Blair Witch (2016)

I’d be willing to bet that few proper film fans out there were actually excited when a third Blair Witch movie was made – I wasn’t, but I figured it was going to be an hour and a half’s worth of moderately-entertaining stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily regret watching.

There are few movies out there with quite the cult status of The Blair Witch Project: although a tried-and-tested schtick even in the ‘90s, the concept of a film that blurred the lines between fiction and reality really hit home hard, especially when it coincided with the true advent of the internet. The web provided never-before-exploited marketing opportunities, and step by step, the makers had assembled something of a snuff film whose authenticity could be verified by all other sources – as well as the fact that the ‘actors’ seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. It was a true sensation, the likes of which has barely been emulated, if at all, since.  This is why it was a bold choice for a sequel, especially since the first one flew very much under the radar, and no one had ever attempted anything like it since.

The premise of the film is that James (James Allan McCune), the younger brother of Heather Donahue - our original protagonist of the dribbly nostril and considerable lung capacity – was a small child when his sister disappeared, and all these years later is using the mystery for his friend Lisa (Callie Hernandez) to base her college film project on. James has spent an unspecified time obsessing over the idea that his sister is still alive in the haunted woods of Burkittsville, prompting him to mull over mysterious internet videos and other clues that might affirm his suspicions.

 

His online musings have seen him make contact with a guy who uploaded mysterious footage of a woman running through a house that police searches of the area could never locate. Despite the woman’s face obviously not being that of Heather Donahue, this video gives James all the motivation he needs, and he sets out to team up with the internet guy to find his totally-still-alive sister. Where would a horror movie be without an overambitious assumption to set the ball rolling?

For diversity and that insulting bit of tokenism, they bring two black friends along – Peter (Brandon Scott) and Ashley (Corbin Reid) – whose sole purpose, it seems, is to complain about the imminent danger they are in. Oh, well, and of course to be the first ones to die. You didn’t think we’d moved past that old chestnut, didya? Not one black death, but two. This must be some kind of record.

This being a thoroughly modern murder mashup, the kids come prepared. Where Heather, Josh and Mike had weighty mid ‘90s VHS film equipment to lug around, these guys have earpiece cameras that don’t fall out, handheld cameras, GPS, cell phones, walkie-talkies and even a drone: about as well prepared for potential supernatural encounters as you can be. Equipment-wise, at least.

You remember that episode of South Park in which the plotline of the latest Indiana Jones movie is compared to our favourite archaeologist being sexually assaulted by Spielberg and Lucas? You might make a similar comparison with Blair Witch. Post-Millennial horror has become an incredibly formulaic experience, with a standard that is a million miles from everything that the original movie was, and it seems that the makers just couldn’t help themselves when it came to ‘modernising’ the beloved product. First night there are creepy noises outside – guy sits up to investigate – BOOM! It’s only his friend descending in a loud and stupidly unannounced fashion on his tent. It’s like the camping version of ‘Oh, its only the cat. Phew!’ Ashley cuts her foot when they decide to wade barefoot (?!) through a river, only for a closer inspection to reveal *GASP* something wiggling under her skin! Is this Blair Witch or fucking Alien? This whole build-up for no pay off is not only a waste, but totally ill-fitted to the genre.

The final act of the movie is where it loses all its rhythm. One of the major strengths of the original Blair Witch movie is that basically all of the horrors were unseen, so by the end we are not only terrified, but wondering quite what went on. What did happen to Josh? Why was Mike not fighting? Who left the goodies outside their tent? One thing we can establish onscreen is that all the action is contained within a very real and reliable world. Sure, they get lost in the woods and go round in circles, but that’s easy to do. Blair Witch decides to go down a more definitive route, and takes a leaf out of the book of…well, basically every found footage movie to be made in the past 15 years that took place in some sort of abandoned building. Grave Encounters et al.

The morning hours come but it is eternal darkness outside. We see tents being thrown through the air by unseen forces. Characters age years in a matter of hours. Yup, it’s one of those time- and space-bending theories that sounds like it should have a technical name but I haven’t managed to find it. Once again, it’s overkill. Being preyed upon by an unseen malevolent entity through seemingly endless woods is bad enough, and this twist really does nothing to enhance the plot – it just feels disjointed, like a rejected transplant organ.

The Blair Witch Project followed in the footsteps of some of the best horror/thrillers of our time, by using that classic Hitchcockian technique of keeping the antagonist off-camera. Psycho and Jaws are great examples of this, and the sheer horror created by The Blair Witch Project relied very heavily on letting our imaginations do the work. We were fed many influences, from the opening interviews with local townspeople and other folklore, giving us a haunting image of the witch and her atrocities, and we were taunted with terrifying sounds and the characters’ reactions to their surroundings. Never once did we see the Witch. Was she even real? This is the kind of direction strong horrors take.

Not only does Blair Witch break this golden rule, but it changes the story. You’ll recall Mary Brown telling Heather, Mike and Josh about her childhood encounter with the witch, and describing her as being a person covered in fur-like hair, whose feet never touched the ground. Lane and Talia - the internet guy and his girlfriend - shit all over this long-held impression, instead telling us that the Witch’s death at the hands of the townspeople saw her stripped naked and suspended from a tree, rocks weighing her arms and legs down - effectively a makeshift rack. When we finally get a look at the Witch (which we never should), she is the standard product of a modern horror movie: a pale, long-limbed humanoid that we have seen in a million other supernatural horror movies this side of the Millennium.

Research informs me that director Simon Barrett tried to make out like this creature wasn’t actually the witch, leading fans to deduce that this creature may in fact have been Heather, mutilated and controlled by the Witch. I call BS on this one, for the reason that Barrett made his utter ignorance of the entire Blair Witch mythology known in the DVD featurette exploring the sets. He seemed under the impression that the original house was still standing ‘somewhere in Maryland’, but this assumption seemed to have no bearing on his decision to build a set to replicate it (even though the set doesn’t replicate it at all). 

Were he any sort of fan, he would know that the historic Griggs House in Granite was demolished some years ago, before which it had gained a considerable cult following, with fans exploring and recreating classic scenes for their own photo albums. He struck me, sadly, as the type to rewrite history because he was too cool or important to actually learn the facts. After the film got a lukewarm reception – with many critics and fans agreeing that the introduction of the creature onscreen killed all tension – I reckon he was just looking to create a bit of a stir, which his ‘revelation’ managed to do. This reckless style of his is evident throughout the movie, always trying to add themes or take the mythology in a new direction, or just start again from scratch. His script is puzzling, and not in the good way that actually encourages theorisation, but in the bad way that is simply incoherent.

The Dyatlov Pass Incident [AKA Devil's Pass] (2013)

I feel bad for Renny Harlin: has any other relatively mainstream director ever been so consistently middle-of-the-road throughout a thirty-odd-year filmmaking career? Boasting five Razzie nominations for Worst Director, and of course, the Guinness-certified Biggest Box Office Flop of All Time (Cutthroat Island), Harlin has done well just to keep working in this business. But the saddest part is that he obviously has real talent: almost all of his pictures have some strong elements, and often, they seem like great movies from a distance. But they are always plagued with silly little problems that bring the main product down. Consider Deep Blue Sea: even on its release it was the go-to shark movie after Jaws, and it has maintained a strong cult following, at least among my own generation. But despite the movie’s many strengths, it is difficult to forget the critical reception, or to forget what we all knew: it was a silly, silly film, with many logical inconsistencies. This, sadly, is a pattern that seems to stalk Harlin throughout his career. 

With the Dyatlov Pass Incident (A.K.A. Devil’s Pass), Harlin had rather unique opportunity to really have fun. For anybody not familiar with the events of 1959 in the Ural Mountains, a group of nine students – all experienced hikers and mountaineers – set out on a trek and never came back. A short time later, rescue teams found all nine dead, under mysterious circumstances. Some were partially undressed, some had massive internal injuries without any outer trace of struggle, and examination of their tent found it had been cut open from the inside and fled from in the middle of the night. No official explanation has ever been offered, in spite of rampant speculation and conspiracy theory – ranging from yeti and UFO to military experiment and infrasound – making this incident an absolute dream to turn into a film, which nobody has ever done. And Harlin, in his classic style, starts off well and ends well, but loses his footing somewhere in between.

It’s a found footage movie, which is just as laborious a filmmaking technique as any other nowadays. In fact it is the Dolly Parton of filmmaking: you have no idea how expensive it is to look this cheap! Behind the scenes featurettes show Harlin crawling around in the snow looking for the most appropriate camera angles, crossing off requirements and scenes from the storyboards – FF is a surprisingly technical process. Unfortunately for the most part, this movie underutilises the format, which in the second act seems to simply serves as a means to masking breaks in continuity. A good FF will take advantage of the moods and emotions you can create by adopting a handheld POV (The Blair Witch Project), but almost nothing here is done with this extra dimension. At least until the end.

So how would Dyatlov Pass and FF go together? Ding-ding-ding ‘College documentary project’! Holly (Holly Goss) reckons she’s 21 when she’s at least a decade past that, and has had Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters-style premonitions of the Ural Mountains all her life. She has apparently been given a project grant by the University of ARE-gan where she is a student (she and almost all the actors are British and acting American, and Goss’ accent is slippery at best). So she takes a few friends to Russia and off they hike. Either Holly is very disoriented with her facts, or the writers made the least effort possible to change key information, as she recounts the Dyatlov Pass events inaccurately, attributing one victim's injuries to another and so forth. 

The group's overnight stay at the site where the Dyatlov group's bodies were found kicks off the horror but doesn't keep it going. Explosions set off an avalanche that kills one and breaks the legs of another of Holly's friends, but not only are they now fighting for survival with no equipment in some seriously harsh conditions, they are also subject to what lies behind the mysterious door Holly found in the side of the mountain. Here Harlin goes and stamps his trademark silliness all over what was shaping up to be a respectable picture. And it's not even the time travel twist that bothers me: it's a good twist, as limited as my comprehension of time paradoxes is. What bothers me is the introduction of lurking humanoid creatures. As I told about in my review of the sequel Blair Witch, as a modern horror viewer I am sick to death of lanky, pale, glowing-eyed, quadroped humanoid creatures. From I Am Legend and The Descent to basically every creature movie of this decade, it has been done a thousand times, and never very distinctively. Come up with a new monster, or do a different kind of horror.

It happens that these monsters are relative to the time travel theme, but even then, they are badly done with CGI and suddenly bring the entire quality of the movie down. I actually sighed and rolled my eyes, it was so poor. This idiotic Resident Evil-style sequence takes place, and it's nowhere near as terrifying as, say, the chase by the hooded and armed assailants who originally chased them was. The entire movie could have done much better were it not for the creature feature.

People on discussion boards have presented an interesting array of ideas and interpretations that the time travel theme has prompted, as well as on how sloppily it is executed. The second act of the movie takes on that annoying horror habit of telling rather than showing. So the remaining characters talk the audience through their patchy theory on what is going on and what they should do next. For example, tell me what's wrong with this suggestion: they theorise that the wormhole they have discovered will take them anywhere that they think of hard enough, so they should think of the place that's freshest in their minds that they recall vividly, for the best chances of success; they decide on outside of the door, on the side of the mountain. Answer: well, everything. Let's assume their theory that the wormhole can take them anywhere is somehow correct. How do we know all you have to do is picture your destination to get there? Secondly, if they are going for a place that they can recall vividly, how about home, thousands of miles away from this hellish situation? How about anywhere but back out into the Russian wilderness with still no supplies or equipment? What exactly is the plan once they get back out onto the side of the mountain, where they managed to lock out the two hooded assailants earlier? 

Just this face... for 90 long minutes

Renny Harlin seems to suffer from over-confidence. His behind-the-scenes dialogue always boasts of things we don't see as an audience: how frightening that scene was, how fantastically talented the actors were. Here he was determined to hire unknowns (that's fine, lots of horrors like to do that), but he also reckons that they were the cream of the crop. Performances are mediocre at best, but the prize here goes to Holly Goss for being terrible. She never ever seems scared when she finds herself in terrifying situations, and has this gormless look on her face throughout. Plus, as early implied, her accent is not great. 

You know what this movie should have been? An account of the real Dyatlov group and their doomed expedition, without the found footage format. Just a straight up narrative of what we know happened, and then perhaps a fictionalised account of what could have caused the group to flee their tent and eventually die. Because the appeal of the Dyatlov Pass incident is that it is a real life event that still doesn't make much sense, and feels like one of those unsolvable mysteries. There you have your perfect movie! You don't need to modernise it and make it about American college students for it to be interesting. 

Grave Encounters 2 (2012)

What’s the best sequel of all time? While it may not be Grave Encounters 2, I would argue that it’s one of the strongest horror sequels we’ve had for some time. If I’m honest, I remember little of the first movie, but this is for good reason. It is one of a slurry of found footage horrors based on paranormal investigator TV crews getting lost in the bowels of an abandoned hospital/asylum/prison, and how often has a movie like this turned out a truly memorable character that you can instantly distinguish without having to subconsciously label them Brunette 1 and Brunette 2? The first Grave Encounters is one of these, and it’s a lot of fun and has plenty of good jump scares; the sequel manages to top itself by taking on the same fictitious reality as used in the Blair Witch Project 2, in which the first movie is acknowledged as a movie.

Alex (Richard Harmon) is an uptight obsessive who is working on his own horror movie while

Nothing unsettling about this guy

becoming engrossed in the mysteries surrounding the movie Grave Encounters, and soon abandons his own project in favour of an investigative piece, in which he aims to prove that the movie was reality and that a whole TV crew are dead by ghostly means. OK, let’s take an obligatory moment right here to appreciate the one eventuality that characters in these sorts of plotlines always seem to take for granted: they go somewhere dangerous and creepy to prove that ghosts exist, and then when they get that startling proof, they are far from overjoyed. In fact, one might venture to say that they bite off more than they can chew in the ghost-hunting business and give Yvette Fielding a run for her money on the screamometer. One time it might be cool for one of these crews to actually show some sort of spiritual efficiency when faced with ghosts.

19th century-style filmmaking

Anyhow, Alex brings along his small crew of friends and they break into the same abandoned asylum. But this isn’t just any asylum, this is a shapeshifting, time-bending asylum from M&S, so prepare for the mindfucks. What really made me look again at this movie was the featurette on the DVD, which gives you behind the scenes footage and interviews with director John Poliquin and writers/producers The Vicious Brothers. Part of a small gaggle of modern horrormakers that miss the spit-and-sawdust levels of filming and reach into the past for their inspiration, the Vicious Brothers detail the tremendous technical measure that goes into making a movie look so small-scale, and the box of tricks they use to pull it all off, including such Victorian wonders as forced perspective. Consider, for example, the simple genius that goes into designing a shot in which a creature twice the size of the characters comes crashing down a corridor like a huge house spider, by using a particularly tall and lanky actor in a scaled-down set. It’s just pure excellence.

A supernatural version of a Welcome Mat

There is further method to the madness: by introducing the building as a weird entity that seems to dangle between dimensions and is capable of manipulation, all classic audience reactions are suspended. The hackneyed knowledge of running outside instead of upstairs or not believing the bad guy is really dead is long forgotten once physical rules no longer apply, leaving the audience with little option but to sit tight and hope for the best. It’s filmed very well, and FF opponents will have to try harder than the ‘shaky camera’ excuse with this one, as it’s coherent even given the context. It is a gripping and watchable movie, and has a couple of really fantastic Oh Shit moments, which are particularly important in a film that is brimming with jump scares.

I suppose it would be beneficial to watch Grave Encounters before embarking on this interesting sequel, and if you’re here and interested in the sorts of movies I write about, it probably wouldn’t be a waste of 90 minutes of your life. But if all else fails, watch it so you can watch the second one and get it, because it’s a really good movie, and a rare example of a sequel outshining its predecessor. 

Wrong Turn 2 (2007)

Star of the show, Mr Wayne Robson

Wrong Turn has got to be one of my favourite post-millennium horrors. I don’t think it has anything to do with my longtime love of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or any of its contemporaries, but don’t mutated hillbillies make excellent villains? When Roger Ebert reviewed the remake of The Hills Have Eyes, he humorously and very knowingly detailed his concept of the Wrong Gas Station, which has applied to horror movies for decades, and applies to Wrong Turn: a ramshackle arrangement of cracked wooden planks that looks torn straight out of the ‘40s, with a crackly old hick in denim dungarees as its proprietor, who is always trusted despite his ominous nature and deliberate attempts to have his customers picked off by hick associates. You’d think the only gas station for miles around would make the most of its meagre custom – fat cigar stumps don’t pay for themselves, you know!

Ain't nobody got time for that!

The first Wrong Turn is a fun, tense, creepy movie with some great effects and good actors (Jeremy Sisto’s hair, anyone?). It’s one of those movie series, rather like Final Destination, at which you can look and wonder exactly when the makers decided they were not making a serious movie anymore. The first one can pass for pretty much straight horror slasher; the second decides to take it from a more wink-wink-nudge-nudge approach, both in theme and in specifics. The central disdain for the curse that is reality TV allows us all to share a laugh about the ludicrousness of modern media, while the hideously inventive death sequences allow us to share a laugh about the ludicrousness of modern splatter.

Wrong Turn 2, I assume, takes place in a location close to the first one, and is centred on a group of (mostly) dickheads who are taking part in a survivalist reality show. Among them is the slut, the horny pest punching way above his weight, the mousy girl and the moronic male – classic lineup. Tokens include a black guy who survives and a hot lesbian who doesn’t. Heading the gang is the Colonel (Henry Rollins), a retired Marine who plays to the camera but fights like a champ. The first fantastic kill has taken place before the opening credits, and kicks things straight off with over-the-top deaths constructed with amazing effects and buckets of corn syrup blood. One thing you can always count on Wrong Turn for is memorable death sequences.

Before long, the local family of mutated hillbillies (which now extends beyond the original’s freaky fraternal trio to include…girl hillbillies!) are wreaking havoc and pulling contestants apart with their unnatural strength and durability, but certainly not missing out on any opportunities to fuck each other and birth worm-like babies. These are, after all, no ordinary hillbillies like the banjo kid in Deliverance; these are genetically-mutated cannibal hillbillies who have an unhealthily iron-rich diet and could definitely do with some vegetables. And that means that brothers fuck sisters in public places and sisters birth incest babies that consume toxic waste from a bottle. Although this family of hillbillies seems to have actually learned to speak a few words, they do still do a lot of their stupid manic laughter and hollering.

What can I say? Wrong Turn 2 just gives and keeps on giving for any good horror fan. Tons of splatter, lots of unexpected moments and an outstandingly good performance from Wayne Robson as Old Timer, the shrill patriarch of the family. There are characters you root for, and others whose untimely deaths you anticipate with bated breath. It’s fun, fast-paced, well filmed and done with enthusiasm as a directorial debut from Joe Lynch, and a very worthy successor of the original Wrong Turn.

Bitter Moon (1992)

Boy, don't you hate it when you really like something, and everybody else decries it as absolute shit? You feel like you're seeing something they aren't. Or they're seeing something you aren't. It's a weird feeling. And as I looked up the reviews of Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon, my heart sank. Were we watching the same movie? Not only was there barely anything on the net about the movie (no interviews, few reviews...), but everybody (thankfully, except Ebert) hated it, and I just didn't get it.

I had developed a real admiration for Polanski's work from his early films - Repulsion (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Tess (1979) being my favourites. When browsing on Netflix late one night, I came across Bitter Moon, and took it on because I love Polanski movies, and wanted to give Hugh Grant one last chance to prove some acting skills beyond being his usual dithery English twat of a self. Well, my first motivation was ultimately supported. The second was an unsurprising let down.

Grant plays Nigel, who is exactly like every other guy he has ever played. He wears dodgy suits, stutters and grins a lot, and recites lengthy apologies when leaving a game of cards, as the other players ignore him entirely. He is on board a cruise ship with his wife Fiona, played by Kristin Scott Thomas as most of the other women she has ever played. She is stiff, matriarchal, cold and at times cunning. They are attempting to conquer the seven year itch with a trip to India, an aim not eased by the sudden presence of gorgeous, mysterious french woman Mimi. Mimi is played by Polanski's beautiful wife Emmanuelle Seigner, whom he has directed several other times, and she is an absolute siren. As her doomed lover later describes, she has a sexual maturity and a childish naivete.

That night on deck, Nigel is set about by a loud Yankie cripple, Oscar, played by Peter Coyote, who is one of those types who imposes themselves on you with their dramatic demeanours. He begins to inflict his lifestory on Nigel over glasses of whiskey, teasing him with acknowledgement of his lust for Mimi, and promising that if Nigel will hear his story, he can have her.

The script, by Polanski, Gerard Brach and John Brownjohn (great name, by the way, John) is based on the beautiful french novel Lunes de fiel by Pascal Bruckner, which I bought and read after falling for this movie, as I am a moderately talented french-speaker who finds great practise in french literature and a dictionary. Polanski diverts a little more from his original source than is characteristic of his work: Rosemary's Baby and Tess, both around three hours in length, take their time and stay remarkably loyal to the novels upon which they are based. It is a quality I truly admire about Polanski. He does not condense: he is a caring storyteller who makes sure everything is taken into account, and hence succeeds in creating as vivid a world on screen as those on the page, film after film.

However, the powerful themes of Bitter Moon are bold, aggressive, primal. I believe I enjoyed this movie so much because it seemed to quite uncannily remind me of myself in years past. This is not an easy thing to admit, as Oscar and Mimi, both of whom begin as starcrossed Parisian lovers and show promise of lifelong affection, are ultimately wretched people. This is not necessarily their faults. Not all the time. But in coming to this conclusion, we are guided by the stark way in which Polanski addresses human behaviour and emotion.

Though Nigel and Fiona end up playing an interestingly pivotal role in the film's finale, Mimi and Oscar are the real focus, with Nigel playing the fourth wall to which the story is narrated. Oscar introduces his story some years earlier, where he is a middle-aged writer, living his dream Hemingway Paris life on a trust fund left by his pioneer grandfather. He is full of life and poetry and exuberance, and looking to write the masterpiece that will finally get him published. One day on a bus, he notices a beautiful young woman, 'my sorceress in white sneakers', who cannot find her ticket. Oscar slips her his, and takes the fine from the conductor. His romantic mind is besotted, and he stalks the city and the bus route looking for her. He finally bumps into her in a restaurant, and asks her out. Thus their touching romance begins.

In this movie, at the age of 26, Emmanuelle Seigner achieves that incredible balance, also achieved by the likes of Linda Blair, Catherine Deneuve and Britt Ekland, of being both terribly cute and thrillingly sexy. It's in the look and the nature, and it is so rare to fall dead in the middle of the spectrum, but it can create some fascinating onscreen characters, as all these actresses proved throughout their careers. When we first see Mimi on the bus, she is schoolgirl-like. She has long, straight, blonde hair and flat shoes, and her gaze is downcast. Her blossoming sexuality creeps in, from the low cut leotard and mini skirt she wears on their first date, to the sensational way she holds a baguette in the elevator. It is nicely escalated by a brilliantly memorable scene involving milk, a well timed toaster and George Michael's 'Faith'.

Oscar's life, or the imagery Polanski and cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli present it with, is as extravagant and poetic as his narration of it. Although I revel in the romantic way Oscar describes Mimi's vagina to Nigel, others I have watched with have not hesitated to laugh. Oscar's increasingly outrageous antics are at times quite laughable, but as his narration reminds us, he doesn't care what we think, because nobody could hate him more than he does himself. Moreover, he wants us to know him truthfully; he is committed to this cause. It plays out with the sense of Oscar taking some quasi-grandiose opportunity to record his memoir, even if it is only in the single mind of the single man to whom he tells it.

As our preliminary introductions to Mimi and Oscar have revealed, their current selves are considerably different to the two lovers at the beginning of Oscar's story. For one thing, Oscar was able-bodied enough to fuck for several days straight, and is now a paraplegic. For another, that timid city girl Mimi now wears voluminous curls, smoky makeup and slinky dresses, and loves to thrash about on the cruise ship dance floor. They have separate cabins and Oscar is content with an open relationship. What has gotten them both to this stage? And why is it so important for Nigel to hear, when Oscar has already declared that he does not begrudge Mimi seeking elsewhere 'that which I cannot provide'?

Now, this is a pretty fucking kinky picture. Among all the embarrassing hoo-haa by bored, unsatisfied housewives and excited students over the terrible Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, I declared that anybody seeking truly erotic and entertaining films should watch two Polanskis: Bitter Moon and Venus in Furs (also starring Seigner, who ignites the screen more than twenty years after playing Mimi). It turns out that both Oscar and Mimi have fairly ravenous sexual appetites, and fairly adventurous tendencies to match. And anybody who's ever visited Paris can attest to it being one of Europe's sex shop capitals (if it's not, I'm surprised: my partner Leon was amused to see a namesake sex shop there!) - so the next chapter of their affair commences: S&M.

In the course of this chapter, two major forces occur: the S&M gives way to cruelty which lies in a grey area between kink and abuse; and Oscar declares with their increasingly outside-the-box sexual experiments, that they were approaching 'sexual bankruptcy'. Their collaborative need for more eventually outdoes them, and the great love of Oscar's life is dead, and seemingly his soul along with it. When Mimi no longer presents any sexual potential, he casts her off, leaving her heartbroken and eventually so desperate for him that she is willing to do anything.

The formerly dormant cruelty and pomposity in Oscar's nature comes to fruition, and he decides to play a game with Mimi: if she won't leave willingly, he'll torment her into wanting to leave. Oscar is very different to almost any male movie character to find himself in a situation similar to this. The Rom-Com approach would be to give in to the woman's desperation, and live an unwanted and unfulfilling lifestyle to satisfy her, because hey, her behaviour is quirky. The Thriller and/or Horror approach would be to, well... take a leaf out of Limey Lyney's book and make Fatal Attraction; just bump her off, because it makes for good tension and means the man can go off and live his life. But as truly thrilling as Bitter Moon is, it takes the dramatic route: the one that is neither end of the spectrum, and settles for the ways real people might actually behave in such a situation.

Oscar is no 30 year-old pretty boy who tells hushed tales of his abusive parents in a husky whisper, in justification of his being an asshole as an adult. Nor can he say that he has been wronged by Mimi. His response to Mimi's neediness is not revenge, it's mere reaction. He is an asshole, and he knows it. He vocally encourages Nigel, and us, to go ahead and hate him, as he has hit that wall of self-loathing in which no further damage can possibly be endured, or dispensed. So what can be done in order to correct the hatred we feel towards Oscar? Well, Mimi needs her turn.

After demoralising and tormenting her into a quivering state, and ditching her on a plane headed for some exotic island following a botched abortion he insisted upon, Oscar really has it coming to him. Is he redeemable? And if so, is it only because of the pity we can't help but feel for this wretched individual? Mimi makes a surprise return from the exotic island, where she has been for so long that her former lover assumed he was free and clear, and is her new self, with the skirts and the make up. And, living up to the classic noir femme fatale role, she has devised her own plan of action, in which the power swaps hands, and we see Oscar suffer equal humiliation, bringing around some sort of karmic balance.

Bitter Moon is one of those movies I watch with some regularity, because it is just so damn gripping. It is emotionally enticing and wild and is so wonderfully unconventional.

Edgeplay: A Film about The Runaways (2004)

L-R: Cherie, Jackie, Joan, Lita, Sandy

The Runaways are my favourite band. I mean, Bowie's my favourite solo artist, no questions, but when it comes to a group of musicians who rocked hard, put on amazing shows and made their mark on the industry, The Runaways cannot be beat for me. Despite my classic rock upbringing and at the time budding love of the '70s, I had not heard The Runaways' music until 2010. Fans will know that this was when Floria Sigismondi's movie about the band, starring Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart was released. That summer, I was watching E! News (don't judge me), and was nothing short of captivated by the sudden sight of 15-year-old Fanning in a corset and stockings, singing to a crowd of screaming teens with a rock band. I had to know more. The movie The Runaways got a very limited release in the UK, but I tracked down a local cinema that was playing it for about two days, and was treated to an empty theatre!

I loved the movie, and it got me hooked on a few of the band's signature songs. But it was when I started looking into the real Runaways that I fell in love. They were five girls of no more than 17 years old when, in mid-70s LA, they were found by maniacal music producer Kim Fowley, who put them together and worked them like 'dogs' (as he so often referred to them), and made them a controversial overnight sensation. The band's run was short but fierce, and it broke barriers and paved the way for generations of female musicians to come. By 1980, they had all gone their own separate ways, to various fates. But their story is an amazing one, and in 2002, one-time bassist Vicky Blue (or Victory Tischler-Blue) had got into filmmaking, and decided to document the rise and fall of The Runaways.

Although there were a few lineup changes in the very early and late chapters of The Runaways' life, the band is mainly remembered as five key members: Joan Jett (who you may have heard of, I say sarcastically) was the engine, lead songwriter, rhythm guitarist and occasional singer; Lita Ford, who also went on to a long musical career, rocked out lead guitar; Jackie Fox, now an attorney, was on bass; the late great Sandy West worked magic on the drums; and one of the most memorable frontmen in band history took centre stage on lead vocal in the form of Cherie Currie.

All very different girls, but together they constituted a miracle formula for grimy, hardcore, teen-angst rock. Looking back at my own fifteen-year-old self, what The Runaways actually achieved is all the more phenomenal. I was lead singer and bassist in a band at fifteen, and was only asked to play bass because I stood like such an awkward moron when only singing. I would be the first to admit that I had no charisma, and no stage presence. The Runaways were each determined, for one reason or another, to make it big, and each drew major inspiration from key idols: Jett's was Suzi Quatro, Ford's was Richie Blackmore, Jackie Fox loved Gene Simmons, and Currie obsessed over Bowie (girl after my own heart). These teen girls took to the stage, time after time, and did things no other band was doing. Their signature song Cherry Bomb was often performed by Cherie in her trademark corset and stockings, and they were thanked for their efforts with such critical reviews as 'these bitches suck'.

I acknowledge that the '70s wasn't totally rainbows, sunshine, free sex and dollar-acid. It was a key time for the feminist movement, and many industry professionals were at best taken aback and at worst utterly pissed off that females, and not even adult ones at that, were trying to strut their platform boots all over the male stomping ground. So the band was bearing the brunt of a lot of criticism and outrage, but they were 16 and 17 years old, so they reacted with a massive middle finger. But as awesome as the situation sounds - being a talented sixteen-year-old with four wild contemporaries, on the road playing rock gigs - the behind-the-scenes reality was quite different, as Edgeplay shows us.

The one thing Edgeplay is sadly lacking is Joan's participation - for whatever reason, and she is known to be almost suspiciously detached nowadays from a lot of the Runaways stuff. She decided against appearing in the film, or permitting any of her material to be used. This was a major bummer, as about 80% of the band's material is credited to her. I have to admire Vickie Blue's tenacity with pressing forward with the project anyhow, and finding ways around the predicament. It has left some corners cut, with some filler music from Suzi Quatro et al, but audio and video of the band performing songs written either by other members, or other people entirely were a-OK.

Vickie Blue makes a great film here, structurally. Where Sigismondi's quote-unquote biopic was focused almost solely on Joan and Cherie (and steered off the path of truth on more than one occasion), Edgeplay is about the five (or seven, including Vickie and former band songwriter Kari Krome) people who made the band what it was, and chronicles their lives, as narrated by themselves and their parents, and their time together. It also very poignantly looks at the aftermath of The Runaways, which seemed to particularly affect Sandy. Towards the end, we see her close to tears, recounting the terrifying things she'd resorted to in recent years, practically begging the others for a reunion. It's so obvious that the band was her life source, and even twenty years after its demise, it was all she cared about,

As a documentary, Edgeplay is brilliant. Although Vicki Blue directs and asks the odd question on camera, narrative is left to the band members. There is also stock input from that fabulously wired svengali Kim Fowley, who offers his trademark eccentric eloquism (sidenote: Fowley's father Douglas was an actor - he played the exasperated director in Singin' in the Rain) in defense of the various tragedies and successes he was responsible for. And all members interviewed are wonderfully upfront, and Cherie and Sandy's parents offer their perspective as long-distance caregivers, scared for their absent daughters' wellbeing. A very rounded, and at times varied, account is built of the career of The Runaways.

All is held together with some fantastic, grainy old footage of the band, playing live shows, and riding in the backs of cars, and walking through airports, and giving press conferences. It's excellent, evocative stuff. I don't know if a version approaching complete will ever come to be. Cherie's autobiography Neon Angel, a redraft of her original book, is a vivid account of her time with the band, among other things. But to date many intriguing and disgusting perspectives have come to light. Both Kari Krome and Jackie Fox have said Kim Fowley sexually assaulted them. Cherie, after decades of describing Fowley on par with Caligula, brought her cancer-afflicted former manager into her home and cared for him in the months before his death. She and Lita, whose mutual hatred is infamous in the history of the band, have appeared together at an awards ceremony and sung each others' praises. A lot has changed over the years, but Edgeplay is a great combined telling of the story of a significant and, in my opinion, fantastic band, and should be seen by anybody whose soul is either partially or fully comprising of rock.

Edgeplay: A Film about The Runaways (2004)

L-R: Cherie, Jackie, Joan, Lita, Sandy

The Runaways are my favourite band. I mean, Bowie's my favourite solo artist, no questions, but when it comes to a group of musicians who rocked hard, put on amazing shows and made their mark on the industry, The Runaways cannot be beat for me. Despite my classic rock upbringing and at the time budding love of the '70s, I had not heard The Runaways' music until 2010. Fans will know that this was when Floria Sigismondi's movie about the band, starring Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart was released. That summer, I was watching E! News (don't judge me), and was nothing short of captivated by the sudden sight of 15-year-old Fanning in a corset and stockings, singing to a crowd of screaming teens with a rock band. I had to know more. The movie The Runaways got a very limited release in the UK, but I tracked down a local cinema that was playing it for about two days, and was treated to an empty theatre!

I loved the movie, and it got me hooked on a few of the band's signature songs. But it was when I started looking into the real Runaways that I fell in love. They were five girls of no more than 17 years old when, in mid-70s LA, they were found by maniacal music producer Kim Fowley, who put them together and worked them like 'dogs' (as he so often referred to them), and made them a controversial overnight sensation. The band's run was short but fierce, and it broke barriers and paved the way for generations of female musicians to come. By 1980, they had all gone their own separate ways, to various fates. But their story is an amazing one, and in 2002, one-time bassist Vicky Blue (or Victory Tischler-Blue) had got into filmmaking, and decided to document the rise and fall of The Runaways.

Although there were a few lineup changes in the very early and late chapters of The Runaways' life, the band is mainly remembered as five key members: Joan Jett (who you may have heard of, I say sarcastically) was the engine, lead songwriter, rhythm guitarist and occasional singer; Lita Ford, who also went on to a long musical career, rocked out lead guitar; Jackie Fox, now an attorney, was on bass; the late great Sandy West worked magic on the drums; and one of the most memorable frontmen in band history took centre stage on lead vocal in the form of Cherie Currie.

All very different girls, but together they constituted a miracle formula for grimy, hardcore, teen-angst rock. Looking back at my own fifteen-year-old self, what The Runaways actually achieved is all the more phenomenal. I was lead singer and bassist in a band at fifteen, and was only asked to play bass because I stood like such an awkward moron when only singing. I would be the first to admit that I had no charisma, and no stage presence. The Runaways were each determined, for one reason or another, to make it big, and each drew major inspiration from key idols: Jett's was Suzi Quatro, Ford's was Richie Blackmore, Jackie Fox loved Gene Simmons, and Currie obsessed over Bowie (girl after my own heart). These teen girls took to the stage, time after time, and did things no other band was doing. Their signature song Cherry Bomb was often performed by Cherie in her trademark corset and stockings, and they were thanked for their efforts with such critical reviews as 'these bitches suck'.

I acknowledge that the '70s wasn't totally rainbows, sunshine, free sex and dollar-acid. It was a key time for the feminist movement, and many industry professionals were at best taken aback and at worst utterly pissed off that females, and not even adult ones at that, were trying to strut their platform boots all over the male stomping ground. So the band was bearing the brunt of a lot of criticism and outrage, but they were 16 and 17 years old, so they reacted with a massive middle finger. But as awesome as the situation sounds - being a talented sixteen-year-old with four wild contemporaries, on the road playing rock gigs - the behind-the-scenes reality was quite different, as Edgeplay shows us.

The one thing Edgeplay is sadly lacking is Joan's participation - for whatever reason, and she is known to be almost suspiciously detached nowadays from a lot of the Runaways stuff, she decided against appearing in the film, or permitting any of her material to be used. This was a major bummer, as about 80% of the band's material is credited to her. I have to admire Vickie Blue's tenacity with pressing forward with the project anyhow, and finding ways around the predicament. It has left some corners cut, with some filler music from Suzi Quatro et al, but audio and video of the band performing songs written either by other members, or other people entirely were a-OK.

Vickie Blue makes a great film here, structurally. Where Sigismondi's quote-unquote biopic was focused almost solely on Joan and Cherie (and steered off the path of truth on more than one occasion), Edgeplay is about the five (or seven, including Vickie and former band songwriter Kari Krome) people who made the band what it was, and chronicles their lives, as narrated by themselves and their parents, and their time together. It also very poignantly looks at the aftermath of The Runaways, which seemed to particularly affect Sandy. Towards the end, we see her close to tears, recounting the terrifying things she'd resorted to in recent years, practically begging the others for a reunion. It's so obvious that the band was her life source, and even twenty years after its demise, it was all she cared about,

As a documentary, Edgeplay is brilliant. Although Vicki Blue directs and asks the odd question on camera, narrative is left to the band members. There is also stock input from that fabulously wired svengali Kim Fowley, who offers his trademark eccentric eloquism (sidenote: Fowley's father Douglas was an actor - he played the exasperated director in Singin' in the Rain) in defense of the various tragedies and successes he was responsible for. And all members interviewed are wonderfully upfront, and Cherie and Sandy's parents offer their perspective as long-distance caregivers, scared for their absent daughters' wellbeing. A very rounded, and at times varied, account is built of the career of The Runaways.

All is held together with some fantastic, grainy old footage of the band, playing live shows, and riding in the backs of cars, and walking through airports, and giving press conferences. It's excellent, evocative stuff. I don't know if a version approaching complete will ever come to be. Cherie's autobiography Neon Angel, a redraft of her original book, is a vivid account of her time with the band, among other things. But to date many intriguing and disgusting perspectives have come to light. Both Kari Krome and Jackie Fox have said Kim Fowley sexually assaulted both of them. Cherie, after decades of describing Fowley on par with Caligula, brought her cancer-afflicted former manager into her home and cared for him in the months before his death. She and Lita, whose mutual hatred is infamous in the history of the band, have appeared together at an awards ceremony and sung each others' praises. A lot has changed over the years, but Edgeplay is a great combined telling of the story of a significant and, in my opinion, fantastic band, and should be seen by anybody whose soul is either partially or fully comprising of rock.

The Sacrament (2013)

Finally, a decent example of post-modern found footage horror. Let us make this the third relevant step in the subgenre thus far: 1) the original and best Cannibal Holocaust by Ruggero Deodato, 2) The Blair Witch Project and 3) Ti West's The Sacrament. These three films have presented to us unimaginable terror through the medium of handheld footage, and have done so to such admirable effect that I feel they warrant this three-step programme in FF.

The synopsis of The Sacrament will almost certainly ring bells for many people. Some people may actually remember the real events upon which the movie is based occurring. I was gripped by the premise of a mockumentary about a guy who is invited by his sister to visit the strange cult village she lives in, and the madness that goes on within. OK, lemme just throw it straight out there. Kool Aid. There we have it: the Jonestown massacre of 1978. Once I'd finished being thrilled to hell by The Sacrament, I went and googled it, and soon found the reason the story seemed so familiar to me, and watched several absolutely soul-crushing documentaries on the tragedy. Let there be no mistake: this movie is, at times, painful to watch, and not in any gratuitous, explicitly savage or violent way, but in often quietly disturbing moments, with a wholly crushing sense of dread building from the outset. It is, in this way, that it is amazingly effective.

For my birthday this year, I was given (after much hinting) the Shameless DVD release of House On The Edge Of The Park by Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust), and whilst powering through the special features, an interesting lecture came up, held by some English film professors, with the director and actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice present. These professors had been commissioned to examine the results of violent movies on audiences, and this was one of the titles they looked at. Their findings were interesting: most people were disturbed by brutality and control inflicted on vulnerable characters. Surprisingly, mostly Ricky. His character is the secondary antagonist, who answers to Alex (David Hess), and he comes across as mentally challenged. Where the audience could, for the most part, accept the violence going on between the fully functioning adults, they were uncomfortable with the young, virginal Cindy getting caught up in the trouble, and the obvious manipulation of a mentally incapacitated man.

The story of Jim Jones, the wacko proprietor of Jonestown, shows bold and consistent themes that ran throughout the guy's life. He always had a knack for sniffing out vulnerable people, who felt outcast and ill-fitting, and giving them a place where they belonged. As a child, he actually was one of those sickos who got off on torturing animals. And when shit hit the fan, the dude ran. The really disturbing element of The Sacrament, rather like with HOTEOTP, is that the victims' vulnerability is what throws them into the arms of evil people. It's a classic abusive relationship. The abuser is dominant, and presents themselves as an escape, a refuge, which the victim dares not try to escape, for fear of what's on the outside being worse than the inside. The relationship is ruled by fear, isolation, insecurity. And what kind of place, we come to ultimately ask, must a person be in to feel like killing themselves, their friends and children, is the best, or only, option.

Something I came to notice only after I had watched this movie and gone on to learn about the incident through documentaries, was that The Sacrament is practically a shot-for-shot recount of the real incident, with names and dates changed to protect those (very very few) still living. Not that this is really necessary, but still...they had to fictionalise something. Patrick (Kentucker Audley) is a photographer, who receives a letter from his recovering addict of a sister Caroline (Amy Seimetz), inviting him to visit her at Eden Parish. It's one of those places that the residents refer to as a 'community' when we know it's a total freakin' cult. Patrick's two buddies, Jake (Joe Swanberg) and Sam (AJ Bowen) are professionals in media and looking for a compelling story.

My boyfriend said to me when the guys first arrive at the 'community', "They have a watchtower. Only one kind of place has a watchtower." While the residents willing to speak to the crew rave about the freedom and peace that their new home has given them, a distinctly ominous tone is set with the introduction of the Jones figure, here named The Father, on the first evening at a village meeting. He has agreed to be interviewed by the guys, luring them into an intense exchange somewhat reminiscent of Dr Lecter's psychic musings. Father is played, with a thrashing undercurrent of menace, by a wonderful actor (ironically) named Gene Jones. A 60-something balding fellow with immeasurable manipulations behind those dark glasses, Father is an astonishing character, played with measure and daring by Jones. He embodies the macabre evil that slowly decays his character, and is frighteningly similar to the real Jones.


As mentioned, the movie is a distinctly accurate reconstruction of the massacre, so the details need not be disclosed here. But the film crew get out alive, as did one or two of Congressman Leo Ryan's people back in '78. But the interactions and manipulations that festered in that town and brought on its imminent demise are painfully crafted by West, leaving the audience gripped in fear and horror and despair. You witness the movie's finale as a desperate, helpless onlooker, mouth hanging open for minutes at a time. If the Titanic had been sank deliberately by a mad captain, the situations would begin to be comparable. It's a level of horror that transcends horror: it's tragedy. As helicopter shots capture the shrinking patchwork of whole families, lying face down on the ground, arms about each other in dying embrace, masses and masses of people, it's like having been plucked from Hell and stuck on a bird's shoulders, to be nothing more than a silent, rescued witness of the aftermath of murder. The Sacrament is utterly sombre, and unforgettable. It is brilliant.

Deep Throat (1972)

Cultural scandal/phenomenon Deep Throat has a place in my life I believe to be unlike that of most other fans. For one thing, I'm 23. The movie is 20 years older than I am, and a lot of people my age are under the false impression that things from our parents' generation are stupid or lame or ugly. Don't worry, I've taken a deep breath and composed myself.... For another thing, porn is probably more easily accessed than decent healthcare nowadays (sad statement) and it has gone to muuuuuuch darker, creepier and distinctly less erotic lengths, which have become the norm for most viewers, i.e. the sexual content, explicit though it is, is way too soft for modern audiences.

But of course, I am a devout appreciator of vintage articles and the contexts within which they were created. My awesome Pop grew up in London in the 1960s, and was one of the original hippie generation, and so we have spent many, many hours over the years talking about those wonderful times, and the things people got up to. He, naturally, was the person from whom I first heard of the movie Deep Throat, and its iconic star Linda Lovelace.

Last week I bagged an original 1974 paperback printing of Inside Linda Lovelace on eBay for £6.50 and read it within a day. You see, odd as it may seem to some, pervy as it may seem to some others (simpletons), in the years since I first heard of the movie, I have read many books and articles, seen many movies, documentaries and interviews, and my interest in the whole Deep Throat - Linda Lovelace thing is significant. Perhaps this wouldn't be quite so the case were it not for Lovelace's crazy, tumultuous existence in and out of the public eye.

She was born Linda Boreman in 1949, and as a young adult met bar owner/photographer/professional creep Chuck 'JR' Traynor, this slimy geezer with the least sexy moustache I ever fucking saw. He taught her meditative techniques, being the self-professed love guru he was, that enabled her to open her throat like a sword-swallower and accommodate a phallus. Not long after the whole Deep Throat craze (which did go on for several years), Linda disappeared and popped up some years later as a distinctly frumpy and domesticated version of her former self, newly married, born again and raging against the porno machine. At the time when the hardcore feminism movement that my mother was once such an avid participant of was at its peak (if you can call it such), Linda was picked up by an odious activist named Gloria Steinem and rode the anti-porn wagon harder than she did Harry Reems. Once that craze had also fizzled, Linda struggled to maintain odd jobs as a divorced retired porn sensation, and several more years later, was doing the convention circuits signing photos, and promoting herself as the star of Deep Throat. She even did a couple of very tame 'glamour' photoshoots for magazines.

There are two sides to the Lovelace record: Side A focused all its energy on creating a stir, and being a general figurehead for the sexually liberated crowd; Side B was probably the first high-profile case of playing the Victim Card. As part and parcel of her mid-'80s feminism kick, the former story of liberation and good vibes became one of apparent torture, rape and control. Linda claimed that Chuck forced her at gunpoint to make all of her movies, threatened the lives of her family etc.etc. Coming to any sort of decision on what really happened has taken a lot of research, and anybody interested in corroborating this should seek out the same materials I did (Lovelace's several books are a twisting tale). But here is the way I see it:

Chuck Traynor was a slimy, over-sexed bastard who got a kick out of being some form of self-professed love guru, and Linda was an overprotected suburban girl from a devoutly Catholic family whose upbringing produced a simultaneous need for rebellion and control from a third party. In honesty, her early porno chic incarnation seemed something of an airheaded one. An old TV interview catches some uptight journalist asking her if her liberal ideas wouldn't cause imminent anarchy. She replies that she doesn't know what anarchy means. Cute, huh? Then, in a move that is sooooooo typical of modern girls, she found people condescended and shamed her for her sexual antics, and decided to totally relieve herself of said shame by blaming it on somebody else.

Almost everybody involved with Linda has denied her allegations of abuse, and their reasoning rings true. New York girls in 1972 didn't take much convincing to do something outrageous and against the grain - there was certainly no need to force anybody at gunpoint to perform in a porn movie. There'd have been a line all the way down the street of free-spirited hippy chicks who figured $1250 dollars for a few days of wild sex was exactly what they were looking for. Moreover, Chuck's later marriage to the era's other porn queen, Marilyn Chambers, painted a very different picture. Marilyn was a very strong-headed woman, who negotiated herself good deals, presented herself well in public, and was free of inhibitions. Not to mention, she never turned against the industry. Her marriage to Chuck has never been talked of on anything but good terms, and they allegedly left the divorce court hand in hand.

I do hope this considerable dilution of the story is raising all the appropriate red flags for you. There were so many things about Linda's allegations that didn't add up, and this time she just played mouthpiece for a militant feminist rather than a slimy perv. Linda insisted that every time somebody watched Deep Throat, they were witnessing rape. But the idea of all of these perfectly respectable adults - co-stars, crew, etc. - being in on a gang-conspiracy to force one particular woman into porn is quite ludicrous. Harry Reems, Linda's co-star (who, incidentally, spanked the spunk out of Traynor on the Sexy Moustache-Off) was an absolute class act from beginning to end, who actually served prison time when some narrow-minded jury somewhere decided to press obscenity charges. He even paid for Linda to have life-saving surgery later on. People who worked with him over the years described him as an absolute love with a heart of gold. The list of inconsistencies goes on, and sadly, almost taints our ability to enjoy what is actually a funky, silly little sex movie that earned its place in history. Almost...

Ambitions for middle-age summed up in one photo

Linda Lovelace, as herself, is a hippie chick living in Miami with a middle-aged divorcee, Dolly, who enjoys the swingers' life, but feels that sex is missing something. "I wanna hear bells ringing! Dams bursting! Rockets exploding!" she laments. Dolly, who I can only hope to be as cool as in my late forties, provides the perfect solution: a massive sex party! Woohoo!

When even this doesn't untangle Linda's tingle, she turns to hokey Doctor Young (the gorgeous Mr Reems), who discovers that her clitoris is in her throat. Well if that isn't your textbook male fantasy! He teaches Linda to give Deep Throat, and suddenly the girl's practically deafened by all the rockets and bells and bursting dams, and decides to dedicate her life to enjoying herself. Of course, this also means men enjoying themselves, and so Doctor Young enlists her as a 'nurse' to make home calls and enjoy various sexual escapades with various people. The goofy, slapstick action is nurtured by a wildly brilliant, and sadly unclaimed, soundtrack of grimy, funky guitar and amusing synth. The finale number, entitled Deep Throat To You All, is a wonderfully folky and surreal theme. In my mind, which remains static in downtown LA of 1976 or thereabouts, I have this cool fantasy that the soundtrack is the secret work of David Hess, whose music for Last House was nothing short of brilliant. It seems totally him. Alas, the shady Mafia background of the movie seems to have caused the musicians to seek anonymity, but the album is available, and it's brilliant.

As a piece of early '70s nostalgia, Deep Throat is a gem. How does it stack up as a porno? I guess it is entirely dependent on one's personal tastes. Myself, I have seen quite a bit of modern porn, and several factors are a turn off: firstly, lack of plot, style, or discernible creative talent involved; secondly, the freaky shit people do - I find a woman sucking a guy's juices out of another woman's anal cavity to be nothing short of nauseating; thirdly, the 'actors' are harsh, brassy, Botoxed to the gills and generally unrelatable. Porno chic has the appeal of being ordinary people enjoying each other, people you don't feel upstaged by, having sex you can identify with. Kinks are all well and good, but the bar for 'regular' porn has been skyrocketed to distinctly unerotic levels nowadays.

My viewing partner this time round was surprised at how satisfying Deep Throat was pornographically. Plenty of close up shots, plenty of momentum, and some fun variety. It's only about an hour long, but it's hard to get bored of; it's as fun as it is erotic. And for those modern fascists who insist they cannot get turned on by a woman with pubic hair, fear not! Even though 99.9%-vastly-recurring of women would have chewed your ear off for your apparent paedophilic tendencies at the time, Linda (for whatever reason) was a pioneer of several new practices, the first being the removal of her pubic hair.

The '70s are known for their pubic hair, although it wasn't really until the 2000s that women started appearing full 'Hollywood' (totally bare, that is) in film. And while every other woman in Deep Throat is hippie to the core when it comes to pubes, Linda is shown shaving hers off. In an interview, a woman journalist once grilled her about her grooming, saying she didn't know anyone else that did it. It's odd, and pretty depressing, that a mere twenty five years later, this wasn't merely the norm, but expected. Get ready for another personal preference: I love hairy guys. Beards, head hair, chest hair, pubic hair, bring it on. It looks manly, feels gorgeous, I go crazy for it. Thankfully, my boyfriend indulges me. However, the majority of guys my age shave, wax or even laser everything off, and if there is one thing that looks supremely gay, it's a guy with no pubic hair. It gives me the oiled-up Chippendale vibe, the apparent 'ideal' sexy look that comes off as staged, and utterly emasculated. Deep Throat has got some nice shaggy guys on board, with Harry at the helm, and pornstaches galore!

I could probably write more books than Linda did about her, and this movie, and about vintage porn in general. But I think I've pretty much summed up Deep Throat. It's wacky, cheesy, funny, naughty, ground-breaking, Conservative-offending brilliance, and it's an entirely viable mastabatory aid to boot.

Cabin Fever (2016)

Rating: 1/5

I find it strenuous not to begin this review with a gospel-style "Why, oh, why, Lawd?!", because the remake of Cabin Fever just breaks so many rules, it's hard to know where to begin. Well, let's start with time: how long is a reasonable period between remakes of a film? 30 years perhaps? Certainly not 15. That's how long it's been since Eli Roth's original screamer of a teen horror was released, and it did not take long to gather a cult following. But the majority of the original's audience is still young enough to identify with the story (the teens are all played by people our age, anyhow). I saw Cabin Fever in 2005, at the age of 13, and it remains a favourite. Its perfect blend of bloody gore, intrigue and hopelessly millennial humour made it pure gold to my generation, and the next up.

Secondly, if you're going to remake a movie, isn't the crummy excuse always that the makers are 'giving it their own twist' or reimagining the story in some form? What is the point of remaking a fifteen year old movie, and doing it almost shot-for-shot identically?! There is basically nothing to distinguish this Cabin Fever from any of the other dead-teenager riffraff. I counted four instances throughout in which the action did not borrow exactly from its predecessor's. Four. Way to make original material, guys. And perhaps the most offensive thing to top it all off: dialogue is identical, except for the 2000s humour. No 'gay'. No gay squirrels to shoot, and no romantic protagonist to tell not to be gay. This blows.

So here we are. Don't anybody dare watch this crapfest without watching the real one. Anyhow... the kids (*ahem*late 20s*ahem) are off on spring break or whatever and rent a cabin in the woods whose neighbouring landscape is inhabited by your classic yokel bunch (see other reviews for fun with the Yokel Bunch!), which was still a fairly original bit back in 2001. The douchey third wheel who once brought a pussy air rifle along, for shooting aforementioned gay squirrels, now has a fucking AK47 (Murica), and does considerable damage to the infected hobo he accidentally shoots.

When the guy rocks up to the cabin later, the mayhem ensues: they get infected...it's in the water... etc. Fairly standard, especially because by this point, you have given up on director Travis Zariwny (in the credits, he even has the audacity to go by just Travis Z...how hip) making any effort at originality. But one of the four differences that severely got under my skin was the sex change of Deputy Winston. You'll recall that Winston was originally played with absolute perfection by evasive actor/musician Guiseppe Andrews, as a young slimeball with social issues who was as obsessed with partying as he was with doing an unwittingly terrible job at being a policeman. Here we have your average Page 3/Playboy fodder (Louise Linton), i.e. a young woman, playing Winston, with almost identical dialogue. Here, it comes off as just some strange copper in desperate want of a threesome but not the balls to ask for one.

I seriously don't know where to go from here. I just find myself reminiscing about all the hilarious scenes in the original Cabin Fever... the guy who swallows the harmonica -- the kids selling infected lemonade for 'fiiiive siiints' -- the local hick that's got a shotgun on the wall 'for the niggers', only for a car full of black dudes to roll up during the closing credits and thank the dude for fixing the shotgun up for them. It was just so of its time, and the thing is, a lot of people of my generation... we still think it's the time. We don't feel old, and we still enjoy the things we did during adolescence, and that includes Eli Roth's Cabin Fever. If kids today want to check out a good, gory horror movie, they can fucking well buy the original! (It's not as if they'd want to return it to Blockbuster, even if that were still a thing).

POST SCRIPT - The paragraph I just finished with is significantly effective as a conclusion, so I thought I'd add some interesting, though terrifying, tidbits. Years ago, my sister and I watched Cabin Fever with our Pop, the learned old devil. And he informed us that the gross flesh-eating disease to which the teens succumb is in fact a real thing. The aptly named Necrotising Fasciitis really is a killer virus that eats away at your body and kills you within a day or two. Rare but real, and what are the odds of getting an ambulance on the phone by the time you realise your fucking fingers have fallen off anyway?!

Ils (2006)

Back in the summer of 2008 (great summer, by the way), my sister and I went to the movies with our boyfriends to see The Strangers. The cinema environment naturally enhances the fear factor of decent horror movies (provided you don't have any sarcastic assholes in the house), and the movie scared the shit out of us. It prompted a lifelong fear of uncurtained windows after dark. And being alone in a house at night. But fuck it, every horror movie had done that.


It was claimed that The Strangers was based on Ils, which I am somewhat ashamed to have taken ten years to watch. The copy that I picked up had an English cover and was titled Them, but my DVD turned out to be an original without subtitles. Fortunately, I am a moderate French speaker and am in the habit of watching French movies to improve my language skills, so it posed me a nice challenge. Particularly as the movie actually takes place in Bucharest and features some Romanian dialogue too. If anybody out there is a particularly cunning linguist like myself (*wink*), Romanian is an interesting language, which a native friend of the family tells me is mostly Latin-based, with very minimal Slavic roots as one might expect. Due to several Turkish occupations, there are even Arabic influences. So yeah, check out a bit of Romanian.

Clementine (Olivia Bonamy) is a French teacher at a school, and she and her fiance Lucas (Michael Cohen) have bought a dilapidated chateau in the countryside which they are in the process of fixing up. It's beautiful and it's huge, and there's no one for miles around. No wonder people emmigrate to France for the space and low housing prices! Anyway, one night Clementine is disturbed first by a weird phone call, then by noises outside. A mysterious gang of attackers descend upon the chateau for reasons unknown and wreak havoc for the young couple.

Even for the surprisingly brief portion of the movie that actually takes place in the house, Ils provides little reference point for The Strangers, other than the basic premise of a young couple in an isolated house being terrorised by assailants unknown. And the only slight oddity of this premise is the small group being attacked. And that's only because the genre usually likes as many pick-offs as possible. But the movie, like its antagonists, is in it for the hunt - the kill is a mere afterthought. And writers/directors Xavier Palud and David Moreau's script and direction make thorough use of the terrifyingly vast spaces where attackers could be lurking.

This movie relies far less on jump scares like The Strangers did, and despite the latter's phony use of the old 'violent crime in America' statistics and implication that it is an act of charity which could help avoid similar things happening, Ils really addresses the situation with realism. Being on this turf, you should already know that this is a ***SPOILER ALERT*** zone, but I'll just put it out there, as the point of this movie requires me to give away twisty details. These antagonists turn out to be children, a small gang of varying ages, who carry out a carefully orchestrated attack against innocent people for no apparent reason. But in court, the children justify their cruelty by saying, "they wouldn't play with us." It is this point that leads one to believe this is far more than your average stalker/slasher. Like Eden Lake, it seems to be making a social statement.

Not only is this a creepy movie whose point is driven further home by the entire possibility of it, but it is vocal, and says to me that the entitled attitudes of the younger generation can have tragically detrimental effects on their social development. In other words, if kids are allowed to command adults and get their own way, what is to stop them going on such criminal rampages as a tantrum?