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.