Red Mist

Here's another review rescued from the depths of the Deep Web... originally published by Retro Slashers on 22 July 2009.

 

I never thought I’d live long enough to see a remake of Aenigma – Lucio Fulci’s blending of Carrie and Patrick, which featured killer snails and death by Tom Cruise poster. But that’s essentially what the recent British horror Red Mist (known as Freakdog in the US) is, albeit one that’s short on molluscs and big on Jason Goes to Hell-style body-hopping.

 

The premise is simple: What would happen if you inadvertently sent a mentally retarded hospital janitor into a coma when a hastily organized prank designed as retaliation for a blackmail plot went wrong, only to discover that secretly injecting him with an untested wonder-drug gave him the ability not only to astral-project into the bodies of your friends, but also to stalk and kill your friends in a variety of gruesome ways while seeking misguided revenge for a crime you weren’t entirely responsible for in the first place?

  

Yes, we’ve all been there, and in Red Mist it’s the turn of junior doctor, Catherine, played by highly likeable Katherine Heigl-a-like, Arielle Kebbel, who’s since gone on to star in the uninvited remake of A Tale of Two Sisters (itself called The Uninvited, aptly enough). Since it’s not until the halfway point that Catherine actually gets handy with the hypodermic, it’s a bit of a wait before the horror kicks into high gear but, with car-door head-slamming, forced acid-drinking and naked stomach-slicing in the middle of a busy nightclub, it’s certainly worth it.

 

What’s less attractive is the last-act lull, which puts Catherine in a very reactive (as opposed to proactive) position and, in these post-Sidney Prescott days, means she doesn’t quite cut it as a top final girl. That’s not to say the movie peters out, though; in fact, it all ends quite satisfyingly – especially in comparison to director Paddy Breathnach’s previous horror effort, the hallucination-themed Shrooms, which didn’t so much peter out as flatline during an epileptic fit of meaningless, are-they-tripping-or-not jump scenes.

 

Breathnach is Irish, and you’ll remember I described Red Mist above as a British film, which it is despite being set in America. With a couple of exceptions, it appears the cast is a mixture of English, Irish and Scottish actors, all valiantly attempting American accents with differing degrees of success. The movie, too, is a tag-team of styles and subgenres, mixing the morbid medical school hijinks of Pathology and Unrest with torture scenes, guilty drama, and supernatural slashing. It’s as the latter it delivers most wholeheartedly, however. That, and as a gory Aenigma variation.

Rating: 2/5

Bloodbath at the House of Death

If you’ve ever wanted to see Vincent Price bang his hand on an axe-head and shout “Oh shit!” then this British horror spoof is the movie for you. Price appears as “The Sinister Man”, parodying his roles in various Roger Corman films, and is for a while the best thing about Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984), until his unceremonious exit about halfway through. Amongst the rest of the cast – most of whom play scientists and other experts investigating the titular mansion – Pamela Stephenson (Not the Nine O’Clock News) probably comes off best, despite enduring copious fart gags, Kenny Everett’s dubious attempts at physical comedy, and being stripped naked by an invisible force à la The Entity.

Yes, the standard of jokes in Bloodbath is about on a par with The Kenny Everett Television Show, meaning that you’ll likely either love it or hate it depending on your taste for innuendo-strewn, frequently incoherent grossness. If anything, however, the freedom to push the gore and nudity to the limit results in a lazier approach, meaning that the writers are too often content to rely on the aforementioned fart gags, while anything approaching a clever spoof of horror clichés falls by the wayside.

Bloodbath works best through a haze of nostalgia, recalling a time in British history when increasing permissiveness on TV collided head-on with escalating concerns over violent “video nasties” – and this feels like the bloody aftermath. Call an ambulance... Or, better still, a coroner.

Rating: 1/5

It!

It’s no secret that my goal in life is to watch every movie Roddy McDowall ever made. But did you also know that my other goal in life is to watch every giant killer statue movie ever made? Well, it is. And I made this life-altering decision about two minutes after I watched the 1966 Brit flick It! – which not only stars Roddy McDowall but also features a giant killer statue. Talk about everything clicking into place!



You want to see the Rodster overacting like he’s never overacted before? Watch It! You want to see giant killer statues punching holes in London landmarks? Again, watch It! In fact, we could all save a lot of time if you just switched off your computer right now and went and watched It! – but I understand you come here for in-depth critical analysis and film theory, so let’s plough on.

Roddy plays Arthur Pimm, a curator’s assistant who lives at home with his elderly mother. And, when I say “elderly,” I mean old... Cobwebby old. Yes, Mrs Pimm is actually a rotting corpse sitting in a rocking chair in her son’s bedroom. (I know... where have I seen this idea before, right? It’s on the tip of my tongue...) Anyway, Pimm talks to her, dresses her, and carries her around the house, but mostly she just sits there rocking quietly in her chair. Quite how she manages to rock is never actually explained. She is, after all, dead. But rock she does, and very spooky it is too, thankyouverymuch.

One evening sometime in Scene 2, Pimm is called out to the museum’s storage warehouse, the scene of a devastating fire that’s destroyed almost everything the museum owns. Oh, except for a large, scowling stone figure, which may – or may not – be a giant killer statue. I’m giving nothing away. Pimm gives it the benefit of the doubt but, when his boss gets an unseen whack to the back of the head whilst standing near the statue, things aren’t really going in its favour. Particularly when the curator dies as a result.

Was it the statue that delivered the fatal blow? All we know is that, where once its arms were in an extended position, one of them now seems to be pointing downward, and Roddy does to great lengths to illustrate this using an umbrella and a range of puzzled facial expressions. I tell you: you don’t know what acting is until you’ve seen someone using a brolly to mime the motions of a giant killer statue.

Let’s cut to the chase, anyway, because It! doesn’t keep you guessing for long. It’s a Frankenstein story at heart and the statue is actually a golem, which is to say it’s an ancient, folkloric monster of unlimited strength, compelled to do the bidding of its master. In the right hands, it could be the most lethal WMD the world has ever seen. In Mr Pimm’s hands, it helps steal a few bracelets and smack anyone round the head who stands between him and the job of head curator.

Around about this point, I’d love to provide you with a screen grab of the golem but, since I watched It! on TV, I can’t do my usual high-tech wizardry – and there don’t even seem to be any good pictures online, either. But I will say it’s quite an effective-looking monster and I’m sure would’ve caused me a nightmare or two when I was younger. Oh, hang on, here’s a likeness from an old print ad... Prepare to shudder!



Golems aside, I had to marvel at Pimm’s other secret weapon: his marvellous filing cabinet. Whenever he needs anything (or, alternatively, needs to hide anything) it’s straight into the top drawer and the problem’s solved. It’s so good, in fact, and so devastatingly handy, I actually began to wonder if that filing cabinet was really the “It!” of the title. Again, a screen grab would be wonderful here, but you’ll just have to make do with this randomly-sourced image... Prepare to marvel!



Sheesh! Look at that thing go! Anyway, I don’t want to spoil the rest of the film for you but I can’t not mention that the last twenty minutes of It! are so insane, they make the build-up look like a serious documentary about dangerous stonemasonry. There’s motorbike stunts, old ladies being torched, and the dropping of a nuclear bomb somewhere in the Home Counties. Those sweet, sweet 1960s!

Wheel out your Wondrous Filing Cabinet of Wonder and file under “It!’s awesome!”

Rating: 3/5

Mum & Dad

Well, really! Who wants to see knitting needles going into places where they definitely shouldn’t? Or chunks of human flesh used as masturbatory aids? And Christmas decorations made from mutilated corpses?! Not me! BAN THIS SICK FILTH, I say... I’ve had enough!

Hee! Gotcha. Although Mum & Dad quite obviously goes out of its way to disgust you with its depravities, it’s actually nice to see a torture-porn-type flick that’s clearly aimed at seasoned horror fans, as opposed to shock-me-once teenage moviegoers. It’s also pretty well acted, creepily convincing, and astonishingly good-looking considering its £100,000 budget.

Oh, and the BBC stumped up some of the money to make it, so it practically counts as Public Service Broadcasting... Just call yourself a responsible adult.

At the outset, Mum & Dad reminded me a bit of 2004’s London Underground chiller Creep, although it’s nothing like it, really. The reason I thought that was because it also has a foreign-girl-in-London lead – in this case, Lena (Olga Fedori), a young Polish woman working as a cleaner at Heathrow Airport. Where Creep pitted its heroine against a sort of over-the-top monster-human in a gothic setting, however, Mum & Dad takes Lena into what seems like a very ordinary suburban home. Of course, it’s anything but... The run-down house beside the airport, which Lena ends up in when she misses her last bus one night, actually has more in common with the home of Fred and Rosemary West.

In fact, it’s home to two “children”, Birdie and Elbie, who spend their days ransacking lost luggage for electrical items to sell at the car boot. Then there’s their “Dad” (Perry Benson), who wears a blood-soaked vest and does dubious things in a dark room with a dirty hammer, and finally “Mum” (Dido Miles) who prefers a scalpel. It’s the kind of place you’d run screaming from. And Lena would have probably done just that if she hadn’t already been injected with tranquilizer and tied to a filthy bed. It seems the family are looking for a new daughter...

Ohhh, Mum & Dad is so sick! I’ve often wondered if you could make a decent horror film set mainly in one location, with just a small number of characters and some nasty ideas. Well, you can, and here’s the proof. It’s sort of like The Royle Family gone hideously wrong: not much more than a few characters sitting around in a dingy house – but here the TV shows hardcore porn, you can’t see the wallpaper for blood, and the suspense as Lena tries to escape is stifling.

What really works is the disturbingly short journey Lena takes from dull routine to incomprehensible terror. Mum & Dad pulls the strange trick of not letting you see much of the exterior of its house of horror, but this only serves to strengthen the point that it could almost be next-door to yours. Now, are you sure you need that cup of sugar?

TV licence fee revenue well spent.

Rating: 3/5

Crooked House

“The only way to improve that property, sir, is to raze it to the ground and sow the land with salt!”


Here’s something that probably would’ve made my Top Horror of 2008 list if I’d watched it in time; but the made-for-TV Crooked House was only screened during Christmas week, by which time I was stranded at Chicago airport sipping margaritas in Las Vegas... Dammit, BBC, you’re never going to make it onto end-of-year lists if you carry on like that!

Remember those bloody brilliant horror anthologies that Amicus churned out in the 70s, like Vault of Horror and Tales from the Crypt? Well, Crooked House is a modern take on the subgenre, written by Mark Gatiss of the creepy/funny TV series The League of Gentlemen. There’s two ways of enjoying Crooked’s spookiness: either in three 30-minute instalments (as it was originally screened over three nights on BBC Four) or as an omnibus TV-movie edition. And we all know that TV movies rule, so that’s how I decided to catch up with it.

Now, when I say “modern take”, I genuinely mean it’s something a bit new and original in style, as opposed to a straightforward pastiche of the Amicus approach (which the League of Gentlemen had already done – superbly – in their 2000 Christmas special). Without giving too much away, Crooked House actually ties its tales together in its third part in rather a neat way, sorta like Pulp Fiction but without all the coke and cameos. Anyway, Crooked House is much more than the sum of its parts. And, without sounding too crass, let’s take a look at its parts.

As with all anthology movies, you get your wraparound story – that’s the bread of the anthology sandwich or, to put it literally, the “wrap” that goes “around” the tasty filling. Here, it’s the story of high school History teacher Ben (Lee Ingleby), who’s popped into his local museum with a mysterious artefact dug up in his back garden. The curator (Mark Gatiss himself, sporting a convincing Scottish accent) believes it to be a doorknocker from the now demolished Geap Manor, an old house that “drew evil to it like a sponge draws in water” – or, to stick with our analogy, like a sandwich draws in water if you, say, drop it in the bath. Anyway, Ben wants to hear more – about the house’s history, that is, not the porous properties of sponge – which is lucky for us or it’d be a pretty boring film. Cue flashback!

Part One: The Wainscoting

Wainscoting, in case you’ve never lived in an English country manor, is wood panelling on an interior wall, and it’s at the centre of the horrors for Geap’s owner in 1786, Joseph Bloxham (Phillip Jackson). He’s having the place refurbished, after making his fortune on the back of some dubious business deals that haven’t gone down too well with the local townsfolk. Still, the place looks simply marvellous with its fancy new paintwork... If only those strange blotches would stop appearing on the walls, accompanied as they are by strange noises from behind the panelling. As it turns out, it’s all down to a nasty secret and some very poorly sourced building materials...

Part Two: Something Old

Another nasty secret lurks in the background of the second story, set in 1927, when heir to Geap Manor, Felix (Ian Hallard), is busy romancing the lovely Ruth. She’s a little lower on the social ladder than his family might be used to, but Felix thinks she scrubs up simply spiffingly. At a costume party held at the house, the couple announce their engagement – which doesn’t go down too well with some of the guests. But the only one Ruth’s really worried about is the mysterious, veiled bride she keeps glimpsing in the shadows. Everyone else is in high spirits, however, and it’s all fun and games. At least until the lights go out...

Part Three: The Knocker

Welcome back to the present, where Ben (remember him?) isn’t quite the heir to Geap Manor exactly, but it seems that his townhouse is built on the land where it once stood. This would explain how the old doorknocker turned up in his garden, although not the tortured expression on its twisted face. Perhaps it’s not the best idea to hang it on his front door, but that’s what Ben does. And soon comes a loud knocking in the middle of the night...

Following the pattern of the best anthologies, Crooked House uses its first story as a nice warm-up for the chills that follow, then gradually ramps up the fear towards a deliciously nasty pay-off. Thus, The Wainscoting is the least disturbing of the three tales but Gatiss fills it with period dialogue I just couldn’t get enough of, and the revelation when it comes unsettles like a comfortably creepy M.R. James tale.

Something Old is, simply put, a great ghost story. Economically written (there’s almost enough plot here for a full-length feature but it flits by), it relies on character to draw you in and, like the first part, is terrifically acted. It’s almost a disappointment when we segue into part three and leave its charmingly spooky world – or, at least, it would be if The Knocker didn’t immediately grip with its present-day mystery, leading to a chilling resolution that’s all the more effective because Gatiss allows you to work some of it out for yourself.

I won’t claim that Crooked House is the scariest ghost story of all time or anything but I spent most of it enjoying the all-too-rare feeling of tingles running up (and down!) my spine. And I didn’t even have my Prestigio Massage Chair switched on. The idea of period horror on a BBC Four budget may conjure up a few chills before you even get to the proper thrills, but everything about this worked for me, and I think it’s probably entirely down to Mark Gatiss’s devilishly intelligent writing and enviable understanding of the genre. I can only imagine what kind of amazing sandwiches he’d make if he opened up a deli.

Rating: 4/5

Hysteria

Flashback alert! We’re going deep, people, and I don’t mean the eighties. I don’t even mean the seventies... no, I mean the sixties! Turns out they actually had movies back then, although no CGI to make them look all realistic and everything. Anyway, today’s mind-bending review comes way back from the hazy, crazy days of 1965... Far out!

Come with me now as we drift back through the mists of time... *Cough!* (’Scuse the dry ice there.) Just imagine for a moment you’re not sitting in front of your plasma screen surfing the net, but instead reclining on a stylish, probably vulva-shaped sofa, lazily perusing the pages of your favourite Cahier du cinéma (that’s French for “snooty movie mag”). So pop off your iPod nano and nix that Nintendo DS – it won’t do you any good anyway because where we’re going it’s all black-and-white – and prepare to be sent into... Hysteria!

“Without a past, I have no future... How long can a man live in a void without going nuts?”

That’s the dilemma facing Chris Smith (Robert Webber), an American in London who’s lost his memory after a car crash on the deadly roads of rural Kent. Upon his release from hospital, Chris learns that someone has made a luxury penthouse available to him in the city. But just who is his mysterious benefactor? Why is the rest of the apartment building empty? And will you please save any further questions for the short Q&A session at the end?

The only clue to Chris’s identity is a photograph found at the scene of his accident, showing a beautiful but unknown woman. Asking around at a local photography studio, he learns that she was a model who was murdered six months ago. Not only that, but the crime took place in his own apartment block. Could her death be linked to the mysterious, arguing voices he hears emanating nightly from the empty apartment next door? Or has the accident left him with mental problems worse than mere amnesia? And, hang on... doesn’t the beautiful female driver who just passed him in the street look suspiciously like the supposedly dead girl?

Ah, questions, questions, and yet more questions. But don’t worry, this is 1965: David Lynch hasn’t been invented yet, and films still have to have proper endings that tie everything up sensibly. Of course, that doesn’t mean they have to be dull... although, to be perfectly honest, Hysteria does get just the tiniest bit dull once it’s established its mystery premise. Luckily, a flashback sequence at the 45-minute mark turns everything on its head and, from then on in, it’s a pretty gripping and suspenseful ride all the way to a triple-twist ending.

After the success of Psycho and Les Diaboliques, Britain’s Hammer Film Productions got in on the game with a string of psychological horror-thrillers of this sort. Most were written by Jimmy Sangster, who produced roughly one a year throughout the sixties, raiding the thesaurus to come up with such titles as Maniac (1963), Paranoiac (1963) and Nightmare (1964). It’s also arguable that these had a strong influence on the Italian giallo movement, and indeed most of Hysteria’s plot elements would resurface in many a classic giallo in the seventies. But, while Hysteria is a prime example of Hammer-produced psycho-thrills, it lacks the visual imagination and excesses that make its Italian cousins so memorable.

Still, it’s got groovy, spiralling opening credits, a touch of raciness, and a conclusion so neat I doubt any mystery fan could come away too disappointed. Any other questions?

Rating: 3/5

Twisted Nerve

Twisted Nerve, ladies and gentlemen... or, how did they have the NERVE in 1968 to make a film so TWISTED?

Actually, the title comes from an uncredited snatch of poetry quoted in the film that goes thusly: “No puppet master pulls the strings on high / A twisted nerve, a ganglion gone awry / Predestinates the sinner or the saint”. The notion is, of course, that one’s character and actions can all be traced back to one’s genetic makeup. That’s not a particularly controversial opinion in itself... unless, as here in Twisted Nerve: the Movie, it’s suggested that the mentally ill and their siblings are predestined to be psychopathic murderers.

The main character is Martin Durney (played by the baby-faced Hywel Bennet), a twenty-something university drop-out who’s doted upon by his mother but despised by his stepfather, who regards him as a useless layabout. His brother, who’s been safely packed off to an institution, is what the film calls a “mongol”, but whom we might describe today as a person with Down’s syndrome.

One day, while visiting a toy shop, Martin commits an act of shoplifting that alters his life in two ways. Firstly, he ends up being kicked out of the family mansion in London. Secondly, he meets Susan Harper (Hayley Mills), a guest house owner’s daughter with whom he becomes infatuated. So infatuated, in fact, that it’s not long before he shows up on her doorstep, posing as a mentally handicapped man left with nowhere else to stay by his holidaying father.

Hmm... None of this sounds as downright twisted as it comes across in the film. Try to think along the lines of The Talented Mr. Ripley (published a decade prior to the release of this film and likely an influence) which also features a main character who switches between identities to get what he wants. But then add in the fact that Martin exploits the sympathies of people genuinely concerned for the welfare of someone with learning difficulties, and you’re a little closer to understanding his unsettling motives.

Twisted Nerve builds a lot of suspense on its foundations of truths concealed and trouble brewing. And I mean a lot. Many reviewers seem to have found it tedious and slow, but there’s so much danger bubbling beneath the surface of every situation, every conversation, that I couldn’t look away. Granted, at nearly two hours, there’s a lot of conversation, but Roy Boulting and Leo Marks’s dialogue is dynamite ready to blow – multilayered, full of tension and acid wit.

And the unease is reflected in the sixties London setting too. It’s a fascinating time period, bristling with underlying tension between rigidly defined social classes, races, sexes, age groups – all drawn into conflict here, whether it’s the doctors who constantly refer to an Indian student as “the maharajah”, or the trouble Susan attracts simply because of her attractiveness.

I think Hitchcock would’ve enjoyed this immensely. He’d certainly poach two cast members – the excellent Billie Whitelaw and Barry Foster – for his similar but even more gruelling and repugnant London-set suspenser, Frenzy, a few years later. As in Frenzy, it’s not long in Twisted Nerve before someone winds up dead but, where Hitchcock achieved a morbid, almost casual sense of horror, everything’s a little more shock-horror here. But, when you’ve got the shocks and you’ve got the horror, who’s complaining?

Rating: 4/5

I’m the Girl He Wants to Kill

Confession time: Long, long before Anchorwoman In Peril! existed (i.e. sometime last month) I flirted, floozied and experimented with running a short-lived blog called Buon Giallo, all about Italian horror. What can I say? I was young... I didn’t know what I was doing... I didn’t inhale... I also didn’t keep the blog going for very long. I guess my heart just wasn’t in it. Anyway, one of the films I talked about was actually an episode of the 70s British TV series, Thriller. It’s a great episode deserving of greater recognition – and, now that the whole series of Thriller is available on DVD, perhaps it’ll be discovered by a new generation of horror fans. If so, they’ll find a gripping thriller featuring a classic final girl years before the slasher cycle kicked into full swing. In this hope, I hereby reprint my review of I’m the Girl He Wants to Kill. (How’s that for getting away with only one paragraph of new material for today’s entry? ... Score!)

In 1973, Dario Argento presented the TV series Door Into Darkness on Italian TV, comprising four, hour-long stories of murder and suspense modelled on the giallo films that had brought him to prominence. Over here in the UK, screenwriter Brian Clemens had envisaged a similar show called Thriller, of which I’m the Girl He Wants to Kill is a particularly giallo-like episode from the third series, originally broadcast in 1974. [See how I tied it all in to Italian horror for Buon Giallo? Clever, no?]

Token American Julie Sommars stars as Ann Rogers, a hardworking employee at Parker Industries, based in a London high-rise. What this company actually does is only vaguely defined, but it must take up a lot of time because Ann is always finding herself working late on things like “the Jamaican project”. Arriving home to her flat one evening, Ann passes a mysterious man in the hallway and, in a superbly spooky scene, discovers her neighbour’s dead body on the upstairs landing. She provides a description of the killer to the police – who believe him to be responsible for several other murders in the area – but time passes and the culprit remains at large.

One good thing comes out of Ann’s visit to the cop shop, however: she bags herself Detective Sergeant Tanner (Tony Selby), a prime slab of afro-haired 70s studliness, and useful boyfriend to have around if it looks like you might be stalked by any deranged psychos in the near-future. Of course, this is exactly what happens to Ann; after spotting the killer in a local jewellery shop one lunch hour, she’s chased back to her office and barely makes it back to safety. A quick phone call to Tanner assures her that her pursuer has been apprehended and, ever the diligent worker, Ann carries on with her day’s work until night falls and she’s the only one left in the building. Except, that is, for a familiar figure lurking in the lobby below, knife in hand and ready to strike...

I haven’t seen any other episodes of Thriller but, if I’m the Girl He Wants to Kill is anything to go by, it looks like I’ve missed a treat. Lean, taut and terrifically suspenseful, the episode is tele-terror at its best. Its premise is played out at just the right length to ensure we get to know and care about the characters, all the while taking care to plant ominous pointers to the trouble Ann will encounter later on – from electrically-locking doors, to windows sealed “for your comfort”.

The remainder of the story constitutes a harrowing battle of wits between killer and super-secretary – who, while resourceful, is never played as unrealistically as she might be in this post-Buffy the Vampire Slayer age of martial arts-trained female empowerment. Lifts and telephone switchboards become instruments of tortuous tension as Ann’s familiar workplace becomes a deadly trap. There’s even a moment reminiscent of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, in which characters find themselves trapped between two sets of glass doors. Ann learns to turn the tools of her trade against her attacker... while he learns that it pays not to be overweight if you’re a psychopath intent on chasing your victim up to the twelfth floor and back.

Now available on DVD as part of the complete Thriller series box set, I’m the Girl He Wants to Kill also includes an extended opening sequence shot for American TV, featuring – naturally – a gratuitous shower scene, as well as lots of shots of feet padding around portentously (I’m guessing the original cast weren’t available for reshoots). I’d encourage you to seek out the film in whatever version you can... It’s absolutely thriller-ering.

Rating: 4/5