Reviews

Kitchen sink snooz-a-thon which seems more focused on cups of tea and nattering than being a horror. Flora Robson and Beryl Reid are the odd couple of sisters, who spend every moment having agitated little quarrels about nothing, while a vicious beast is loose on the moors, and... Oh please excuse me...would you like a cup of tea?

In the pantheon of eccentric 70s brit horrors (that were not by Hammer or Amicus), this doesn't measure up to the groovy Tower Of Evil, or the deranged Killer's Moon, or Norman J Warren's campfest 'Terror'. I recommend choosing those over this one... Now, fondant fancy? Help yourself.

Dry, humourless, overly melodramatic teen sci-fi series for girls, which allegedly has some connection to the first two (highly entertaining) Terminator movies.

After wading through a few episodes of this pompous dreck in search of a pulse, I'm still not exactly sure what that connection is? You know there's a problem, because they feel the need to embellish just about every single scene with mopey, mushy, ominous background music playing over everything, like that somehow enhances the rad-ness. It doesn't.

About as interesting as a 9 hour long weather report for the Sahara desert, I was soon begging for Big Arnie to suddenly turn up and pull the plug. Don't be back.

I'm so stuck in the 1978-1989 era of slashers that I rarely bother to check for new stuff, but when I do I'm always disappointed. Thanksgiving looks, sounds, and feels like every other new slasher I've bothered to watch in the last 15 years. You could splice random scenes from this into the latest Scream, Halloween, Saw >insert recent slasher< movies and no one would probably notice. Everything is filmed, scripted, scored, and acted in the same way. The thing I love about old slashers like Pieces, The Mutilator, Graduation Day, Hospital Massacre, New York Ripper, Happy Birthday To Me (to name a few) is that despite their flaws they all seem to have their own unique vibe going on. Thanksgiving's 1 hour 41 minutes crawls by like 7 hours 83 minutes of cookie cutter un-originality.

Firstly that title could not be any more '70s giallo' if it tried, and the good news is this film lives up to its title. Pleasingly unhinged stuff, and I'm surprised I'd never encountered this one before randomly clicking on the fairground scene on youtube, and that scene was enough to convince me I needed to see it. If you're a fan of Lenzi's SPASMO, and EYEBALL, or maybe Fulci's LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN then this is definitely one to check out, similar levels of daft-yet-vicious shenanigans, 70s high fashion, hairstyles, and weird dialogue. This has gone straight into my all time top 10 giallos after one viewing.

As of writing this, there's barely 80 other reviews for this movie, and at least half of them thoroughly unimpressed... Well, okay, guess I'm in a minority here but I'm gonna say Long Weekend has to be the most intensely gripping film I think I've ever seen. Every frame exudes a helpless, squirming uneasiness which I can't actually explain, but is palpable throughout. There is a creeping, malevolent undertone to everything that happens, even when nothing happens (which to be fair is a lot, but that's no problem, it's not boring). The fact that neither of the 2 main characters are particularly likeable could easily be a negative, but actually just adds to the mix, as you voyeristically observe their slow descent into the dreaded abyss that is Mother Nature's unforgiving cauldron of despair and madness (or something)... This is not a melodramatic, screamy Oscar-fest however, this is pure underground Rock'n'Roll filmmaking. Okay it's not perfect in terms of acting, but partly to offset the bad scores, and also partly because I cannot think of another film comparable to this one, I'm giving it a 10/10... AVOID the 2008 remake.

Heavy-handed 'satire' that seems to unironically celebrate the very things it is attempting to satirise. Almost like they wanted to make a typical big dumb gross-out teen comedy, and *randomly* decided to set it in a dystopian future where brain-dead commercialism is king and independent thought is extinct... like that part was incidental, and just an excuse to drive home a bunch of lame crude jokes in a slightly novel way. What a wasted opportunity.

Although hardly deep or meaningful, films like The Running Man, Robocop, and Back To The Future Part 2 were a lot more successful in casually portraying a grim futuristic worldview - and they're also way more entertaining... Idiocracy, set in the year 2505, feels dated and stale.

Far as I'm aware this was Jess Franco's lone attempt at a conventional slasher, in a career otherwise more focused on surreal sleaze. I wish he'd made more cause Bloody Moon is a trip. Laughable dubbing and dialogue, insane twisted villain, classier than average girls, a young tennis player character who looks uncannily like Roger Federer from some angles, and an infamous gore set-piece that's so unrealistic that it somehow comes off as *more* disturbing than if it had been done well. (probably). This film is good fun anyway, don't miss it if you like early 80s slashers.

Take a drink every time someone says the word "drugs" in this movie and you'll probably be on the floor before the 25 minute mark. Every other word of the script seems to be "drugs", and usually spoken by actors who have apparently never heard or said the word "drugs" before in their life. I guess they were a brand new thing at the time.

Death Wish 4 hails from 1987, and I'm not sure exactly what kind of cosmic shift impacted hollywood in that year, but things definitely got very 1987-ish... this is clearly a film cut from the same big bold glossy and cheesy cloth as Robocop, Lethal Weapon, Predator and The Running Man. It seems every action film from that year was in some way trying to be over-the-top awesome. Well at least DW4 tries to be awesome, it doesn't quite achieve awesomeness though, its b-movie armour is a bit too tough to crack and let all the awesome in.

Bronson is a dependable but somewhat static frontman, who seems to revel in his one-dimensional-ness. That's not really a criticism, that's his style and he owns it. At one point he's forced to step outside his 'zone' and go undercover as a tuxedo'd cocktail barman, and he just looks completely ridiculous.

Apart from that DW4 is the usual concoction of baddies getting wasted for being bad, and big shoulderpads. If you like the 80s then you like this. And while it's technically 'better' than 94's final sequel, it's not as tastelessly deranged, so it's ultimately it's not as much fun.

Firstly that title: 'The Hell's Gate' makes no sense gramatically. I can't believe not one person involved with this film from conception to completion actually realised the english translation surely should've been 'The Gate To Hell'? ...On the other hand having now watched it, yes I can believe that.

Lenzi went to a lot of interesting places in his movie career, from the cannibal jungles to the crime ridden streets of Italy, but this detour into 'haunted underground caves' territory could be his all time low point, pun intended. Random guys wandering round a cave for 90 minutes, and occasionally dying. The end. I don't expect David Lynch or Coen Bros levels of complexity and nuance when watching a Lenzi film, but I was amazed at how babyish this was in every way. A ten year old could draft a more sophisticated plot and script in half an hour, guaranteed.

I couldn't find an english dubbed version so no amusement at any bad dubbing could be had, and I'm not a fan of subtitles generally either so that proved an extra chore, making The Hell's Gate a horrible viewing experience all round - but throughout his career Lenzi occasionally created totally mad classics, so I had to see this just in case it was one of them. It wasn't.

The kind of jock-headed popcorn blockbuster that doesn't so much tick all the boxes as detonate them. The kind of film where you can imagine the cast doing a testosterone drenched huddle/team talk before takes. The kind of film where random military style music plays constantly throughout, reminding you to feel heroic and proud. Well, watching this outrageously pointless paean to gung-ho mediocrity made me feel about as heroic and proud as Emo Philips in a body-building contest. And yet, witnessing this big dumb jigsaw slowly fit itself together was not as wretched as it should've been. I'll concede that what US Marshals does quite well, it does quite well. The direction is slick enough to cover at least some of the cracks, and despite being made in '98 there's a pleasingly late 80's feel to the whole thing. 6/10

Straddling the boundary between grindhouse scuzz and Oscar-bait style earnestness, this film has an authentic and uncompromisingly gritty feel to it which makes me respect all the glowing reviews and cultish acclaim it gathers. What I couldn't do is enjoy it, because it came across as a slow meandering chore to get through. The plot was there, the atmosphere was there, but nothing was grabbing me. I felt like I should be transfixed, but found my concentration was lapsing so badly I had to rewind a few scenes 3 or 4 times before I took them in - and that was before the half hour mark.

There's a scene in Abigail's Party where Lawrence admires the complete Shakespeare collection sitting in his bookcase before saying "Of course, it's not the kind of thing you can actually read...". That's how I feel about this film. It's probably a classic, but I can't actually watch it.

Not only is 'Freddy's Dead' the best Nightmare On Elm Street movie by a mile (including the overrated original), it's also one of the most unashamedly oddball and relentlessly creative movies of its era. Right up there with Hudson Hawk, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, and Evil Dead 2.

Ok it's not high art, it's not scary, and the general slap-dash feel of the whole thing prevents it from being any sort of classic, but no matter where you are in this movie you're never more than about 90 seconds away from something truly bizarre and visually entertaining occurring. I don't care if Freddy here is turned into a lame comedy character who's about as frightening as Seymour Skinner; there are numerous things that happen in this film which I can't say I've seen in any other film. I call that taking risks. Tell that to every single director working today with their glossy melodramas, frat boy gross outs, and cookie-cutter superhero drivel.

Good points: luridly colourful in a stylish 80's Argento kind of way.

bad points: everything else... don't think I've seen a sillier giallo/slasher. the tone of the film is horribly flamboyant and show-offy, but there's nothing to be proud of here. It's amateurish in an off-putting way, not an endearing way, with annoying characters that seem like they're all trying to out-annoy each other. Even though Argento's Terror At The Opera is flawed in many ways, I would recommend that one over this any day (being the closest comparison I can think of).

GUY: "You should thank me."

GIRL: "Thanks."

GUY: "I don't need your thanks."

This and many other scintilating passages of top quality dialogue can be heard in 1989's American Hunter. Spiritually it's in the same league of ineptness as Samurai Cop, although the fights here are way more adeptly choreographed. Ultimately it's not as funny or charming as S.C. and it gets a little generic 80s action-esque in places, but there are more than enough scenes of ridiculous macho overload and awkward one-liners to justify a viewing. In fact the first 30 minutes or so are insanely good fun - it starts off with a guy driving a jeep through a boardroom meeting - but it doesn't quite keep it up despite the non-stop pacing.

Whereas Howling VII: New Moon Rising is so groundbreakingly awful on so many levels that it merits at least a few re-watches, Part VI: The Freaks is just regular awful and hard to sit through even once.

Imagine an episode of Murder She Wrote set at a carnival freakshow, but there's no Jessica Fletcher. And no murder. That's the first half of the film.

Then halfway through we finally get some kind of hint that this is actually supposed to be a werewolf film (really?) but instead of springing to life everything shifts into minus gears and becomes even more dull. Without the Howling name attached to it, there's no doubt this bore-fest would've disappeared without trace.

Time has been neither kind nor cruel to this relatively obscure Steve Coogan series (only 15 imdb reviews to date). Watching in 2020, I still have the same likes and problems with it as I did when it went out.

Of the 6 episodes, two are bona fide tv classics. One, And Now The Fearing, is a perfect pastiche of early 70s Amicus portmanteau horrors - every single cliché gets thrown into the mix with fantastically cheesy results. The way it's all crammed into 30 minutes is also impressive.

The other, The Curse Of The Blood Of The Lizard Of Doom is a deliriously silly yet engaging sci-fi tinged 19th Century body horror. The slew of knowingly horrendous one-liners in this episode had me creasing, the attention to detail of the sets (and the bad-on-purpose special effects) were spot on, and even the newspaper headlines were genius. Everything about this episode is great, and I wish it had been a full length movie.

Then there's one decent episode, Voodoo Feet Of Death. The premise/set up here is original, and the script has some funny moments, but overall it felt a bit drawn out and convoluted. Worth watching though.

The remaining 3 episodes were a bit of a slog to get through and Coogan seemed to be stuck on autopilot in all of them. Frenzy Of Tongs was especially weak, almost the entire episode seemingly taking place in a big dark cupboard. The other two were historical period pieces and vaguely forgettable, although in fairness all 3 of these had at least one moment that made me laugh.

As a series overall, I'd say of Steve Coogan's non-Partridge tv work this ranks below Paul Calf's video diaries and Coogan's Run, but above Saxondale (overrated), The Trip (yawn) and Tony Ferrino.

Toe curlingly self-conscious adolescent dreck masquerading as edgy comedy. Every scene lifted straight out of some hideous amateur dramatics improv class, and the frequent attempts at breaking the 4th wall were so uncomfortably executed that every time she glanced at the camera I wanted to chuck my sofa at the screen. Perhaps I'm just not the 'target audience', in which case I'm grateful I'm not... I lasted about 2 episodes, but I'd pay good money to have them erased from my mind.

In terms of plot, bad guy, and kills this could be considered a slasher - but in every other regard it's more like a downbeat made-for-tv drama/thriller. There's no zany goofball element and none of the fun-factor which characterises most slashers, and for that reason Night School never really amounts to much more than a fairly routine detective yarn with some added nastiness thrown in.

In fairness the killer's motivation is quite original (as is the twist), but even as an early 80s horror hound I can't imagine wanting to sit through this again.

The moment the intro credits of Final Score start rolling you know what you're in for. A none-more-80s synth soundtrack (think a cut price Lalo Schifrin doing the Halloween theme) is interspersed with the sound of random machine gun fire, while cast and crew members with names like HARRIS R and RONNI S flash up in a basic blood-red typeface. These guys didn't have time for all that 'full last name' stuff, let's just get on with the job damnit.

In some ways Final Score is your standard 80s action beat 'em up fare, but there's an extra helping of cheese and a side portion of brutalness with this low-budget pizza. The home invasion scenes early on are especially nasty and unflinching, and make you root for Chris Mitchum's character as he then goes out and dispenses justice. And there is a *lot* of justice dispensed in this movie, perhaps almost too much justice... But hey, that's the reason the movie exists. Mitchum himself looks like a friendly physics teacher and never quite convinces as a tough guy vigilante, but does a decent job as the lead anyway.

Overall this is not in the same league as the similar 'The Stabalizer' in terms of enjoyment factor, but it's definitely worth a look if you're into the whole 80s revenge-sploitation genre.

As a straight white man who identifies as a gay black female I found the racial message of this movie too confusing for me to bother working out if I was either highly delighted or highly offended by it, so no dice there.

What did offend me was the utterly generic dialogue, acting, and script, which all could've easily been lifted from any other also-ran US horror/thriller from the last 15 years. The way everyone in these kind of movies all talk in that vaguely disinterested, pseudo-cryptic, casually sweary, oh-so-kewl way...It really gets on my big black breasts.

There I said it. I feel liberated.

This Time was possibly the unfunniest thing I saw this year, almost reaching Miranda/Mrs Brown's Boys levels of unfunny. A wretched combination of overly forced delivery and half baked writing, and such a depressing watch (for this massive AP fan) that I felt part of my soul curl up and die a bit more with each episode.

When you have real life tv guys like Jeremy Vine going from arguing with phone-in callers about which brand of aftershave would work best on a chicken, then segueing straight into a pre-arranged studio debate about whether goalposts should be made twice as big in order to prevent 0-0 draws (yes, that happened), then I doubt the format here was even worth parodying in the first place.

On the bright side, people can bounce back. And if anyone can bounce back from a catastrophe like this, then it's Alan Partridge.

Considering the horrific subject matter, this movie managed to come over as glossy, superficial, and above all it was determined to be emotionally manipulative at every opportunity. I'm sorry but since when was kidnap, imprisonment and prolonged abuse as cosy and sentimental as this? In what way does this movie attempt to truly confront its audience with the raw, vile atrocity of its subject matter? It didn't need to be ultra-explicit visually, but 'Room' was presented more like a hankies-at-the-ready emo weepfest than a genuinely harrowing study in cruelty and repression. As for the 2nd half of the movie, the attempts at scenes of angsty/shouty family drama and turmoil were from the straight-to-DVD standard school of acting. All in all a bland, boring and forgettable excercise in hollywood 'realism'.

1(awful)

This show is awful. It is literally everything that the original wasn't, right down to having been dragged out ad nauseum into something like 45251 seasons, in contrast with the perfectly concise 2 series + Xmas specials Gervais and Merchant produced so that the show didn't outstay its welcome, didn't get stale, and didn't have a chance to become less than brilliant.

The main problem with the US version is that every ounce of awkward, cringeworthy, darkly vicious, breathtakingly raw subtlety of the original is replaced with an annoyingly cosy, self-congratulatory 'wackiness' that makes me imagine the whole US cast giving each other hi-5's in between takes, passing round cream buns, and going "Oh you guys...Ain't we just so gadamn funny!?!". It's just as cringeworthy as the original but for all the wrong reasons. In fact - ironically - this is exactly the type of inoffensive, kooky, clichéd drivel that the original Office was created as a reaction against. There was a razor sharp 'edge' throughout the UK version. The US Office is about as edgy as a pancake.

Another failing of this remake is the botched appropriations of the UK characters for a US audience. Take 'Jim', for example. He's supposed to be the equivalent of Tim from the UK version, i.e. the solitary voice of reason in the show, the lone island of sanity in an ocean of corporate film-flam... And yet in the US version he's some cooler-than-thou, drawling, nonchalant, vaguely aloof personality vacuum - exactly the kind of person you'd call in sick just to avoid spending another day working alongside. In short, he's one of 'them'. Somehow the writers obviously think he's more or less the same guy as Tim, which tells you everything you need to know about how clueless this remake is.

Of course, the big argument is that people say "don't compare them, dude!" and even get offended when comparisons are made. Are these the same people who would argue that The Monkees were equally as good as The Beatles because, well, it's unfair to compare them? The fact is, the US Office is closer in spirit to Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach than it is to the UK version. That would be a more valid comparison, because everything that happens is so patronisingly implausible and dumb.

I feel slightly better after writing this review that will be read by no one, it's something I needed to get off my chest, especially considering how many people are head-over-heels in love with this remake. Another thing I need to get off my chest is this: watch any old 80s episode of The A-Team and tell me the US Office's 'Dwight' hasn't stolen his entire act wholesale from Howling Mad Murdock. I don't pity the fool.

Nearly 10 years on, this one-off series is still, for my money, the last true work of genius to have invaded the small screen of UK comedy (or anywhere for that matter). Much like The Office, Brass Eye, I'm Alan Partridge and Spaced before it, there are so many hysterical laugh-out-loud moments and so much attention to detail that even on repeated viewing you are sure to catch something new or only half-remembered from each of the 6 episodes. Some quotes/scenes seemed to achieve instant cult status among fans, but there are other bits no one ever mentions: for e.g. the introduction of 'the temp' from episode 2 which manages to put me on the floor every time I see it, or the random nurse + patient love scene at the beginning of the episode Scotch Mist, which could just be the most awesomely rubbish 60 seconds of TV ever created. To name but two examples out of hundreds!

It's a shame that Darkplace has apparently never seen a region 1 DVD release because this means most US fans will have missed out on what are probably the best selection of extras on any DVD I can think of. The two half-hour documentaries, comprised of more interviews from the actors, are almost as funny as the episodes. Garth Marenghi's rants against authority, Dean Learner's musings on production techniques, and in particular Todd Rivers discussing everything from the plight of sex-pests to bad acting on Eastenders - while cradling a nearly empty shot-glass of whisky - really add to the Darkplace experience.

Subsequent UK comedies such as The IT Crowd, Mighty Boosh, Peep Show, and The Inbetweeners may have received way more success and critical acclaim, but in my opinion they're not a patch on Dagless and co. Stay holy!