of all, it's got Rory Calhoun wearing a pig's head while having a chainsaw battle with another equally-armed guy. If that isn't why cinema was invented, I don't know what is.

The rest of the films I saw at Glasgow this year will follow sometime next week...