Best of 2008 (40-36)

40 32A
Charming coming-of-age tale set in 1970s Dublin. Clearly a film for young girls, but what the hell, I liked it. Nominated for an IFTA Best Film award too, though I don't see it winning.

39 JUST ANOTHER LOVE STORY
Certainly not "just" another anything. I don't suppose that modern Danish film noir is a gigantic genre, but I bet this is still one of the best entries all the same. Terrific thriller.

38 CHANGELING
For all my complaints about Jolie's overacting, Eastwood's study of the dark side of LA's modern history is still a great film.

37 WALTZ WITH BASHIR
Bold, daring and timely animated movie from Israel that should get an Oscar nomination, even though Pixar own the actual awards. It has made the foreign language shortlist though, so watch out there. [UPDATE: I wrote this a few days ago, and the nominations have since come out - no animated nomination, which is a shock, but it is nominated for in the foreign language category]

36 DIARY OF THE DEAD
Like the previous entry, some people thought George Romero's latest zombie movie was an anticlimax and hated it. I thought it had its flaws but was still immensely enjoyable and felt that the back-to-basics approach really paid off.

Horrorthon'08: DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978)

It's many years since I saw Romero's classic zombie film and to be honest I couldn't tell you which cut we even saw at the IFI, but it's always nice to see something like this again anyway, especially with a like-minded audience.

The first of the sequels to the seminal NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, this is the logical progression as the zombies are now overrunning the living and it's all about surviving. For one band of refugees, that means making themselves a base in the local shopping centre, allowing Romero to both spin a yarn about consumerism while also allowing Tom Savini to demonstrate some interesting ways of being killed or maimed.

The film is certainly a satisfactory outing and one of the best of the zombie genre but I'm not sure I'd elevate it to quite the same heights as many others do. I still think that parts of the film - particularly in the middle - are too slow-moving, and some scenes of dispatching zombies begin to get repetitive. After an entertaining opening, it's not really until the finale that we see Romero and his flesh-eating hoards really cut loose for all their worth once again.

It's still a classic though. You can't beat some flesh-eating zombie action, though I'm more of a Fulci man.

Horrorthon'08: NIGHT OF THE CREEPS (1986)

Once again the new Irish horror (GHOSTWOOD) got ditched for 80s nostalgia as I went to see NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, a fondly remembered zombie-ish teen horror that was every bit as stupid and entertaining as I remember it.

Interestingly, the showing here was thought to be a premiere of sorts. The film never received a cinema release in the UK or Ireland - many people discovered the film either through video or, like me, late night BBC screenings - so this was a special occasion, particularly since it's not available on DVD yet either. It was made all the more special by the fact that the print they showed was absolutely pristine.

The plot essentially boils down to alien parasites turning people into zombies while a bunch of teenagers worry about drinking, getting laid and playing frat pranks. Hilarity ensues. Much of it is genuinely, intentionally funny while parts of it are more funny because of how dated it is. Have you ever noticed that 80s films actually seem to have dated more than most films from the 60s or 70s?

The real star of the show however is stalwart character actor Tom Atkins, who plays the police officer in charge of the case. Having lost his (unfaithful) girlfriend in an unfortunate incident involving a serial killer, an axe and a crashed UFO, he's a washed up, miserable man who gets all the best lines and delivers them with deadpan aplomb, whether he's answering the phone ("Thrill me!") or displaying a real weapons fetish.

Gore, pretty ladies, alien parasites and a bitter but hilarious cop all add up to an immensely enjoyable cinema experience. Thrill me indeed.

Horrorthon coverage to be continued soon...

Horrorthon'08: EVIL DEAD II (1987)

I don't know if it's because they couldn't find a print or whatever, but Sam Raimi's comedy horror sequel was screened from what appeared to be a DVD source or something like that, and on top of that the projectionist was clearly having some issues getting it in the right aspect ratio.

Technical issues aside however, it was great fun. You just can't go wrong with this one. Regarded as better than the original in most quarters, EVIL DEAD II: DEAD BY DAWN made it into the top 50 of Empire's top 500 films of all time recently, such is its staying power. Okay, so Empire's top 500 films was a puddle of pish in many ways, but for a gory horror to be held in such high regard by so many still speaks volumes.

After a brief intro which basically remakes the original film (no continuity knowledge required here!) Bruce Campbell and friends get terrorised by evil spirits in a cabin in the middle of the woods.

And that's about it really. However, there's endless entertainment in the presentation, from stooge-style slapstick to gross-out gore, stop-motion magic mixing with hilarious Campbell overacting. It's an absolute hoot from start to finish, and possibly the only time I've ever heard a cinema audience spontaneously applaud and cheer the word "groovy."

Horrorthon'08: QUARANTINE (2008)

QUARANTINE is the inevitable remake of the acclaimed Spanish zombie flick [REC], a "found footage" take on the genre which came out around the same time as George Romero tried the same thing with DIARY OF THE DEAD. The gimmick is already getting old (CLOVERFIELD was great though) and the shaky-cam visuals of QUARANTINE aren't going to win over any new fans.

Having never seen the original (I know, shame on me) it's difficult to judge this one. I enjoyed it and since I guess most of the audience for it probably won't have seen the original (at least I guess that's the thinking behind the obsession with remaking every decent horror film that isn't shot in English) then maybe that should be taken as all the recommendation I need to give.

The problem however is this. The story is nothing special and even the film as a whole isn't likely to go down as a classic in the annals of horror. What makes it worth watching (if you like such things) are the entertaining gore effects, some wonderful action set-pieces (someone falling down a stairwell and death-by-camera are two favourites) - in short, a collection of moments rather than one stupendous whole.

That said, one thing which is new to the remake is obviously the cast and, considering the talentless nobodies that often show up in genre films QUARANTINE does okay. The star is lead actress Jennifer Carpenter (previously seen by horror fans in THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE), who doesn't just manage the girl-in-peril scream queen stuff but also delivers a wonderfully natural performance in the opening set-up scenes in which we are introduced to her character, a young reporter spending a night with a fire crew, all of whom end up trapped in a building with some nastily infected people.

Definitely give it a shot, but I take no responsibility if it turns out that the original is better.

Also screening with this film was the short film ALL THE LITTLE THINGS. It wasn't very good.

Glasgow Film Festival - viewings so far

Just a few hours later, it's another update!

Quick update from what I've seen at the Glasgow Film Festival so far as I'm pushed for time.

I kicked off with BUNNY CHOW, a low-budget South African film about a bunch of wannabe comedians on a journey to a major South African rock festival. It's a stoner comedy with a likeable cast of slackers and while it's a little rough around the edges and the ending hasn't had much thought put into it, it's still an enjoyable movie that should find a cult following.

Next up was the "Night Terrors" strand of dark short films. The highlights for me were the excellent animated short EVERYTHING WILL BE OK, following a man's descent into nervous breakdown, and Matt Palmer's ISLAND, a tense affair that doesn't bring anything new to the table but does create an air of suspense from start to blackly comic finish. And if I'm not mistaken it looks like it was filmed near where I live too, which is nice.

George Romero's next zombie film, DIARY OF THE DEAD, has perhaps been beaten to the punch by CLOVERFIELD (Romero's film takes us back to the beginning of the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD series and observes it through the camera of a student filmmaker) but nevertheless I found much to enjoy.

If you're one of the many who were underwhelmed by Romero's long awaited LAND OF THE DEAD, this isn't going to win you over. It suffers many of the same flaws, and in greater number. The cast, with the exception of Michelle Morgan, are all unsympathetic nobodies, making it difficult to care about them. They're not helped by some really dodgy dialogue either - some of it's terrible, some of it is just a little too heavy-handed.

That heavy-handedness however stems from one of the film's strengths - the fact that, as always, Romero at least has something he wants to say (this time round, he's looking at media coverage and the YouTube generation). It's unfortunate that Romero seems to be in a minority of horror filmmakers interested in making political horror but it's this integrity, combined with plenty of well-handled set pieces and an atmosphere of dread, that reminds me why even a Romero misfire is usually far more interesting than the very best efforts of many of today's younger generation of horror hacks. Eli Roth, I'm looking at you.

In the Bette Davis retrospective, I took in THE OLD MAID, which is the best film I've seen at the festival so far. It's a weepy old melodrama from the 1930s and it's wonderful. From zombies to weepy melodrama - I love them both.

EMPTIES, a Czech film from the director of KOLYA, is another must-see movie. A hilarious look at the life and exploits of a man approaching retirement who gives up his teaching job and tries his hand at various other pursuits, including meddling in the lives of his companions. It went down really well with the audience I saw it with, and deservedly so, and should find an audience on the arthouse circuit given the critical love of Eastern European cinema.

Finally, I saw the low-budget (almost no-budget) Scottish drama THE INHERITANCE. Its lack of funding is obvious but this Scottish road movie has plenty of heart, captivating performances by Fraser Sivewright and Tim Barrow (the latter also wrote the script) and stunning photography that shines through the shot-on-video roots. Already receiving good word of mouth on the festival circuit, it's unlikely to break out into large theatrical distribution but is far too good to simply fade from view. Part road movie, part film noir, part relationship drama, it's another fine entry in the canon of Scottish cinema. It also gets bonus points for me for a scene towards the end in which director Charles Henri Belleville is surely making visual reference to THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. Sergio Leone on the Isle of Skye - nice combination.

That'll be the last update for a week or so, as tomorrow night I'll be popping off to the Dublin Film Festival for a few days. If you're there, why not go and see THE INHERITANCE.

VHS Lives! HUMANOID WOMAN (1981)

The next tape from the pile is HUMANOID WOMAN. This began life as a Russian science fiction film (CHEREZ TERNII K ZVYOZDAM - difficult to say, but cracker of a score at Scrabble) before someone decided it would be nice to re-edit it, dub it into English and release it under the aforementioned new moniker. This is a UK release on the Xtasy label and it's not the first time they've released such cheeky stuff. When some episodes of Japanese PLANET OF THE APES rip-off SARU NO GUNDAN got dubbed and re-edited into the movie-length TIME OF THE APES, it was those good folks at Xtasy who released that one too. If it wasn't stuck at the bottom of a pile of old tapes in a cupboard somewhere, you'd probably have been hearing about it this week.

But back to HUMANOID WOMAN. I found this one for a quid in a charity shop in Kirkcaldy on a day off work - nobody can say I didn't make constructive use of my time. Actually, I think it may have been when I took the day off for last year's Oscars. But anyway, I'm digressing again.

The reasons I bought it? Well for one thing it was an old sci-fi film that I'd never heard of. Secondly, it had a weird looking guy on the cover who looked quite menacing which, combined with the 18 certificate, made it seem quite promising. The third and final reason was that there was no way I could resist a film whose sleeve featured the tagline "ZOMBIE BEAUTY IN SPACE MASSACRE".

As it turns out, it's not as dark as I'd anticipated. In fact, it's really rather silly. Now I'm honest enough to admit that the film is not in its original form and certainly the dubbing alone would make even the greatest film seem a tad sillier. However, when you see things like a household robot that looks like a cross between a robot and a cake (but, for some reason, with the feet of an elephant) you can't help but wonder if the film was ever serious in any language. My doubts were not eased by the sight of someone crashing through a glass wall and leaving their exact outline, cartoon-style, where they passed through it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself; I suspect you'd like to know a bit about the story. Well, it starts off with some astronauts, one of whom has the best beard in history, coming across a space station inhabited by a strange - wait for it - humanoid woman. The discovery is laced with some pretty psychedelic colouring, but I couldn't work out if that was some kind of visual trickery playing tribute to classic Russian sci-fi flick SOLARIS or if it was just that my tape has gone a bit dodgy with age.

Anyway, it turns out that the woman's some kind of advanced being from the planet Dessa. Advanced, but servile. So much so, in fact, that one of the men who meets her declares in all seriousness that since she offers total obedience, she'd be the perfect wife. Ah, they don't make them like this anymore.

So basically there's this humanoid clone thing who is really advanced but takes orders from some evil guy on Dessa. The evil orange-looking guy looks a bit like Richard Harris, or rather what Richard Harris would look like if he was made out of marmalade.

I'd like to tell you more but I hastily scribbled down some notes while watching it ages ago, and now I can't remember what they mean. There's something about a record player, some gas masks and an evil dwarf in a leather jacket. Anyway, this combination of orangey evil men, humanoid women, astronauts, a pint size Fonz and also some mutants who are a bit like those ones from BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES all culminates in a fun romp to the post-apocalyptic ruins of Dessa and a totally barmy finale combined with some fantastic metaphorical imagery.

I guess it's probably better if you just go and watch it for yourself. Shouldn't be too hard - that's what eBay's for.

The VHS appreciation marathon continues tomorrow!

Sci-Fi London; and visiting the BFI

And so, over a month later, I finally manage to finish off the rest of my London summary. What else did I do besides attend the Nightmare USA event?

Well for one thing, the Sci-Fi London film festival also happened to be on that weekend, so I guess I might be in danger of losing my geek status if I didn't at least attend something at this festival.

So on Sunday afternoon I took in a double bill of THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT and QUATERMASS 2, two classic British sci-fi movies based on the legendary Nigel Kneale BBC shows.

On the one hand, they don't really offer anything different to the countless American B-movies of the 40s and 50s, but I just get a kick out of seeing the Brits do it just as well - you know, back in the day when we could make movies that just about competed with the Americans at their own game.

Both films have dated as much as you'd expect them to, but at the same time there's an undeniable charm about them. Even if people are being killed by aliens, it all seems so quaint and innocent you can't help but love them. It's the kind of attraction that only old black and white sci-fi movies seem to possess.

That night I attended a screening of 28 WEEKS LATER, the US-made sequel to the hit British sci-fi horror 28 DAYS LATER. The screening was a few days in advance of its premiere, so maybe my writing about it here would have been quite interesting were it not for the fact that I've taken so long to get round to it that the film has been and gone from cinemas in that time.

Still, I should say at least that despite some outlandish contrivances to rival Spielberg's WAR OF THE WORLDS rehash, it was a lot of fun. The film may not have been shot on video this time, as Danny Boyle's original was, but it does its best to recapture the mood with the same theme music and a hyperactive visual approach that isn't a million miles away from the energetic action of the original.

It should also be said that the scenes of deserted or overrun London were very well realised (albeit not matched by a knowledge of London geography, causing my London-based co-viewers to laugh out loud at some of it). That said, the most bizarre thing about watching this film was that I was watching it in London. Many of the deserted streets I was watching on the screen I'd actually walked through on my way to the cinema. Weird feeling.

That was all I managed at Sci-Fi London, but I still managed to squeeze in more films courtesy of the British Film Institute.

ROVING MARS 2D was a gripping look at man's attempts to study the red planet; ROAR: LIONS OF THE KALAHARI was a 3-D movie that observes the life and tribulations of a pack of lions living in the middle of an African desert plain; both were seen and enjoyed by me on a trip to the BFI's IMAX cinema.

Also at the BFI, I checked out the new Mediatheque facility, a development that must surely mark a major step forward in the quest to make the archive available to all.

The Mediatheque, for those who don't know, is a new facility at the new-look BFI that contains several monitors with access to an ever-increasing sample of material from the BFI's archive, with new material (often in themed packages) being added every month. And it's free.

The system is not without problems - evidently it's still being broken in and is experiencing some technical difficulties - but it's a treasure trove for experts and casual viewers alike. I watched THE FUGITIVE FUTURIST, a short silent film from the early days of cinema that used trick photography to show what London might look like in the future; I also watched an old BBC documentary about the slave trade.

Britain has such a wealth of quality TV in its archive - from the days before 99% of TV became unwatchable tosh aimed at idiots - and this is a fantastic way to introduce new viewers to it; to remind them what TV is capable of and that there is more to this medium than people sitting in a room insulting each other and being humiliated while viewers phone in to vote on stuff. In fact, aside from grabbing new viewers, it's also a great way to catch that programme you remember that you really want to see again but hasn't ever been repeated or released on video or DVD. For example, you can dip into the archives of the BBC's critically acclaimed PLAY FOR TODAY slot; or check out Paul Greengrass's stunning BLOODY SUNDAY, a film that is now out of print on UK DVD. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

In addition to the IMAX and the Mediatheque (not to mention a little trip to the BFI shop) I did manage to squeeze in one screening at the BFI's National Film Theatre.

That screening was DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. I confess I've never seen this three-hour epic, but if you're going to see it for the first time, it should really be in the cinema. It's a love story on an epic scale, with every aspect of production carved in perfect detail. The cast are all stellar, but particularly Omar Sharif and Julie Christie. Then again, if the film had been utter garbage, I'd still have been happy to watch Julie Christie for three hours. But I do think she's a great actress all the same.

So now I guess I need to go back to writing about regular cinema and home viewing, as that's all my recent festival shenanigans over and done with until August, when the annual fun and frolics of the Edinburgh festivals kick off.

Who knows, maybe I'll even manage to write more than one blog entry one week as well.

The Freakpit salutes Bruno Mattei

If you're trapped in a post-nuke future overrun by rats, these are the guys to save you

I didn't quite get round to posting about this when it happened (but then, it's me, so when do I ever?) but Italian movie director Bruno Mattei died a couple of weeks ago.

If asked to name a legendary film director, I'd bet not too many people would pick Mattei. It's not like his name featured on any lists next to Huston, Ford, Leone, Spielberg, Wilder, etc. Not surprising really, given most of his output.

You see, Mattei was a hack. But as hacks go, he was possibly the greatest hack of all. His films were pure, unadulterated trash and yet they trash of the highest calibre.

Mattei often worked under a pseudonym - Vincent Dawn is probably his most well known, but one look at the IMDb reveals a significant list of them - and I'm not entirely sure whether it was to try and fool English speaking audiences (in the same way that many Italian films of the 60s and 70s featured cast and crew with American-sounding aliases) or if it was just to try and throw people off the sent that might have had it in for him.

For Bruno Mattei was more than just an ordinary hack. He was an entirely shameless one. His films were not just knock-offs of whatever was popular, they even stooped as far as using stock library footage or even stealing wholesale from existing films. One more recent example was his film CRUEL JAWS, which I wrote about last year after seeing it at the Horrorthon festival in Dublin. As its title suggests, it's one of those seemingly countless JAWS rip-offs, made long after you'd have thought the genre was dead. Not only was it a giant-shark-on-the-loose movie however, it actually recycled footage from the other movies and even stole some music from STAR WARS. It's difficult to make it any more blatant.

His magnum opus as far as stock footage goes must surely be HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD, which was released to many territories as the wonderfully-titled ZOMBIE CREEPING FLESH. This good old fashioned video nasty was a zany zombie film that took place primarily in a jungle, thus allowing Mattei to squeeze in huge amounts of nature footage and film of jungle tribes. Of course, he made sure that he integrated it in such a way that it was being observed by a topless woman jogging along the road, but that's Mattei for you.

ZOMBI 3, another of Mattei's films, was billed as a sequel to Lucio Fulci's ZOMBI, aka ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS. It was actually partially the work of Fulci (who gets the credit on the film) but Mattei ended up playing a significant part. Once again, the film offers all manner of crazy undead-related antics that just make you stare in disbelief at the screen.

He did turn his hand to plenty of other exploitation genres in his career. THE OTHER HELL was his madcap chicken-murdering entry into the nunsploitation genre - nuns behaving badly, if you will - and he couldn't very well leave the early 80s Italian post-apocalyptic genre alone either. Thus we got RATS: NIGHT OF TERROR, in which an Earth ravaged by nuclear war is overrun by rats. This film is available in both the US and the UK on DVD and I urge all trash movie fans to check it out. Not just because I love the genre or because it's Mattei at his insane best, but primarily because the ending is one of the most gobsmacking moments of ludicrous spectacle ever committed to celluloid. It's certainly one of my faves.

Even in the latter years of his life, Mattei couldn't avoid churning out more straight-to-DVD cheapo flicks from genres long thought to be dead. Cannibals, zombies, women-in-prison... it reads like a list of popular Italian exploitation genres of the 70s but no, it's a summary of Mattei's last few movies.

I'm going to guess that you won't be seeing a special Bruno Mattei tribute montage at next year's Oscars - particularly since it would be made up of several pieces of footage that he probably stole from others - but within the realms of cult cinema his status as legend is secure. His films were trash and he was a indeed a shameless hack. But movies will be slightly saner and a lot less fun in his absence.

NIGHT OF THE SEAGULLS (1976)

In the final installment of the BLIND DEAD series, the action returns to dry land, meaning (YES!) more zombies on horses.

NIGHT OF THE SEAGULLS is a rehash of everything that's gone before but in doing so it returns the film to its roots and serves up plenty of what made it so enjoyable to begin with.

The plot, such as it is this time, concerns a doctor and his wife who move to a small seaside village where it just so happens that every seven years they sacrifice seven virgins in order to appease those nasty knights. And wouldn't you know it, just as sure as I always manage to arrive at the station in the morning just as my train is departing, so these poor folks have arrived just as the latest round of murders is hitting its stride.

Naturally, being a fine pair of horror cliches, er, sorry, I mean a fine pair of upstanding citizens, the couple do their best to figure out what's going on and save the next poor sacrificial girl. This of course upsets the locals, meaning we now have angry locals and horse-riding zombies after them. Some mornings you just wish you'd never got out of bed.

Although it a mish-mash of previously used plot elements (including another disfigured outcast picked on by the locals) and the ending is a bit contrived, it delivers everything you expect and provides a far more fitting conclusion to the series than GHOST GALLEON would have done. It still can't quite match the first two films, but at least it has slow-motion horse-riding zombies, and there's nothing cooler than that in the history of cinema. Well, except maybe that scene in ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS where a semi-naked woman watches in terror while a zombie wrestles a shark. They don't make them like that anymore. With good reason, the cynics might say.

That concludes my look at these wonderful films. If you've made it all the way through this series of blog entries then you probably either already know these films or else you're just one of my colleagues from work who only reads this crap to humour me.

If however you're a casual horror fan who was thinking about investigating these films then I urge you to do so, as they can be picked up pretty cheaply (the set is currently retailing for £23 at play.com as I type this).

A word of warning for the purists though - aside from the UK set being missing a couple of features that are in the US box set, the BBFC demanded several seconds of cuts to the first film for its UK release, the objection being to one particular scene in which one of the nastier characters forces himself on a woman. You can argue about whether the BBFC are right to make these cuts (they're not) but then again you can also argue about whether such a scene was required in the first place (equally doubtful). But at the end of the day it's only a few seconds and it's still a bargain buy for a bunch of horse-riding zombies.

Oh yeah, did I mention the horse-riding zombies at all?

THE GHOST GALLEON (1975)

THE GHOST GALLEON is probably the weakest of the three BLIND DEAD films (if you haven't read about the other films, check my previous blog entries first!), a fact which can be largely attributed to the absence of many of the factors that made the first two so good.

The plot involves some kind of incomprehensible nonsense about a fashion shoot, but all you need to know is that it ends up with a couple of swimsuit models and a few other folk on an abandoned galleon in the middle of the ocean... a galleon that only appears in a thick fog that weather stations can't pick up. And did I mention it contains the corpses of a certain nasty group of Templar knights?

It sounds like the perfect recipe for more spooky goings on, leaving aside the fact that the previous films have been largely ignored again, but it's let down by a number of factors.

Firstly, the setting is too claustrophobic (which sounds ironic for a horror film) - the sight of a courtyard full of these (excellent) zombies in RETURN OF THE EVIL DEAD or the sight of them strutting across the field on horseback in the original movie were far more impressive sights than having a bunch of them squeezed into a tiny ship.

There's also the fact that the galleon is so obviously a model that the long shots of the ship in the fog are just not as effective as they could be, which is a shame as the set-up, as mentioned above, sounds perfect for a spooky, atmospheric horror.

The characters are all one-dimensional half-wits too, which doesn't help, but I think that the biggest gripe I have is that because they're on a ship that means - yep, you've guessed it - they don't have their horses! Damn it, that's why they're so cool! Zombies! On horses!

There are still plenty of shocks and it's a fun little time-waster but it's a bit of a let down when compared to the previous two films in the series. If you're going to have zombies at sea, then you should at least include a cameo appearance by the decaying, waterlogged corpse of Glenn Miller, coming back from the dead to lead an undead orchestra in a rousing performance of "Moonlight Serenade"... before eating someone, obviously. Or maybe it's just me.

To be concluded...

RETURN OF THE EVIL DEAD (1973)

Yes, I am still talking about Spanish zombie films. With that aside, let's continue...

The first of the BLIND DEAD sequels, RETURN OF THE EVIL DEAD is probably also the best of the sequels too. It's not quite in the same league as the original but uses many of the same tricks to maintain the creepy atmosphere. Well, when I say the same tricks, it's actually slightly more than that - the film could just as easily have been entitled RETURN OF THE SAME ZOMBIE-ON-HORSES FOOTAGE WE USED IN THE FIRST FILM. Thankfully they chose not to go with this alternate title though - it would have looked rubbish on the posters.

The story is very much a retread of the first film with only minor differences (largely ignoring whatever the aftermath of the first film's ending would have been). On the anniversary of the knights' execution, they obviously decide to return to the land of the living, with a little help from the disfigured village idiot, and (in slow motion, of course) exact their revenge on the village.

The usual violence and sleaze are in abundance, as is the aforementioned reused footage, and the story settles into a simple siege tale of the few remaining villagers left trapped in the church while our old Templar chums gang up outside. What's fun to watch is the way the characters screw each other over in an attempt to save their own skin, culminating in a superb piece of bad taste pantomime villainy from Fernando Sancho, a nasty piece of work who decides to try and sacrifice a little girl in order to make his own escape!

Anyone who liked the first is liable to like the second film, containing as it does much of the same ingredients. The chief difference in tone this time is the ending, which comes off as a slightly more upbeat take on the ending of THE BIRDS rather than the cynical twist of the first movie.

Ultimately though it's all about nasty zombies in cloaks riding horses in slow motion. Have I mentioned how cool they are?

To be continued...

TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD (1971)

If you read the start of yesterday's blog entry and didn't like the sound of it, I wouldn't bother with today's either. If you read yesterday's and were interested, welcome back. If you didn't read yesterday's but are reading today's, you'll be delighted/bored [delete as applicable] to know that I'm talking about zombie films again. Read yesterday's and it'll all make sense.

TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD kicks off De Ossorio's series in style. There is much depravity, gruesome death and other such unwholesome activity but what makes the film (and, indeed, the sequels) is the tone of the film. It's an exercise in mood and atmosphere that belies the meagre budget to create something that is just plain creepy.

The story begins when two lesbians fall out over a man. Okay, so that's not a major plot point, but it's a sentence I've always wanted to write. Anyway, woman number one runs off in the huff, where she discovers the ruins of an old village and decides to stay there. Naturally she absolutely refuses to spend the night sleeping alone, semi-naked, near a graveyard.

Nah, just kidding, this is classic exploitation horror so she does exactly that. Wouldn't you just know it though, she's only gone and picked the exact night the living dead are about to rise up from their tombs. Honestly, if I had a pound for every time that's happened to me on holiday...

Naturally, her lady friend and the man who came between them come searching for her and gradually twig as to what is going on. Cue lots of running away, screaming, fighting and a bit of flesh-munching. Oh, those wacky undead Templars.

But back to that stuff about the spooky atmosphere. Of all the zombies ever committed to film, these guys should be the least terrifying - not only are they even slower than normal zombies, but they're blind too, and have to track down their prey using their sense of hearing instead. However, their lack of pace is more than made up for by the fact that they happen to ride undead horses! Yes!

If I was a zombie, this would definitely be my chosen form of transport. Then again, in retrospect, since these zombies are all hundreds of years old you'd think they must all qualify for a bus pass. Still, having tried using late night bus services, I don't blame them for opting for the zombie-horse option - at least there's no risk of having some drunken bint spew on you while you're trying to eat your McTemplar Burger or whatever.

On paper, there's nothing unusual about the plot of this film whatsoever - but those zombies are just unspeakably cool in both look and execution (they ride horseback, in slow motion, the soundtrack is augmented with some spooky echo effects, and they're usually accompanied by some creepy religious chanting). They're what really make the film. (Note: there are some scenes that sensitive viewers may not want to watch, but the chances are if you've made it this far you're probably not bothered)

The ending of the film is not entirely unpredictable but no less effective for it, and while I've no idea if De Ossorio deliberately ends the movie with a few still photos accompanied by the soundtrack for artistic reasons, if he just made an arse of it or if he ran out of money, but whatever his reasons it works perfectly.

Join me tomorrow for a look at the first of the sequels...

A shameless and very tenuous "Da Vinci Code" tie-in

I don't go in for trends - I've never read a Harry Potter book, nearly every band I like stopped recording before I was born, my favourite films often elicit nothing but looks of bewilderment, I don't own an iPod.. I could go on, but I won't. I was just making it clear what kind of person I am so that it comes as no surprise to you when I say I've never read "The Da Vinci Code", even though there are undiscovered tribes living by the banks of the Amazon who've probably heard all about it by now.

The popularity of this book has now reached fever pitch - religious folks going mental about it, people suing the author, and a major Hollywood film is to be released shortly. So it's at this point that I saw the perfect opportunity to jump on the band wagon and write a blog that shamelessly cashes in on the hype.

You see, I'm acually talking about zombies again. If that's not your bag, you may wish to ignore today's entry. If it is your bag, then you could probably still ignore it as I'm likely to be preaching to the converted.

And the connection to "The Da Vinci Code"? Well, someone told me that the Templar Knights were involved in the storyline somewhere. And that's all the excuse I needed to write about my recent viewing.

The other night I sat and watched a marathon session of zombie magic. Well, four films to be precise. Yes, I know you find it hard to believe that I found time in my hectic social schedule for such an activity but for a change I thought "sod it". I promptly texted Keira and Britney explaining that our regular date was off because just this once I'd like to sit and watch some films instead. (Yes, this is of course a lot of facetious nonsense - I can assure you I have never sent a text message.)

The Americans have the DEAD movies of George Romero; the Italians have the classics of Lucio Fulci (ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS, THE BEYOND, etc.); but this week it was the turn of Spain's premier contribution to the zombie genre to get thrown into the Freakpit's DVD player. The series in question, for those of you who have no idea and yet somehow were interested enough to make it this far, is Amando De Ossorio's BLIND DEAD series, a four-film opus churned out in Spain in the 1970s. If you want to put that in some kind of zombie-related perspective, they were made after NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD but before DAWN OF THE DEAD. Just so you know.

A brief outline of the story (it's a zombie film, it's not like anything other than brief is required) follows...

Hundreds of years ago, a group of Templars (you see, it's related!) discovered the secret of eternal life. Unfortunately that secret involved some rather unnerving sacrificial activity - you know the sort, sacrificing women, eating flesh, drinking blood, etc. A bit like a night out in Glasgow but with marginally less killing. This, on top of the fact that they already behave like a bunch of drunken numpties, proves to be too much for the locals in the Spanish countryside village where the knights are lording it.

And so the knights are rounded up and killed, in a good old fashioned torture kind of way, like only a good zombie movie can do. Of course, just to make sure that they can't find their way back from hell to menace folks once more, the villagers decide to burn the knights' eyes out too. Ouch. I felt much the same after watching SPICEWORLD to be honest.

So anyway, on to the first movie.

Actually, no, I've written enough already. I think I'll turn it into a week-long marathon blog entry just to keep you in suspense. Tune in tomorrow when I'll tell you all about the first entry in the series...

Arthouse zombies and the pensions crisis

Britain, as you may have heard in the news recently, is facing a pensions crisis (and we're certainly not alone). The main reason for this is that with people living longer now, we have far too many people of retirement age who need to be supported by the (not enough) people who are working. Sweeping legislation is due in April (and probably for a good while after that too), and a kind of "National Pensions Day" was held in the UK recently (it was Saturday just passed - what do you mean you missed it?) so that people could debate the problem.

"Talking about pensions?" you all cry. But wait, stay with me, I've not gone mental. I am still going to talk movies. Here's why.

Just the other day I went to see a film entitled LES REVENANTS (it's been given the English title THEY CAME BACK), which is currently touring the country as part of the Renault French Film Festival. It's an excellent and intriguing film in which one day, for no apparent reason, every person who has died in the last ten years suddenly returns to the land of the living.

The film works in a lot of ways - it's an emotional drama about the effects of people being reunited with long dead loved ones; it's a suspenseful thriller that poses an interesting "what if?" question; it's a moody science fiction piece; it's even what I might very loosely term an "arthouse zombie movie". (Have I just coined a new term there? I hope so.)

You see, people are returning from the dead, making life rather difficult for the already living. Being an "arthouse zombie movie" there are some differences between this and the likes of ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS though. Walking corpses with decaying flesh are replaced by miserable looking French people philosophising; and any potential for eating of raw flesh has been replaced by scenes of earnest-looking people staring at each other a lot. But while faced with such staples of the stereotypical arthouse flick, you can't look at the slow-witted returnees shuffling in slow-motion along the street in their packs without thinking of films like DAWN OF THE DEAD (the original obviously - the zombies were a bit faster in the remake) and ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS. So you see, it's both arthouse and zombie movie. Kind of.

But there's one other side to it too.

Faced with the problem of how you get this many people back into employment, one person points out that thankfully it's not an issue since most of them (the majority of the returning dead being over 65) are retired anyway. But of course one smart cookie has their finger on the pulse and points out that this will have a huge detrimental impact on pensions...

So not only is it all of the above things, it's also topical and relevant to today's big issues. And inspired by this thought, I've done a bit of research during my day job (because, incredibly, I'm not being paid to haver a load of pish about weird movies) and have turned up a rather worrying discovery.

Did you know that throughout all the legislation, the new proposals and the countless debates on the subject, not one solitary person or political party has put forward a single suggestion as to how the new pension reforms will cope in the event of seventy million people suddenly returning from the dead?

When our politicians show such an unforgivable lack of foresight, it's hardly surprising that we're facing a crisis.

The horror! The horror!

I'm talking horror again. Yesterday I spent much of the day at the Glasgow Film Theatre where the Glasgow Film Festival (in association with horror festivals Frightfest and Dead by Dawn) were laying on a day of new horror films. The day opened with a double bill of Korean horror in the shape of THE RED SHOES and OUIJA BOARD.

THE RED SHOES is an oddity. Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale had already been the basis for the rather lovely film by Michael Powell in the 1940s. It seems bizarre that the same tale that inspired such a great British romance could also inspire a modern Korean horror, but it has, so there you go. A woman finds a pair of lovely red shoes which turn out to have mystical properties and weird things start happening. This latest effort plays out like a mixture of the original story and the horror film RING, but with more legs being chopped off.

OUIJA BOARD is a more straightforward ghost story in which a group of school girls try to use a ouija board to get revenge on the school bullies. Funnily enough, weird things begin to happen, most notably a spate of shool girls putting plastic bags over their heads and setting fire to them for no apparent reason. Strange way to die, but it does lead to one of the few moments of genuine chills in the film, as a school room full of kids watch helplessly from a window as a girl in the playground sets herself on fire.

There are two major details that both films share, and neither is a positive one. The first is that both films go on far too long - THE RED SHOES seems to reach a logical conclusion but somehow finds another half hour of meandering nonsense to lay on top of it; OUIJA BOARD on the other hand just keeps piling on the weird happenings until what was a reasonably effective ghost story is a confused mess.

The other detail is that since they're both Korean horror films they both feature white-dressed, pasty-faced girls with long dark hair obscuring their face. I know it's a cultural thing but come on, surely not all weird apparitions can look like this? It's come to a point where a man with a sheet over his head would actually be a refreshing change.

Also served up on the day was REEKER, a low budget American affair that is due to hit UK cinemas in June. It sees a group of youngsters driving across the desert on their way to an outdoor party only for them to run into trouble with a strange monster intent on picking them all off one by one. There is a healthy dose of gore (joy!) and a funny vein of very black humour running throughout that means even when the "twist" ending arrives and turns out to be a bit transparent (it is signposted very early in the film and probably isn't much of a twist to anyone who ever saw an Amicus horror film from the 70s) you've at least had a lot of fun getting to it. It also has the best opening five minutes of any film I've seen this year, though guaranteed not to be as popular with animal lovers.

WILD COUNTRY opens in UK cinemas this week after a lengthy tour of festivals across the world. A Scottish movie about teenage backpackers being attacked in the hills, this offers nothing in the way of originality and the monsters are a little cheap looking but the film is funny, unashamedly Scottish and at less than an hour and a half never outstays its welcome. It helps that it has a likable cast too, including SWEET SIXTEEN's Martin Compston and the Oscar-winner Peter Capaldi.

The cast and crew were all in attendance for what was the first screening in Scotland - it made for an interesting sight since half the crowd were here for the event and the other half were folks like me who were there for the horror marathon. The upshot was a crowd that was split between people in tuxedos and posh dresses and guys in hoodies and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD t-shirts. One day all premieres will be like this.

Like REEKER, it's got some great gore effects and often amuses. You also have to applaud it just for being a Scottish horror film. We seem to be against the idea of doing genre cinema in Scotland (Richard Jobson's futuristic martial arts movie THE PURIFIERS is the only other one that springs to mind) so it's nice to see something like this. It should be noted though that the film does begin with an unmarried teenage mother giving up her unwanted baby for adoption - the number one rule of Scottish cinema is, after all, that nobody is allowed to have a happy and contented life.

The night finished with a showing of BOY EATS GIRL, a horror film from the Emerald Isle. When her young lad is accidentally killed, a mother uses the power of voodoo to resurrect him but makes a slight cock-up which results in him coming back to life with an unfortunate thirst for human flesh. Irish singing starlet Samantha Mumba is the closest thing to a big name in this latest Irish zombie film (yes, there is actually more than one) but like its Celtic cousin WILD COUNTRY, the cast are all likable enough, nobody takes it too seriously and once again there is a healthy balance between laughs and dismemberment.

All in all a day well spent. But it didn't quite end there, because I still had to get back to the 24-hour car park to retrieve my car for the journey home. So forget about the spooky films I've just watched - have you ever walked the streets of Glasgow at 1am? Now that's what I call scary.