Catacombs (2007)

I decided to revisit Catacombs after a good ten years simply because I remembered it being OK and it was going really cheap in the discount DVD shop. It is nowhere near as good as I remembered, probably owing to the fact that I recalled the beginning and the end, and none of the boring shit in between. And boy, is there a LOT of boring shit in between! And even the beginning and end have been bastardised by my damned sense of logic. Let's dive into what could have been a good movie, but isn't: Catacombs.

If you'd ever wondered what a cave full of assholes
looked like...

Victoria (Shannon Sossomon) narrates that she got a mysterious postcard from her sister Caroline (Alecia Moore, AKA Pink) to go and stay with her in Paris, as it would be good for her. The brief intro shows us that Victoria takes a surprisingly wide assortment of medicines, explaining to a couple of obnoxious airport customs officers that she "feels nervous sometimes". The movie makes a point of painting every French person (and that is basically everyone except Victoria and her sis) as a menacing entity who not only hates Americans but is in the very process of concocting a diabolical way to harm whichever American is standing before them. Caroline is the typical carefree punk type that an indie horror would only ever hire Pink to play, but in this sense, means that she is actually a total prick who incessantly drops foreshadowing words of threat that sound the furthest thing from natural dialogue.

The sister's housemates are male French assholes who take joy in shitting people up for no good reason - more foreshadowing. They take Victoria to a party they assure will "change her life", that is hosted in one of the many corners of the Paris catacombs, letting us know highly expositionally - but not in the least bit convincingly - that the Police never catch them because the catacombs are vast and they party at a different spot every time. When we see the vastness of this rave and the sheer noise that it creates, it prompts us to question many of the finer logistical details of this underground party scene: Who the fuck could NOT hear that noise? How can the catacombs safely stand the vibrations and capacity of so much noise, equipment and people? How the fuck do they manage to get full DJ decks, rigging, fully-stocked neon bars, lights and bottomless alcohol, to their venue at all, let alone without attracting any attention? Is the winding line outside the door of what is obviously not a club or any other official establishment not evidence enough for the authorities of where this huge gang of hoodlums may be hosting their latest event? 

OK, Pink's naked shoulders.
Maybe one reason to endure this shit.

Victoria is lured away from the main party by Caroline and her group of Parisian friends, including main party host Jean-Michel (I mean, it was gonna be either that or Pierre, right?!), who take her to a cavern in the catacombs where they skinny dip in a lagoon, but she refuses to join them, and tries to skulk off back to the party. But in between her protests, Jean-Michel relays to her the legend of the devil man living in the catacombs, who was born of satanic ritual and brought up on a diet of raw meat until he was strong enough to be the adult Devil Incarnate. Now he supposedly lurks in the tunnels of the catacombs, so, hey - there's a nice thought for you to take back into those gloomy passageways with ya, Vic!

Caroline catches up with her but they get lost and are soon set about by the Devil man, who apparently kills Caroline, and chases Victoria off. This is where the action ends for a good hour or so. In her copious wanderings in darkness, the only thing that punctuates it much is the appearance of another French dude, Henri, who has a map and a theory as to how to escape. He is soon dispatched though, and Victoria's constant addressing of him as "Henry" - even after he pointedly helped her pronounce his name properly - is surely to blame for half his eventual disdain for her. Anyhow, this bullshit rambles on for way too much longer, and eventually the twist hits. Caroline is not dead, and all of this horror that couldn't possibly have been logically premeditated, was just a "prank" to get Victoria over her mental illness. LOL, they really had her going there!

But Caroline seems outraged that such an elaborate prank could send her mentally fragile sister over the edge and see her inadvertently kill someone in self defense. I mean, Christ, Victoria, lighten up! Just because some masked menace has hunted you down through an underground maze for hours and almost killed you several times, doesn't mean you have to go pick-axe him in the face! By this point, Vic has well and truly had enough of her sister's shit, and kills them all. Then she somehow gets back to the surface (this major point that the entire movie has hinged upon is totally glossed over in the end) and nonchalantly gets in a cab covered in blood, asking to go to the airport. End of movie.

I find myself never saying this, and I mean ever. I mean, people have always told me I should be a teacher because of how I can always find a compliment for everything, but I wasted 90 minutes of my precious life on Catacombs, and I'm kind of pissed off with how little I got in return. I feel like 90 minutes of sitting in gridlock traffic on the motorway may have been a more productive use of my time. But hey, I guess in this case I can churn out a few hundred words on its poor quality.

Guaranteed, she will get to the airport, no questions asked

Shame is, the first act of the movie is well done - very atmospheric and great use of sound editing and cinematography. But then the entire thing comes crashing down in every aspect, and it bobs by, embodying mediocrity. I feel that Catacombs should have been a short film. Take the first twenty minutes, and the final five, glue the ends together, and send it out on the film festival circuits. That could have worked. But a feature film this is not, and as a horror fan, I was left pissed off, and too deprived to call it a night. I had to top it off with something of quality before I could sleep soundly - which I didn't anyhow, by the way. This movie was so disappointing it literally haunted my dreams. Happy viewing.

The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999)

The Rage: Carrie 2 was probably one of the first sequels I ever saw to a classic horror movie. Carrie, as I have documented before but have yet to formally review, was a conquest of my early adolescence that bordered on obsession, and it remains one of my favourite horrors of all time. My stepsister showed me this sequel when I was about 14, and strangely, I have grown to love it. Years ago, it was a movie I would watch in deepest secrecy, for fear of word getting out that I actually enjoyed such an obviously inferior product; nowadays I adhere to the Dave Gorman school of thought when it comes to the concept of ‘guilty pleasures’ (look this up if you don’t catch my meaning – it’s most amusing and true). I used to love to ride this movie’s ass and say how dreadful it was, but my understanding of film grew at twice the rate of my every other form of maturation, hence my now differing opinion .

How do filmmakers usually achieve a sequel when the lead characters have already been killed off? They resurrect the characters; they repeat the events of the first movie with a new bunch of characters; they continue the story of those who may still be living. Enter Amy Irving, who wisely or not decided to reprise her role of Sue Snell, who is now a middle-aged woman, working as a high school counsellor, somewhat haunted by her involvement in the whole Carrie White debacle some twenty years earlier. That’s fine, but she wasn’t the one with a special power, and it wouldn’t be Carrie if it didn’t have telekinesis. Enter Emily Bergl as Rachel, an unusual looking grunge kid who lives with gnarly trucker foster parents thanks to her own mother’s incarceration at the local asylum. She embodies the ‘90s Nirvana mood – listening to Marilyn Manson and Billie Holliday, passing her evenings working in a photo hut, sneaking her beloved dog Walter into the house at night. She is so befitting the revival of the tormented high school girl.

Boy, didn't think the critics would hate it
this much!

It wouldn’t be a modern high school flick without cliques, which is the engine of this movie’s climax. Rachel is the usual grungy outcast, and her only friend Lisa (Mena Suvari) promptly kills herself in a spectacular effects sequence, having been dumped by a jock she questionably gave her virginity to the night before. The jocks keep a crass system, awarding points to each other according to the girls they sleep with, and Lisa is the game’s latest victim. When the jocks realise they could be in deep shit - having played around with underage girls, prompting one to commit suicide - they decide that ‘damage control’ is the way to go, and they set about making sure Lisa’s only friend won’t squeal on them.

In the midst of all this, one particularly upstanding jock, Jesse (Jason London) decides that what they are doing is wrong (several girls into his scoresheet, of course), and happens to grow close to Rachel. This attracts the cattiness of Tracy, the girl he has blown off, who also becomes determined to take revenge on Rachel. In a mere week, Rachel has gone from invisible virgin outcast with one living friend, to deflowered public enemy #1 with no living friends. High school, eh?

No way the chicks can resist our wet-look
hair gel and sweater vests, man!

Was there a part of you that ever felt like Chris and Billy got off easy in that spinning firey blaze of a car, or that Norma’s assumed unconscious death by smoke inhalation could have been more brutal? Fear not, friends, for this is a late ‘90s movie, and more blood must be spilled than from that suspended metal bucket. That means exploding eyeballs sharded with glass, and testicles ripped off with harpoons, and even a fatal stabbing by CD (guess the format knew it was doomed, wanted to take a bitch out with it!) The finale of the film is a thoroughly enjo

yable flaming bloodbath, and doesn’t it always suck that little bit more when the location being torched is a multi-million dollar mansion of a house, rather than a crappy old school gym?

So what’s the catch? What makes this Carrie 2? The big revelation is that after Carrie’s Daddy Ralph ran away (this is much more detailed in the novella than the 1976 film), one of the hussies he gave a damn-good Bible lesson to was Rachel’s mom, impregnating her with a telekinetic spawn ready to wreak havoc on her high school in later years. That Ralph! 

Ohhh no ya don't! If we have to endure Jason
London's horrible delivery, you do too!

This movie is by no means perfect, and there are still some parts that make me chuckle. Jason London’s delivery, having arrived at the finale party late and found nothing short of a mass teenage grave in flames, runs to Rachel saying, ‘They’re all dead – we gotta get outta here, let’s go’. As if he were a secretary announcing the name of the next patient the doctor was ready to see; totally casual. The asylum is staffed by the most incompetent nurses ever, who fail to notice a patient escaping, but grab another patient who was right next to the door at the same time and drag them off in a backwards-run. I mean, no need to soothe a mental patient dude, just grab them from behind unannounced and literally run with them. No biggy. It’s the small things that make the movie unintentionally funny, and the big things that make it unintentionally good.

Me, pretending to be outraged by this movie

For a number of years – ever since I grew to not hate myself for enjoying this film – I have been firm in my opinion that this would be a good movie, were it not the sequel to Carrie. If this could have just been The Rage, without any links to Brian DePalma’s movie or even Stephen King’s book, and been your average teen angst horror, it would have been great. But by adding that little subtitle, and insisting on trying to milk the bosom of a twenty-five year old movie, it throws away any such credibility.

Artistically, the movie is fairly sound. Some fun is had with black-and-white visuals, and distorted angles and frame speed, while the aforementioned suicide sequence still blows my mind to this day, and I wish the DVD had some kind of documentary that would explain their technique. Because I’m still not quite sure how they did it, and that is the kind of movie I admire. The music is a major strength, with a beautiful haunting theme melody that is performed alternately on piano, keyboard and electric guitar. It is grimy, atmospheric and so well suited. It is perhaps the best thing about this film. The script is nothing special, but it is surprisingly well acted – particularly by the younger members of the cast – and looking back, it fits very nicely into the young late ‘90s horror landscape. It’s very much worth an hour and forty of your time. Just try to forget the whole ‘it’s the sequel to Carrie’ thing.

Pretty Baby (1978)

I confess that I first sought out Louis Malle's Pretty Baby merely because of the torrent of ongoing online controversy that encircled it some forty years after its making. At that point, I was a 19-year-old college student, and of the whole cast and crew, was only familiar with Susan Sarandon (whose career I devised my entire second year film studies project on). Nowadays, I know much about many of the people involved, and most recently, began to read Brooke Shields' autobiography There Was a Little Girl, which details the infamous relationship she had with her mother Teri. I sometimes wonder at how society seems to have gone backwards in so many of its ideas and tolerances, and how the more time goes by, the more incredible it seems that a movie like Pretty Baby was ever made; it certainly wouldn't be nowadays, perhaps in the same way as Lolita, which director Stanley Kubrick later lamented that he could not take to the full extent of his source material, because of 1960s Hollywood censors.

Pretty Baby is a period piece, about a prostitute named Hattie (Sarandon) and her pre-adolescent daughter Violet (Shields), who live in a New Orleans brothel in the early 20th century, just before and during and after the legal clamp-down on the sex industry. Much to the uproar of the small-minded back in the '70s - and to this day - the visual narrative includes a couple of very brief shots of young Brooke Shields, who was only 11 or so when she filmed, naked. But let us start this debate by going back to the definition of pornography, which is material created with the intent of titillating or arousing the viewer. Now, if you are of broad mind, you will accept that a photograph or video of a person naked - whatever their age - does not fit this definition, as nudity is not inherently sexual; an idea modern society is losing grip of. I would argue that the next step in this logic is that a movie tells a story through a combination of narrative media: visuals, sound, etc. As I have mentioned in previous reviews, we as an audience need to see and hear and feel the full extent of our characters' lives if we are going to feel for them. If we had not seen in gruesome detail the cruelties of Joffrey Baratheon, would we have as much reason to hate him?

The movie opens with the gutteral groans of a woman, and a fade in of the bemused and intrigued Violet's face. We all instantly ask the same question: is she witnessing pain or ecstasy? The questions that these speechless opening moments force us to ask ourselves carry on throughout the movie. As it happens, Violet is watching her mother Hattie give birth to another john's illegitimate baby. But, I concede, whether Violet had been bearing witness to childbirth or paid fornication, the experience would have been just as relevant to her life, and to our experience as an audience.

Violet and Hattie live in the glamorous brothel of Madame Nell (Frances Faye), a wide, darkwood classical house with moody burgundy interiors and all the sophistication of the many palaces the elder March daughters visited in Little Women. Here, men of position go there to fulfill their fantasies, and one day, the time has come for young Violet, whose age is never explicitly revealed, to be deflowered by a paying customer. The girl sweet-talks the winning bidder in the naive, scripted way only an eleven-year-old who has been instructed what to say could - much to his disdain.

In between all this action, a photographer has arrived at Madame Nell's, seeking models for his intimate portraits of Louisiana prostitution. He is Bellocq (Keith Carradine), a stern but sensitive being whose heart breaks over the auctioning of Violet's virginity. Among his work with the other women, the girl becomes enamoured with him - again, as only eleven-year-olds do - and he with her, though in a far more paternal and protective fashion. When the fuzz are closing down all the brothels, Hattie moves out with the john  who impregnated her and their illegitimate son, leaving Violet behind. Bellocq marries her in an attempt to save her from a life of imminent poverty and abuse.

Pretty Baby is a long, brooding and sensuous movie, and anyone who pays attention to it can see it for what it is. The odd naked shot is a natural extension of the situation, and as Roger Ebert so gracefully put it, "it's an evocation of a time and a place, and a sad chapter of Americana". The young Brooke Shields shows immense capability that her later career didn't seem to present opportunities to demonstrate, while Carradine conjures the same sorrowful, fair-haired onlooking lover that Peter Firth did in the same year in Roman Polanski's version of Tess.

I love Pretty Baby. It is a rare sort of movie that gives me the low, underlying stirrings of sympathy and yearning that real life relationships give me. Not the kind that make you shout at the screen about what the characters should do, but the kind that moves you, as if your close friend were living this same existence, and an external feeling of remorse and sorrow, yet lack of control over the chaos.

Killer Barbys (1996)

This was a cheap indulgence of a movie in several ways. It cost me two quid, and it looks like they paid the graphic designer of the cover art about the same wage, so the poor little Quasimodo of a DVD was waiting for someone like me to come pick it up, like Toy Story but with home media: they have hopes and dreams, and the forgotten clones of celluloid B look at the moon through the window of the DVD store each night and dream of a horror freak who will love them as they are. Killer Barbys (or Vampire Killer Barbys according to the cover) was that little outcast, and I was the horror freak.

I took a chance, took a ch-ck-ch-chance chance on it because it had Jess Franco's name on it. I've reviewed several Francos, both for UKHS and my own blogs, and his iconic status in European horror makes any little fantasy of his worth my time. Bloody Moon was highly amusing '80s kitch, while Female Vampire was far more typical of Franco's love for gothic naked vampiresses and had an X-Rated cut available. Killer Barbys fits somewhere in between, following the ordeal of mid-'90s punk band The Killer Barbies (a real band in a sort of semi-autobiographical Jagger-type movie portrayal), whose van breaks down in the misty woods on their way to a gig. The three guys and two gals spend most of their time fucking and smoking joints (my kind of people), and do the classic split thing when a creepy old sage in a nice suit invites them to take refuge at the castle of Countess von Fledermaus nearby. The horniest couple stay behind to alleviate some of their horniness, while the others head up to the castle.

Vintage Franco

The old guy, we know, is the lover/secretary of the Countess, who at first is a sinewy corpse gasping on silk bedsheets, starved of the young blood that sustains her vitality. One or two of the band get picked off and used to rejuvenate the Countess enough to show herself to her guests, one of whom she seduces very swiftly over dinner and fucks to death. This, naturally, involves a lengthy sequence of the Countess writhing on the naked body of her doomed lover, covered in his blood.

The movie is thrown off terribly by the presence of an unhumorously comic trio, a freak and two dwarfs he keeps as 'children', who don't kill the horny couple in the woods as we so obviously expect them to, but wank over the sight of them boning, and swap all the punk Barbie dolls decorating the band van with animal skeletons. They are a bad joke to the end, and actively detract from the steam of the movie's engine, in a fashion darkly reminiscent of my beloved bumbling cops in Craven's Last House on the Left.

As a Franco, the movie operates on about a quarter of the production budget that US movies would, and it shows from beginning to end. Highlights include poor visual angles as we watch the Countess 'stab' her lover's 'body' and totally not the mattress right next to him; and the obvious mannequin being thrown out of the window in lieu of a stunt double is movie gold (see The Sinful Dwarf). Franco's style is firmly burrowed in the early '80s, and refuses to update, except for funky '90s clothing. The girls spend the majority of the movie in a t-shirt and panties at the most and just silver go-go boots at the least. The Countess is a fucking stunning 'older' woman who we get to see writhe around naked. A Francophile will be in their fucking element with Killer Barbys.

The music is another strength: although the title song by The Killer Barbies is overused, the early-'90s grunge-punk music is invigorating, and ironic enough to contrast the screen action to good effect. So far, all the Franco movies I've seen have been very distinct, despite Jess's reputation for a couple of favourite subgenre themes. Killer Barbys is a fun, poorly dubbed and unique viewing experience that is 90 minutes well spent, and a pretty cool introduction to the real life Killer Barbies discography.

The Exorcist (1973)

If you tot up box office pull, critical reaction, social and cultural impact, controversy level and professional accolades, can you think of a more successful horror movie than William Friedkin's The Exorcist? It would be seriously difficult for anyone to deny it. I say this, with the words of asshole teenagers ringing in my ears... It's crap, it's boring, it's stupid and the deal breaker: It's not scary! Some young idiots seem intent on denouncing anything older than they are, where I have always reveled in vintage styles. To them, if there is not a body count of at least five, it's not scary. To them, if no one is sexually assaulted by some evil being, it's not scary. To them, if there is no blood and guts flying around at a persistent rate, it's not scary. Well, if we can replace 'guts' with 'vomit', I think we have just solved at least one of these issues.

As a kid, how I yearned for this movie! In my adolescence, my love for horror was blossoming, and I always tuned into those countdown shows of '100 Greatest Scary Moments' and the like. I read every page on the internet I could find about The Exorcist when I saw it ranked at number 3 on the list, and looked at every picture, and listened to every audio excerpt. Back then, the internet (and my knowledge of how to use it to its fullest potential) was in its infancy compared to today, and so if I was gonna see this thing, I'd have to suck it up and ask my folks. Well, Mum immediately said no (duh!), and Pop was also unconvinced, although generally far more on my side. He just didn't want to get shit from my mum for saying yes! Well then, my 13 year old self said, I'll just read the book instead. I mean, they don't put age certificates on books, so who's going to stop me?! (Note: this technique, first devised and exercised in the case of Carrie, was a useful crutch during this time).

Pretending to Mum that I won't go out of
my way to watch this movie anyway.

And then, everything changed. In the shite little town that my mum had moved us to for high school, there weren't many shops, and they were mostly of little interest to teenagers. But a new one came along one day: a second hand video shop. No DVDs, just cassettes. The store's very basic policy was 5 Videos for £4, or £1 each. Simples. After scoping the place once or twice, and noticing that they just bagged videos by the bundle, and didn't bother to sort through them first, I tried my luck one day. The Exorcist, Hellraiser and Gothika, sandwiched between The Little Rascals and Toy Story. Bish bash bosh, off I headed home with my very own copy of The Exorcist! What a fucking badass I was! As if I just got away with that!

Now I knew, for the most part, what to expect due to my collective fragmentary research. I knew that what I had invested a whole 80p in was a piece of history - that was what I loved about it. My friendship group was only as hardcore as The Ring, and had always denounced my love of David Bowie as 'fancying an old man'. But my parents brought me up well, on Fairport Convention and Janis Joplin and Kate Bush. The favourite movies they liked to share with me were The Hunger, The Company of Wolves, and Tess. My Pop was 40 when I was born, and so being a young 'un and direct descendant from an original '60s flower child and member of Alex Sanders' coven, I had some seriously special and vintage influences headed my way. He saw The Stones, Pink Floyd, The Who, all in grassroots concerts where landlords would cut the power after midnight, and the bands would carry on thrashing unplugged for hours into the morning. My parents are two fucking cool people, and although Mum was a little on the overprotective side, they showed me how to appreciate quality art, and to see past age.

My day to day operation relies fairly heavily on the fantasy that it is 1976. Or -3, or -4. Basically throw me anywhere between 1965 and 1978 and I ain't coming home. This period has always had a dazzling appeal to me, and all the cool stories my folks have told me about these times shaped my interests and tastes as an adult. There is not a day goes by that I do not wear high-waisted flares, platform shoes and my hair in flicks. I'm one of those (I bet many of you will relate) who feels they were born too late. When I watch old movies, and see cute chicks like Linda Blair or

Ultimate staring contest

Sandra Cassell with their bell-bottomed jeans and clingy tops on braless tits, I just feel like I belong there, not here and now. And so old movies are a means of fantasy, they're like my porn (which the '70s produced wonderfully, too! Man, remind me to review Deep Throat on here sometime!)

But I lengthily digress... The Exorcist! We start in Iraq (God, can you imagine?!), where Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) seems to have retired to some anthropological position, and is alerted to some interesting demon relic they have found. Merrin seems to recognise it, and takes a journey to another dig site, where he stands face to face with a lifesize statue of the demon Pazuzu. Fade to Georgetown, Washington, where actress Chris MacNeill (the wonderful Ellen Burstyn) is living with her daughter Regan (our gal Linda Blair) whilst filming a movie on location. They are such a cute couple, who clearly adore each other, and Linda's signature cuteness is at maximum impact. Despite Regan's absent father causing stress to them both, they seem to have an awesome life. Their house is gigantic, and they host cool parties where people drink at their bar and priests play their grand piano for singsongs, all while multiple cigarettes create a fog. I mean, if that's not living the '70s dream, I don't know what is!

Livin' the dream, baby!

But strange occurrences are off to a flying start, first around the house with weird noises, and then with Regan. Now Chris is a very modern '70s woman, who doesn't care to carry a husband who can't deal with her career, and doesn't believe in God. She lives a fun, liberal, atheist life, as does Regan. So when things first kick off, she takes her to doctors, seeking a psychological explanation for her daughter's violent outbursts. Chris soon reaches breaking point, at which she knows nothing anymore, and will turn in any direction open to her. So when clinical doctors and psychologists professionally suggest that this steadfast atheist turn to priests for an exorcism, she seeks the help of Damien Karras (Jason Miller). Karras is a deep, complex character, who also stirs our sympathy. He is a Jesuit priest and psychiatrist from a destitute Italian family, whose poor aged mother is put into a cruel state hospital because he cannot afford a private hospital for her, where she later dies. He is racked with guilt and finds himself falling apart from his faith. When Chris turns to him for an exorcism, he follows her pattern of action: first he examines the girl as a psychiatrist, and finding himself flummoxed, eventually agrees to take the matter to the church's Boys Upstairs, so to speak.

When Ebert reviewed The Shining, he drew attention to one of the film's strengths, in the way it creates mystery by ensuring that none of its characters are reliable sources, preventing anybody - including us as an audience - from understanding the situation with clarity. I think that Friedkin expertly handled this same method, while thankfully recruiting William Peter Blatty, the novel's author, to adapt his own work for the screen. The doctors suggest exorcism as a last resort, when they can present no medical explanation, saying that it could produce results thanks to the power of suggestion. The 'demon' seems to taunt Karras very personally, telling information it shouldn't know. But we know Damien is feeling unstable and desolate since his mother's death. Chris is hysterical a lot of the time, and the famous head spin, as written in the novel, dictates that in the delirium of the scene, before fainting, Chris "thought she saw" Regan's head turn all the way around. It is never certain. None of the characters know whether Regan is crazy or possessed, and neither do we. Do the characters believe in the devil and all that sort of stuff? Do we?

Are you ready for a mind-fuck? Then I'll begin.

Friedkin's direction of The Exorcist is so bold and self-assured. The screen is his playpen, and he likes to play Follow the Leader, pulling the audience along in one direction and then cranking the lever to a trapdoor we hadn't noticed we were standing on. Consider, for example, Karras's silent dream sequence, in which he tries to chase his mother through the street, cut with close-ups of a pendant falling. Each time we cut back to the necklace falling, it is like a warning of the inevitable, that what falls must land, like a countdown to a shock cut, with Regan screaming wildly. He does the impossible of making what is essentially an exploitation visual an artistic endeavour, and benefits greatly from Blatty's screen adaptation of his own novel. What many have deemed so shocking about The Exorcist for generations is not its real spirit - it is no I Spit on Your Grave, although the source material could definitely have been deviated as such under the wrong pen - but vital ingredients to the best telling of this narrative.

As an adult, I suddenly saw the film from an entirely different perspective - that of the mother, Chris. When I reread the novel and considered it, it occurred to me that the 'main character' of the story is either Chris or Karras - not the titular Exorcist Merrin, or the girl he exorcises. Their individual threads of mental and psychic torture are the real plot, and when I watched the movie again as a parent, a whole new dimension of sympathy for Chris had opened up. My daughter is fast approaching Regan's sort of age, and she too is my only child, so the idea of such a horrific ordeal unfolding for my own baby, and my having absolutely no control over it, gave me more terror than any pea soup vomit or crucifix masturbation ever did.

The same can be said for Karras, whose mental state - and its consequent attribution to his death - is more detailed towards the end in the book, and by the finale of the story, we know that the exorcism has been going on for around four or five days, and in that time, he has caught perhaps half an hour's sleep once or twice. He has not eaten, is still reeling with guilt and grief over his mother's hospitalisation and death, and has spent the better part of a week being psychologically tormented by an apparent all-knowing demon. Having a depth of understanding into Karras's condition when he confronts Regan for the final time is crucial to knowing how it will, and must, end. And ultimately, Karras is one of those poetic tortured souls whose only release is surely death, making his fatality somehow not as tragic as it may first seem.

The Exorcist remains one of the most notorious horror films of all time, as well as one of the most mainstream and creatively successful - an odd combination for the genre. But what many a modern audience seems to have little appreciation for is the telling of a horror story with no guts and gore, no murder or bogeyman. Even with its infamous special effects by Grandfather of Makeup Dick Smith, the movie is considered 'boring' these days because of the long stretches of deep dialogue and character building that punctuate the horror scenes. In this sense, it is similar to Jaws - another movie I always loved but grew a deep appreciation for on many new levels as I matured. I daresay the ship has sailed for movies of this calibre to be made again. We are too politically correct, and big studios are simply not willing to give a picture like The Exorcist the time and budget they granted it back in the day. As with many things that took place during that evolutionary era, all the elements happened to be aligned that would make it happen, and sadly, those elements are now at best out of whack, and at worst, non-existent.

Last House on the Left (2009)

Last House on the Left, by Wes Craven, is my favourite horror movie of all time, and any reader of my stuff knows that well. We are still in the midst of a decade-long trend of remaking classic horror movies, and in the grand scheme of things, I am sort of surprised right now that Last House got one before Carrie, Poltergeist or even The Exorcist (these were all terrible and should not have been attempted), due to its underground nature and mixed reception in modern day. But the centuries-old Virgin Spring story that Last House, among several other movies, is based upon still holds water, perhaps now more than ever. When I considered it in contrast to Denis Iliadis' 2009 remake, the original Last House was not what one would imagine when thinking of a horror movie: plenty of comic relief and dark humour, almost no on-screen gore and ungratuitous narrative. The new one takes on a far more classical 'horror' feel from the start, with dark misty visuals, more menacing characters and an obviously ominous set up.

The original Last House went like this: Mari, the daughter of a doctor, lives in the woods of Connecticut, and is celebrating her 17th birthday by heading into the city with her streetwise friend Phyllis, who Mari's mother dislikes and distrusts. On their way to a concert, they cross paths with a gang of escaped convicts while in pursuit of ganja, and get kidnapped, sexually abused and ultimately murdered in the woods near Mari's home. When the gang's car won't start, they seek shelter at the nearest house - and its occupants soon discover what has happened to their daughter, and seek to right some wrongs. This action was punctuated with upbeat folk music and a duo of dumb cops trying to stop the bad guys.

The remake opens with a play on the original loveable cops with two detestable assholes, who are escorting dangerous convict Krug to his new prison. His accessories Francis (Aaron Paul), girlfriend Sadie and son Justin run the cop car off the road and spring Krug. Then we meet the Collingwoods: teenage daughter Mari (Sara Paxton) is a determined competitive swimmer, under much encouragement from her mother, while Doc Collingwood (Tony Goldwyn) is a hands-on ER doctor/surgeon. They lost their son a year previously - Mari treasures a gold pendant that he had engraved for her, and Momma Collingwood frets over her one remaining child with appropriate neurosis.

They come to stay at their summer house in the woods, and Mari looks up old friend Paige, and hooks up with her at her job in a convenience store. The girls chat behind the counter and Mari's newfound aversion to marijuana is made evident. A shady young hoodlum overhears their conversation, and he invites them back to his motel room to buy some green. The girls get friendly with the boy, Justin, and end up partying awhile in the room, when Krug, Sadie and Francis come home, and decide that the girls' inate involvement in their crime spree means that they cannot leave.

This time around, Mari is the smart one, and in the course of her kidnapping, pulls off several intuitive tricks in escape attempts. Her ultimate survival just happens to hinge on her immense swimming ability - but let's face it, they wouldn't have bothered giving us this insight into her personal life if it weren't going to pay off later. This time around, Doc Collingwood's profession serves more purpose than to justify the family's large house. When his near-dead daughter ends up on the doorstep, he uses all his top ER tricks to save her life, all while touchingly talking to her like a loving father.

The gang are very modern, in that the girlfriend gets her tits out a lot, the sidekick is a small white thug, and the leader is absolutely unoriginal. In both looks and character, this Krug is unremarkable and although his team dynamic is largely unexplored, he is a psychological manipulator and a physical abuser. His control of his son is not reliant on heroin, but on emotion, and in amongst his physical assault of the girls, he rubs salt into the wounds with his psychological abuse. His written character is pretty good, but on screen it is not too memorable. David Hess as Krug is one of the most charismatic movie characters ever, and it's a tough act to follow.

The abuse that the girls suffer in the woods is far more in-your-face than in it was in the original, to a certain effect. The rape of Mari certainly turned my stomach, but I maintain that in a good narrative, such cruelties are necessary for us as an audience to feel the way the author intends us to about certain characters - consider Joffrey Baratheon in Game of Thrones to get my point. But a comparison can be drawn here: the 1972 version made my heart ache with its depiction of sexual assault, where the 2009 version made me feel sick. This evidences the primary difference between the two Last Houses: 1972 was a sorrowfully poetic movie, and the 2009 movie was a horror exploitation.

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Horror comedies have long been questioned and disputed by fans and critics. Levels of horror and levels of comedy can, of course, vary wildly. At the comedy end we have the likes of Scary Movie, and up at the horror end we have Hatchet. Somewhere just short of this end of the spectrum lies John Landis's milestone movie An American Werewolf in London. I mean, where do we even start with this unquestionable classic? I can't even remember where I first heard of it, but I know that my household was cool enough to have the video on the shelf. So I indulged when I was about 12, and loved it. This wasn't a movie you need maturity to enjoy, which is surprising given its 18 certificate that has never been changed, despite movies like The Wicker Man and Don't Look Now being recertified in recent years.

The welcoming committee is in full swing

David (David Naughton) and Jack (the gorgeous Griffin Dunne, brother of the late Dominique), are two American college students hiking through the Yorkshire Moors (for whatever reason - I speak as a native Brit when I say there are better places for tourists) and stop in at a rural pub pleasantly named The Slaughtered Lamb. My Pop, sister and I have used the Slaughtered Lamb analogy to describe many a fenland pub inhabited by weirdo hicks, of which we have plenty in the countrysides of England. In this pub, they are quickly made to feel most unwelcome and hasten to leave, with the locals' warnings about bewaring the moon ringing in their ears.

The fellas are soon set about by some evasive menace, which kills Jack and savages David, which the locals from the pub arrive a little too late to shoot dead. There is no trace of the aggressor but a naked bloody stranger lying dead beside them. David wakes up several weeks later in a hospital in London. I'll elaborate for non-UK-based readers: London is - at the closest - just under 180 miles from the border of Yorkshire, and on the most direct route, there are no fewer than five main cities that lie between London and Yorkshire, all of which have large hospitals, and that's not to mention the many other major hospitals within the radius of Yorkshire. So exactly why David ends up in London, I'm not really sure, but it probably wouldn't be such fun to watch him wreak were-havoc just outside of Doncaster.

When David comes around, he insists that he and Jack had not been attacked by a man, but by some beast. He begins to receive beyond-the-grave visits from Jack - whose physical state deteriorates throughout the movie from a freshly hacked up corpse to a sinewy skeleton - who warns David that they were attacked by a werewolf, and as he survived his injuries, he is now one too. And waddaya know? The full moon is coming! In the meantime, David has attracted the advances of Nurse Alex
(the lovely Jenny Agutter), who brings him back to her flat when he is discharged from the hospital.

I'll have you know I'll report this to the authorities!

Highlights of David's antics include a rampage in a Covent Garden grindhouse showing a movie called See You Next Wednesday, a multi-bus-and-car pile-up, stalking toffs on the Underground and stealing a child's balloons while stark naked. As Roger Ebert reviewed back in the day, and as struck me the first time I watched this movie, the ending is abrupt, or as Ebert put it, 'unfinished', but when you consider the alternative that a lot of more modern horrors go for, with an often anticlimactic 'six months later' sketch, it seems appropriate. The original Amityville Horror went the same sort of way, in which time was called at what seemed the midpoint of the horror climax. I don't believe any snippet of an ending could have improved this awesome movie, and its direct cut to credits and an upbeat '50s rock'n'roll cover of Blue Moon serves as a slyly amusing juxtaposition to the last few seconds of the footage. Even its money shot is horror-comedy.

An American Werewolf in London is probably best known for its paramount special effects by the legendary Rick Baker. In the era just before even the cheapest of CGI, if you wanted your crazy visuals you had to make them physically, and Baker did such a phenomenal job of it, that the Academy created the Award for Best Make Up in 1982 in order to honour his work. Hammer's old Wolfman movies are all well and good, but had you ever considered the physical implications of a person morphing into an animal before this movie? To hear David's bones crunching and his skin stretching takes a lot of the romanticism out of being a werewolf, especially when his new love ultimately loses him in the wee hours of their relationship because of it.

American Werewolf remains one of my favourite horror comedies of all time. Although it demonstrates a few deviations from the theory on horror comedy that Adam Green professes - that horror comedy works as long as you don't do them simultaneously - this movie is probably about the best example of the subgenre out there, and deserves every second of cult fame that it garners.

Hatchet III (2013)

I have written several times before of my love Adam Green's throwback slasher series Hatchet, and by this point, I would argue that it is also one of the most consistent series of its kind. Although I have been a fan of the first Hatchet movie for a lot longer than the others, and I've seen it a lot more than the others, I contend that every Hatchet installment is on par with its predecessor.

Hatchet is renowned for its FX, and in this third installment, it is not some elaborate death that is my

This sight is like freakin' Disneyland for Crowley

favourite, but in fact, a very subtle rebirth. By this point in the series, we know that Victor Crowley is a 'repeater', in that every time he is killed, he regenerates in the same form as the night he died. So when the police and coroners have come along to scoop the gloop of the previous night's shenanigans, and have the various pieces of Victor Crowley lumped in one huge body bag, the now lone coroner makes the mistake of turning his back to said bag with headphones in. The cramped body bag slowly deflates like a beach ball until entirely flat, and we just know who's on his way into town!

Having made mincemeat of Crowley, Marybeth rocks up in the local copshop armed and looking like Carrie on prom night. She is immediately detained and held in suspicion of leaving Honey Island Swamp smeared in human debris, much to the amused disbelief of several local hicks. Just like Giselle in Jeepers Creepers, this particular backwoods copshop has a police radio stalker in the form of Amanda (horror veteran Caroline Williams) who is the sheriff's ex-wife and a journalist who has spent years obsessing over the legend of Crowley and is desperate to prove his existence, which the latest massacre seems to evidence, in her opinion. She blags and bribes her way into grilling Marybeth about what happened, and eventually into breaking the suspect out of jail to supposedly put a stop to the latest slashfest.

Among the various police crew at the vast scene of the crime who are about to serve as Crowley's daily buffet of limbs, is coroner Andrew (once again the brilliant Parry Shen), whose character is not related to the recently-deceased tourguide Shaun or Reverand Zombie's employee Justin, but is played by the same actor. His colleague comments that two of the bodies he has recovered look just like Andrew, which the scene gets a good laugh at with the whole 'all Asians look the same' cliche. Andrew ends up one of the finale performers, but not before he gets pinned in the centre of major carnage.

Fuck yo' sista!

Amanda is one of those annoying horror characters who comes up with elaborate and unprecedented theories about how to defeat paranormal entities that basically always turn out to be wrong - and the theorists tend to find out the hard way! Naturally, Amanda drags several others into her ridiculous plight - one that maintains distance and hence survives is Sid Haig in a great cameo scene - leading to the logical but assumed death of both Marybeth and Crowley. Although we can't be sure that either are really dead by the end of the movie, it is hard to believe - even in Adam Green's world - that Marybeth will survive abdominal impalement on a tree branch. But as ever, there is no final overkill in terms of material, and by ending abruptly while the narrative is still midway back down the story arch. This makes for a good thrilling ending.

Oh no! Ma theory was wroowwng!

The third installment is not directed by Green this time around, but by BJ McDonnell, cameraman from the first two Hatchet movies. Having been elected by Green to direct the picture, McDonnell does a strong job of directing a very Greenesque movie that still feels individually crafted. It makes for a very natural extension of a strong franchise, sort of how Jeannot Szwarc did with Jaws II. It's exactly as fun, tense and utterly watchable as the first two Hatchets, so bravo BJ McDonnell.

Hatchet II (2010)

When it comes to post-millennial independent horror series, I don't think Adam Green's Hatchet can be beat. It's not just their technical and artistic proficiency, but the spirit behind them. Green, a kid of the slasher reign of the '80s, is one of those rare artists whose creativity is absorbed in childish imagine, bringing equal measure of excellence and adolescent thrill that no good horror fan has ever really grown out of.

In a Friedkin-style sound jump, Hatchet II jumps straight back in where the first left off, with Marybeth (now scream queen Danielle Harris) neck-deep in grimy swamp water at the hands of the still-not-fucking-dead Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder). A good old-fashioned thumb to the eyesocket sends him toppling overboard the boat and into the water with her, where she is inexplicably saved by old piss-drinker himself Jack Cracker.

He takes her back to his cabin and serves her a refreshing warm cup of piss (and this is before he realises he hates her!) When Marybeth reveals her recently-deceased pappy was Samson Dunston, old Jack cocks his shotgun and tells her to get the hell off his property, and that if she got any questions as to his sudden reversal of attitude toward her, to take it up with Reverend Zombie (Tony Todd).

She makes it back to town somehow, and drops in on Zombie, who reveals to her that her own beloved pappy was one of the three young hoodlums that threw firecrackers at the Crowley house that fateful Halloween night, and is basically directly responsible for the brick-shithouse of a mutant terrorising Honey Island Swamp. He summons his colleague Justin (the wonderful Parry Shen), who it turns out is the brother of Shaun, the hilarious fool whose illegal and "ONLY haunted swamp tour" *smacks with top hat* was the vehicle of the previous night's massacre - and whaddaya know, the guy is the spitting image of his recently-deceased tourguide brother.

Zombie sends him into town with a list of personnel to call to the shop, claiming if he is going to head out into the swamp, there are certain people he'd rather have there for backup. He also tells Marybeth that if she doesn't bring a relative (knowing full well that both her pappy and brother are dead), he will not agree to take her. So she enlists the reluctant help of Uncle Bob, and we are still not sure just what diabolical scheme is behind Zombie's insistence that her family member comes along for an imminent bloodbath.

Having had a fabulous but underexposed cameo in the first Hatchet, adding a few good points to its ensemble of horror icons, it is great to see Tony Todd take Zombie into a feature-length and central character in this sequel. He brings an interesting secondary villain role to the mix, and plays it sinister and yet oddly charismatic, to the point that we are never certain exactly what he's plotting. And naturally, after all of his scheming, he has wiggled his way to the front of the 'creatively horrible death' queue.

So an hour or so later a big old motley crew descend on the Zombie abode, ranging from beefy grey-bearded bikers with confederate flag patches on their denim waistcoats, to slutty girls, to unattractive redneck sex pests. They are all offered $500 a head to supposedly retrieve Zombie's boat, but he promises $5000 for the head of Crowley. Those who are not instantly scared off by the mention of Crowley swagger off into the swamp with guns a-blazin', certain that they needn't fear a 'children's story'. Famous last words.

The real joy of the Hatchet movies is their youthful vigour, with Adam Green at the helm. Dedicated to old-school effects and a zero-tolerance policy towards CGI, Green's series is characterised by its wickedly creative death scenes and its tongue-in-cheek freshman comedic style. For any good horror fan, it is the ultimately enjoyable combination, that makes for fully-loaded entertainment that allows us to laugh hysterically while marvelling in all the really gruesome FX.

Sweet Hostage (1975)

As Exhibit D in the Linda Blair Victim Files, Sweet Hostage is on a different level to the others. Here, Linda Blair is Doris Mae Withers, and she is by far the spunkiest and most independent of Blair's characters up to that point. While the title conjures up some images of an innocent young girl in a flowing white dress being violated by a slobbering psychopath (and not all of these connotations are unfounded), the extent to which Blair's character is a victim, or even really a hostage, is very minimal indeed, and this is by the will of both the lead characters in this surprisingly moving two-hander.


Linda stars alongside veteran Martin Sheen, whose paternity over several of the Brat Pack is so wonderfully obvious from the offset. It is like Sheen is creating a living, breathing mold for what his son(s) would become, and when I say this, I think, of course, of Charlie. Here, Sheen plays a manically sophisticated escaped mental patient with a penchant for romantic poetry, and a tendency towards the occasional flip-out. He has that sort of omniscient life force about him, an energy and buzz that seems superhuman, in the same league as Jack Nicholson, that makes anything he does simply fascinating to witness.

Blair and Sheen make a remarkably formidable pair. They have such chemistry from their very first encounter, a sort that, despite the great talent of these two actors, surely goes beyond make believe. In the same eerily ever-present way that Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling had such simmering sexual tension in a beauty-beast relationship, this sweet 15-year-old and this eccentric stranger 20 years her senior have a tangible connection that enables their entire story to ease by, under unspoken promise of meaningfulness. As it turns out, Linda Blair later revealed in an interview that she fell in love with Sheen whilst filming.

Doris Mae starts off the film as a young tomboy, living in some rural Southern town, where she chatters with the locals with familiarity, but acts as an exasperated onlooker throughout her parents' frequent conflicts at home. She generally seems her normal happy self when she is away from the farm where she lives. In the opening sequence, we are introduced to Leonard Hatch (Sheen), a gallant fellow who bows and recites poetic stanzas for the ladies. He is also on the run from a not too harsh-looking mental institution, and blends in remarkably well: he seems to be one of those selective psychopaths, who knows when to play it cool, which is why Doris Mae thinks nothing of hitching a ride with him when her truck breaks down.

After a little engaging banter, it becomes evident that Leonard does not plan to drop his new Lady Fair off at the farm. Yet Doris Mae is no victim. She insists on holding the power over her captor. "If you're gonna rape me, just pull over and get it over with!" she demands. But Leonard has no such vulgar intentions. His intentions may be rather unclear, but if anything, he seems more in want of a companion, and perhaps a pupil, to whom he can impart all of the romantic wisdom deemed by the doctors to be illness.

The pair live together in a little abandoned farm, and grow to love each other. It says all you need to know about rural Southern towns in the '70s when the thing that causes authorities to be alarmed to a possible kidnapping is Sheen's character purchasing women's clothes at a store. For whatever reason, the store girl deems this highly suspicious/inappropriate and calls the police, who seem to share her suspicions enough to pursue this women's-clothes-buying deviant. It also says all you need to know that this incident demonstrates more effort to save Doris than her parents ever do. But Doris doesn't need or want saving, and the inevitable fallout of the law's involvement turns the story into a sort of Romeo and Juliet tragedy.

For what some might deem an exploitation picture typical of the mid-'70s TV movie scene, Sweet Hostage is a poignant and touching film that deserves much wider viewing and acclaim than it has ever received. Blair and Sheen carry the movie flawlessly, and seemingly without much need for direction, and make one of the most sweet and unconventional romantic couples of lost cinema.

The Craft (1996)

The Craft has something of a notorious place within my existence. As I have written before, my parents were hippies and Wiccans, and I was raised within the Pagan community for the first eight-or-so years of my life. When my Mum's Catholic piano teacher died of cancer around that time, my mother, for whatever reason, had some metanoia and suddenly became a Catholic and insisted on taking me and my younger siblings with me - causing much turmoil between Mum and me in my early adolescence. My dad continued as a privately practicing Pagan, telling my sister Relly and me every night and every time we said goodbye 'Goddess bless you'. He continues to do so to this day.


When I was 12, my awesome stepsister was 'babysitting' me and Rell one night, and showed us the movie The Craft. I started making mental connections, and one day confronted my mother, 'Were we Wiccans?' and she was very quick to shut down the conversation. A year later, I was well-studied in Wicca and had had many informative discussions with my old man, and considered myself a practicing Wiccan. One day I made the mistake of mentioning The Craft to my Mum and she went ballistic, and confiscated my video of the movie. Upon my fifteenth birthday (the movie is a 15 certificate in the UK), I rebelliously flaunted my very own DVD copy, with the knowledge that legally my mother couldn't stop me!

Of all old favourite movies, The Craft remains mostly unchanged in my estimations over the years: it is not a great movie, but it's a bloody good teen movie that many millions hold dear as a cult favourite. Sarah (Robin Tunney) has moved to some town from San Francisco with her father and stepmother. Their house is the perfect modern witch house, and on the rainy day they move in, Sarah is confronted by a local bum carrying a snake. Her father chases him off the property. When she starts at the local Catholic school - where the kids have to wear uniform - she attracts the attention of Wiccan trio Nancy (the gorgeous Fairuza Balk), Bonnie (Neve Campbell in the midst of her '90s peak) and Rochelle (Rachel True), who sense that Sarah is the 'fourth' that they have been seeking to complete their ritualistic circle.

Although the girls get off to a bumpy start after introducing Sarah to their shoplifting habits at a local occult store, they quickly become close friends and develop their cumulative powers. Meanwhile, jock Chris (Skeet Ulrich, also of Scream), has expressed an interest in Sarah, but spreads vicious rumours about her the day after she turns down his invitation to go back to his house. Chris, having previously done something similar to Nancy, draws both the contempt of the circle and the infatuation of Sarah, and his subjectivity to their powers is ultimately his undoing.

The girls each pursue their individual angsts with their newly developed powers: they are good characters in their own contexts, and played well by their respective actors, and they have a fabulous chemistry as an ensemble, which we all know is of high importance to any good teen movie. Although the actors were all into their 20s at the least (Rachel True was actually 30, and has aged incredibly in the years since!), they really invoke that high school feeling that any adolescent can identify with, and as a teenager, I loved that I saw parallels between the girls and myself. There is rage, and jealousy, and rivalry, and social frustration, and who hasn't been there, and felt that it was the end of the world?

Of course, The Craft is somewhat exaggerated in the realities of Pagan practice. I have never known of a Pagan who could carry out the tricks that these girls do, because that's not how magick works. It's about the use of energies and the powers of nature, it's not about levitation and metamorphosis and casting hallucinations. But the fantastical quality that the fictionally 'witchy' theme brings is a brilliant way to tie the whole picture together, and to visually manifest the raging hormones and firey emotions of a group of teenagers. The Craft is no masterpiece, but it is exactly what it sets out to be: a highly relatable and entertaining teen movie, and it is very dear to me.