Hard Candy (2005)

 

What if...? is the central question to any writer. First you write what you know, then you ask 'what if...?'. I never thought a seriously thrilling psychological movie would - at least in my mind - spawn from an episode of To Catch A Predator. It is difficult to make a movie with a moral or societal message that doesn't come off as biased or preachy, and given today's climate, it is probably suitable that a movie like Hard Candy was made in the mid-'00s, just on the precipice of artistic expansion, mere years before the populace apparently became too precious to take a joke, or to acknowledge genuine social commentary when it presents itself. I cannot imagine a movie like Hard Candy being made either today, or even five years ago. It is sometimes terrifying how quickly the societal landscape evolves, and often not for the better, especially when it comes to freedom of artistic expression.

Hard Candy is an amazingly intelligent, sensitive and thrilling movie that is effectively a 90-minute  two-hander of intense conversation, like Educating Rita or Venus in Fur. Elliot Page plays Hayley, a fourteen-year-old girl who meets middle-aged photographer Geoff (Patrick Wilson) on a chatroom, and gets together with him at a local coffee house. They hit it off and she talks him into taking her back to his place, where things take an unusual and *SPOILERY* turn. Hayley roofies Geoff and he wakes up in a slightly less horrifying scenario than the fellas in Hostel: tied to a chair, threatened with bodily harm... and accused of child abuse. Hayley has targeted Geoff as a predator, but once he is subdued, the identity of the predator is suddenly up for question.

I thawt yew wawnted to be shayved... down thayr

It is rare, as the writer and director of this picture both remarked, for a movie to be so succinctly summarised, but as is often the case with character-driven pieces, plot is not necessarily pertinent. Almost Famous and Me Without You are two examples that spring to mind of one-line-plot movies that find their momentum in their immensely detailed characters, who feel like real people. Although Hard Candy is much harder-hitting material than either of these movies, it is essentially a character profile with genuine dramatic tension. Hayley is a vigilante and Geoff is a sinner of the worst kind who tries to spare his reputation the truth right until the end. It could work well as a stage play in its excellence with dialogue and characterisation, and purposeful use of literal frames to reflect the photographic lens through which Geoff allegedly sees the world. 

Hard Candy hangs heavily on its two leading actors, and they carry it with simultaneous ease and torment. Page, given the duality of Hayley, is required to craft a base character, and an alter ego masquerading as a naive teenager, and it is eerily effective. She shows little glimmers of flirtation and precociousness, while maintaining an adolescent naivete; later she suggests entirely through facial expression that her character was molested as a child, and sees this whole ordeal as retribution for not only herself, but for every other young person who was ever victimised. Wilson, meanwhile, runs the gamut of emotion, and is essentially the characterisation of the audience itself, reacting to the each new twist of the ordeal he finds himself in. Importantly, he never once shows true evil to anybody. He goes through flirtatious manipulation, lust, confusion, anger, mortal fear, rage, guilt, submission, but he never lets us see the side of him that caused Hayley to target him in the first place. He is a real, complex person with many layers, and Wilson's performance is nothing short of athletic.

For tonight is the night that my beautiful
creature is destined to be born!

Not only is this movie an intense emotional ride, but it is like wandering through a chic, minimalist art gallery to look at. Everything has a sleek Scandinavian flavour to it, with expressive pops of colour hinting at some thematic undertone. Indeed, the opening credits are a simple shifting of a single red shape among a variety of white backgrounds, suggesting a small but lingering figure stalking just beyond the periphery. And not for the first time, we are forced to consider who this figure really is. Perhaps their identity depends on what sort of a person is looking. Those with devious skeletons in their closet may see that figure as the reason they still look over their shoulder every day. Those of a more innocent nature might consider it the unremarkable perpetrator of terrible cruelty. 

A Serbian Film (2010)

How bad can a movie themed on
mid-century communist propaganda possibly be?!

A Serbian Film is one of those controversial movies you get once in a blue moon that the creators insist there is deeper meaning to, much to the disagreement of audiences and critics. Mark Kermode disputed there being any legitimate allegory being made by the movie, and it has gone down in recent history as one of the most horrifying films ever made. Having finally subjected myself to its uncut version, I am baffled as to how anybody can not recognise the statements being made. I know virtually nothing about Serbia, except for it having a history of severe unrest in many senses, but I could very explicitly identify what the movie was trying to convey. Despite what one might expect having heard the grisly keywords associated with it, A Serbian Film is a devastatingly effective movie with plenty of angst.

Miloš is a retired porn actor who has settled down with a wife and child, but given up a good income and lavish lifestyle in the process. Struggling to get by and realising a quiet part of him misses the guy he once was, he is informed by a former colleague of a filmmaker who is producing a new high art form of pornography, and wants Miloš as his star. Coddled beneath several layers of armed security guards is Vukmir, a sinister and eccentric multimillionaire with a chip on his shoulder about the state of modern Serbian society. He is well practised in his prophetic rhetoric, ranting at length about what real art is, and what it is to feel and live. He wants to sign Miloš for big bucks, but is unwilling to tell his actor exactly what he will be performing, as part of some pornographic method acting school of thought or something.

No autographs, please.

Miloš is dubious about the unspecified nature of the work, but his wife Marija is heavily swayed by the money he will receive in return, so he decides to go for it. First day on set, Miloš is directed by Vukmir via an earpiece while flanked by several armed heavies holding cameras. Some odd domestic is going on between a mother and her adolescent daughter, both of whom go on to be central co-stars in this weird improv. By the second day, Miloš' convictions are being tested too hard by Vukmir's depraved setups, and he decides the next day to throw in the towel.

Suddenly Miloš awakens, hungover and bloodied, and it is three days later. Haunted and unable to find anybody he knows, he racks his brain for scraps of memory and tries to piece together what the hell happened to him. Through flashback and footage on a stolen camera, the movie takes us through Miloš' dreadful search for the truth, and we know things will somehow never been the same for him again.

Fans of Last House on the Left may recall that the original draft of its script was a more pornographically-oriented take on things, and as A Serbian Film was wrapping up, I couldn't help but compare it to Last House. It ultimately tells the same story, of an innocent and loving family torn apart by cruel outsiders, and how the family members react and are irreparably damaged by the ordeal. It is hard to classify either movie as horror, because they are really more like hard dramatic tragedies; they show us relatable and likeable characters whose terrible experiences stir emotional reactions in us as viewers. If I felt anything at the end of A Serbian Film, I felt sadness.

This is the greatest show!

Another element that these two movies have in common is that they narrate from the perspective of the family while framing them visually from the voyeuristic view of the aggressors. A Serbian Film is a very slickly produced picture, with sharp and very precise camerawork and sound. As we follow Miloš through this dark chapter, the camera always follows him like a stalker: we see him from over the shoulders of the people he converses with, or the corners of rooms. The feeling of being watched is intrinsically woven into the style of the movie, while sound forces the foreboding atmosphere upon us like a millstone, with inventive use of string plucking, static-like electronics and even what sounds like tearing paper. An incredible tension is created, starting with small tugs and stirs, and finally climaxing (eh-hem) in the film's closing minutes as an unbearable outburst.

This film is nothing short of ballsy. Srđan Todorović gets to show off an incredible range in the role of Miloš, and wouldn't work so well were it not for his courage to do exactly what the character requires of him. Were his performance to lack a certain emotion and vulnerability, we would not be able to feel for him anywhere near as much as we do by the time his nightmarish ordeal finally ends. I cannot imagine any of the roles in this movie being easy to fill for a director or for an actor, and every single person gives it their all, and absolute sincerity. Sergej Trifunović as Vukmir grasps just the right note of villainy and cunning. He is eccentric without being cartoonish, and measured enough for us to never quite peg him as a straight-up bad guy; he genuinely believes in what he does, and there is more to his motives than simply enjoying causing pain.

If this scene doesn't turn you on, you
clearly don't understand high art.

There is a great scene early on in the movie in which Miloš and Marija are in bed together watching one of his old skinflicks. They have the old "difference between love and fucking" discussion and Marija tells him that she quite fancies just being fucked once in a while. So he tries on the rough, underwear-tearing persona that he hung up years ago, and while she seems somewhat turned on by it, he clearly is not. The action cuts back and forth between the couple fucking, and Miloš' onscreen performance, before he recedes, turns his wife back over, starts to kiss her, and goes on to actually make love to her. This tells us so much about Miloš, and about his relationship with Marija. Although he clearly has the capacity (and from what we all hear, quite the knack) for your classic porn-style fucking, it is a compartmentalised section of his personality that he realises he doesn't like to open out into other sections, and just maybe, he has grown to dislike that side of himself.

Many an exploitation flick is accused of doing exactly what it says on the tin: exploiting suffering. More specifically, they are accused of 'glorifying' violence. A Serbian Film has definitely met its fair share of this vein of criticism, but it never once looks at violence through a rose tinted filter. Every second of pain is depicted as cruel and senseless, and despite its inherently sexualised framing, is never presented for titillation or kicks. It wants us to look at its content in the harsh, brutal way that it truly exists in the world, and ultimately, it wants our understanding of Miloš to grow as a result. The impact of the movie hinges on how we feel for the characters being wronged, not how gross and sensationalist it can be.

Uh... no homo.

The casual moviegoer is unlikely to accidentally stumble into this picture without any prior understanding of what they are getting themselves into, but let it be known: this is a gruesome and hard-hitting picture which in its uncut version uses some very disturbing imagery. It is stuff you won't shake off easily, but if you feel you can handle it, it is very worth seeing. I got so much more from watching this movie than I had anticipated, and am still somewhat surprised to be declaring it a moving and very effective piece.

I wonder what Roger Ebert would have made of this movie. Although he was still alive and critiquing when it came out, he never reviewed it. I feel like his 70s self - the same one that commended Last House - would have seen redeeming qualities in it, and perhaps even recommended it, much to the horror of the average moviegoer. In his mid-80s, Siskel-centric era, he may have decried it for its sexually-oriented violence. I know that by his twilight years, he had grown pretty damn tired of the hardcore exploitation flicks. That was his taste. I love me a hardcore exploitation flick, and A Serbian Film is as extreme as it gets in terms of content and context.

The Girl Next Door (2007)

Daniel Farrands has caused something of a stir in recent years with his choice of film projects. Last year he threw bees into so many bonnets that Nicolas Cage practically showed up to scream about his eyes, with the controversial Haunting of Sharon Tate. This year he has swiftly followed it up with The Murder of Nicole Brown, and with these two titles coming consecutively, people's ears have pricked at the not-so-subtle trend emerging. Farrands has been universally branded as a smut-peddler  thanks to these projects, and I was inclined to consider him such myself after watching Sharon Tate, but my research into that picture dragged up something a little odd.

A good ten years ago, my sister raved to me about "the most disturbing" movie she had ever seen, titled The Girl Next Door, and I didn't get around to seeing it until about 18 months ago. I was pleasantly surprised by this grimy and largely unheard of little movie, and in retrospect, it plays rather intriguingly as a part of Farrands' filmography.

This writer's choice to make films based on true crime events is far from recent. The Girl Next Door is taken from the crimes of Gertrude Baniszewski and her children towards Sylvia Likens, and while it never shies from the grit of the ordeal, it shows an incredible amount of craft and care -- almost sensitivity. I cannot help but wonder how, in the space of fifteen-odd years, Farrands' approach to filmmaking can have deteriorated so terribly.

Any bozo can string together 90 minutes of depravity and call it a movie, but not many manage to pull off true human horror in a way that feels real or relatable. Last House on the Left, Eden Lake and Creep are fine examples of well-crafted stories of man vs. man, and while The Girl Next Door may not be quite as competent a picture as these, it gives it a bloody good go, and delivers an unexpectedly strong and engaging look at child abuse.

Mom, you're blocking the TV!

Based on Jack Ketchum's novel of the same name, the movie is about two young carnival girls taken in by a single mother. Meg (Blythe Auffarth) and her sister Susan (Madeline Taylor) go to live at the home of Ruth Chandler (Blanche Baker) so that their carny parents can more freely make a living on the travelling circuit. Ruth is a smoky, emaciated mother of many adolescent children, whose house is always full of local kids. The narrative chooses to focus on David (Daniel Manche), a kid who hangs out at the Chandler residence, and tells the story from his perspective. This proves a very clever choice; not only does the audience endure the cruelty on screen, but considers it from the innocent stance of a child who is free to come and go as he pleases. There are some great little scenes in which David tries to broach the subject of Ruth's abuse to his parents, but doesn't quite know how to, or simply sits in silence alone, fretting over what should be done.

The strongest element of this movie is how the narrative handles the events. Many a lower picture simply shows us people inflicting cruelty on others and just expects us to believe in their reasons for doing so. When you hear of such a twisted true crime story on the news, often the toughest thing to comprehend is how things get to that point, particularly when multiple aggressors are involved. Who first suggests such crimes? What does one have to do, or say, to a person to get them to behave in such ways? In the real world, everything has momentum and contributing factors that move situations from A to B, and so if we are to truly engage with a movie like this, we have to understand the villains as real people and not caricatures of evil.

It's not as if Ruth and her children just randomly start torturing the girls the day they arrive. There is a slow build up, a series of escalating incidents that eventually lead to the abuse, and Farrands' writing is integral to this realism. Everyone likes to think that they would have the morality and strength to stand up to bad people and prevent them from doing harm, but human behaviour is complex and some people have the capacity to manipulate and influence others negatively. When defending the use of violence in movies, I sometimes use Game of Thrones as an example. If we hadn't been shown Joffrey's many escalating acts of cruelty, would we have understood him in the way that the characters around him did, and would we have felt satisfied by the end of his story? A good narratives fleshes out its antagonists in a way that uses them as more than a plot device or pantomime villain.

There is a largely unnecessary framing device that follows David in middle age, beginning with him witnessing a hit and run, and ending with his conviction to let go of his decades-old guilt. It's not a bad idea to try and give some indication of the long term effects of this trauma on David as our young narrator, but what it could have added to the picture as a whole is undermined by how rushed and tacked on it feels. The ending is rather abrupt, and the momentum of the drama might have been better served by simply scrapping the framing and brooding on the dark basement where the ordeal finally screeches to a halt.

Suck my fat one, ya cheap dimestore hood.

Acting is surprisingly good, particularly from Blanche Baker, and good use of colour and space is made to convey the freedom of wide open spaces and the rigidity of the house's four walls. There is a tangible sense of atmosphere, of time and place, in a way that reminds me of Stand By Me. The kids feel real, and do and say things that creatures unsure of who or what they are would. Against the backdrop of colourful '50s suburbia, the visceral goings-on in the house appear that much darker and dirtier. It's not a long or rambling movie, but it succeeds in crafting a very believable world in creative ways. 

The abuse inflicted upon the girls is upsetting and difficult to forget, so this is not an exploitation movie for beginners, but those with the stomach for such scenes and an appreciation for good writing will really dig The Girl Next Door. Meanwhile, Farrands should seriously go back to the drawing board with the way his career is going, and maybe take a Screenwriting 101 refresher course, as he seems to have forgotten everything.

Hostel (2005)

The 00s was an era of reimagining horror. 9/11 had a profound effect on almost every facet of modern life, and movies were far from immune. Not unlike the way the Vietnam war influenced a new chapter of horror in the early '70s, 9/11 brought real-life terror and gore to the forefront of the public conscience, and changed what viewers looked for in entertainment. Although action movies and TV serials scrambled to rearrange into a less close-to-home format, the horror genre leaned into it, and a new wave, later dubbed Torture Porn, was born.

The two key figures in the Torture Porn movement were Saw (2004) and Hostel (2005), each of which divided audiences in their ultra-visceral depictions of violence. Nobody around in the '00s can forget people asking "Did you see Saw?" before chuckling at their own comic brilliance, and talk of Hostel was hot on its heels. As a younger teenager during this period, I had to wallow in hearsay until each of the movies was released on DVD, and I clearly recall my first viewing of each. Hostel I acquired by taking advantage of my older boyfriend, and we watched it at his house with my sister. At the time I deduced it to be one half softcore porn and one half slasher gore with a nice memorable eyeball schtick, and have gone on since to develop a real fondness for it.

Each Eli Roth movie is a real character; some people can't stand his sophomoric blend of blood and humour, while others revel in his silly, in-your-face approach to making films. My sister and I have always been firm fixtures in the latter group, and share a particular fondness for the most divisive aspect of any Roth movie: the dialogue. If your patience is stretched by Roth's style, Hostel will be far from your cuppa soup, but those who enjoy a bit of silly humour in place of the pointless ramblings that usually open up earlier slashers find his style refreshing. Of course, Roth is also fond of elaborate practical effects, with which he likes to have a lot of gory fun. Anti-TorturePorners point out that violence doesn't equate to scare, which is certainly true, and that a good movie wouldn't have to resort to explicit violence, which I don't believe is true.

Beanie hat! 

Now what I do think is that violence and other forms of cruelty can be absolutely necessary to properly tell a story. Hostel doesn't deliver much real narrative to 'justify' its gore, as we are ultimately not really supposed to like or relate to any of the characters (another Roth trademark), but this doesn't mean there is no thought or perspective to it. Even if the audience doesn't explicitly notice that the movie's style is deliberate in its depictions of violence, they notice the effects.

Roth is far from a tactless filmmaker, and I think that his childlike enthusiasm for every single frame he shoots is his real strength. His work is always more than competent on a technical level, and all gore considered, he makes really good-looking and engaging movies. He is not looking to win any prestigious awards or merge his way into the Hollywood elite, but simply wants to have a really good time making the sorts of movies he would watch himself, and for other people to have fun watching them. For sheer entertainment value, Roth is always a safe bet for me.

World's most trustworthy travel agent

There is not a lot to say about the plot of Hostel, as the fun is in the experience as a whole, but let's give it a try. Paxton (Jay Hernandez) is backpacking across Europe with his meek friend Josh (Derek Richardson), and other tourist Oli (Eyþór Guðjónsson) has been picked up at some point in their travels. We meet them in Amsterdam, where they are busy doing what all good Roth characters do: partying. They get thrown out of clubs, dip in and out of whorehouses, and of course, refer to many things pejoratively as "gay". They come across a seriously weird-looking fella named Alexei, played by Lubomir Bukovy, who tells them that if they want the pure shit from source, they need to trek through the Slovakian wilderness to a village that is populated entirely by Page 3 girls and child thugs. The guys are all pretty stupid, so do they consider this trip a good idea? Of coursh, ma horsh.

While on the train to Slovakia, they are buttonholed by some geeky old dude (Jan Vlasák) whose defining characteristic is eating chicken salad with his twitchy fingers. When said fingers get a little too close to Josh's junk for comfort, the guys throw an all-American freak-out at the gayness of it all, and the Salad guy skulks away apologetically. In response to the sexual assault of their buddy, Paxton and Oli throw a few more homo jokes out for good measure. They arrive in the whore village and stay at a...*dun-dun-duuuuun* hostel, where they lament the lack of English dubbing on local television and how very gay it is that they have to share a room at a hostel. It soon becomes clear that the situation isn't quite so guy-on-guy as they had anticipated, when two hot women in their room invite them over to the spa.

The only time Paxton hated having balls in his mouth

So the partying is in full swing, but after the first night, Oli has disappeared. Paxton insists that this shouldn't spoil their fun, so they do some more partying, and the next day Josh is gone too. Curiouser and curiouser! All the locals are kinda shady, and a gang of kids mug people for such riches as bubblegum, but hey, it's probably just be because they're European.  In the course of trying to find the friend that actually matters enough to rouse his suspicions, Paxton is also set upon, revealing that this quaint little village not only has hot women and kid thugs, it also has millionaires who pay to torture foreigners in an abandoned building. And what's worse... they're all in on it! Ooh, faced!

What got under people's skin about Hostel and Saw was that they were more than just corn syrup and condoms full of sausage meat - they were presented in a vivid and immersive way that felt inescapable. Scores of slasher movies from yesteryear would throw lots of blood around, but rarely focused so hard on the suffering of those being minced. Hostel lingers on the victims of the situation, emphasising the experience of being tortured, tears and blood and vomit. None of the characters is a big badass who just tells their assailant what a "sick fuck" they are while having their limbs removed with table cutlery. They behave like real people, and show violence for what it really is - long, slow suffering.

It's the gayest movie in the fucking world!

Roth's tongue-in-cheek style does require a somewhat turbulent tone that may not make for comfortable viewing by all, but it functions as his charming little take on the genre that I can never help but enjoy and watch repeatedly.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)

The Human Centipede is as bleak as a decent movie can get, and that is very much to its credit. I vividly recall the cultural hubbub that was The Human Centipede when it first reared its ugly head in 2009, and I found out about it through outraged and disgusted social media posts by friends. Of course, knowing me, when that much outrage has been generated, I simply have to see what all the fuss is about. On first viewing, I experienced the retching and hilarity that was expected, but years later, after two sequels have been made, and the Siamese triplet of a film series has been completed, I was surprised to see that it not only held up surprisingly well, but was a genuinely well done film.

Your basic premise is that two American girls, Lindsay (Ashley C. Williams) and Jenny (Ashlynn Yennie), are on a European road trip, and for some reason are making their way down woodland roads en route to a nightclub. Well, their car breaks down, and they exchange some terribly delivered bitchery, while trudging through the rainy forest in shorts and high heels. They happen across the house of one Dr Josef Heiter, a retired specialist in separating conjoined twins. He promptly drugs the girls and intends to expand his surgical repertoire by creating a conjoined triplet that is connected via a single gastric system. In layman's terms, they are sewn mouth to ass. Also along for the worst ride since It's a Small World, is Akihiro Kitamura, who at least garners the privilege of being the front part of the centipede.

As a thoroughly cosmopolitan movie in terms of production, we are treated to no less than three spoken languages, and the version I just watched didn't have subtitles. This made for interesting viewing, particularly as I have previously seen subtitled versions, and know the gist of the dialogue, but mainly went by the emotions being conveyed. The good Herr Doktor does the girls (and the audience) the courtesy of mostly speaking English, but the general lack of communication between characters plays nicely into the idea of alien parts being thrust together.

Does this centipede taste funny to you?

I have noticed an interesting phenomenon within the small-time acting community: many an actor can play fear or hysteria quite well, but delivering natural, conversational dialogue seems beyond them. This is certainly the case for our two American leads, whose earlier scenes are poorly delivered, but are saved by strong direction and production values. However, the shining star of this dim and grimy production is Mr Dieter Laser, who was just made to play a part of this kind. His sinewy figure, soulless eyes and boundless physical delivery make for a sinister and utterly unpredictable villain.

What really struck me this time around about The Human Centipede was how well it conveyed total and utter hopelessness. In some ways, it feels like it belongs in the '70s with the other low budget, somewhat artistic exploitation horrors, in that it stirs the most basic of instincts in the audience, by tugging the nerve of vulnerability. The recurring shots of Jenny and Lindsay holding each other's hands in desperate mutual comfort are some of the many silent and bitterly poignant visuals used by writer/director Tom Six, who pulls off a deeply macabre atmosphere from beginning to end.

This movie is oddly absorbing, and it is easy for a new viewer to expect 90 minutes of faecal torture porn, but The Human Centipede is so much more than that, as becomes apparent after the whole 'eating shit' money shot has been and gone. In fact, the concept of being forced to not only eat the faeces of another person, but also to survive solely on it, is remarkably minimal as a focus of the narrative. The real horror comes in being put into such a horrific and vulnerable situation that requires a miraculous combination of team effort and good fortune to survive even for a day, and the idea that this is not a situation that will soon end with death, but could go on for a very long time.

Honestly, best shot of the entire movie

It is hard to ignore the evident inspiration (for lack of a better term) taken from Josef Mengele for Heiter's character. In fact, it would not surprise me if the likes of this movie took place in Mengele's basement somewhere in Brazil after the war. This connotation also forces us to remember that the likes of this gross movie are not merely the twisted imaginings of some Dutch nutter, but that humans have been devising cruel and unusual ways to punish each other since the dawn of time.

The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019)

Making films, music and literature based - either loosely or otherwise - on real events, and more specifically, on true crime, is far from a modern trend, and yet it is still a divisive topic on moral grounds. The better known serial killers, such as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, continue to inspire recreations of their lives and crimes, and the human condition of morbid curiosity keeps ensuring return on profit is seen. The question of whether it is ethical to rehash such crimes for 'entertainment purposes', and how such recreations can impact the survivors and their loved ones, continues to be asked, yet it seems to have little effect on the industry's production of such movies, or on audiences' viewing of them. Monster and The Girl Next Door are serious and well-made productions based to varying degrees on true crime, but for every Monster, there are easily a hundred The Haunting of Sharon Tate.

Critics have been slamming this movie for many reasons, and Lionsgate have been pulling out all of the damage control stops to ensure people still give their movie the benefit of the doubt. Not only is this not a well-made film, but it is a very inconsiderate one. It doesn't seek simply to recreate the crimes of the Manson family in 1969, but to put a supernatural twist on things, and perpetuate dismal rumours first circulated by the media mere hours after the news broke fifty years ago: talk of infidelities, open relationships and devil worship somehow being the cause of those events is tasteless and speculative at best. What, I ask you, could possibly be gained, or added to this story, by the suggestions of Roman Polanski (who is not portrayed onscreen in this movie) 'cheating' on his wife, or Gibby Folger and Wojciech Frykowski manipulating Sharon into a position of vulnerability? It drags this whole sorry tale to the depths of tabloid fodder in the least tactful way possible.

The media spin that continues to embody the Tate-LaBianca murders could be an interesting way to tell this story, but this is clearly not what the makers had in mind. If nothing else, its only real goals are to paint Sharon and her friends as people they were not, with an aim to add a sense of suspicion and tension that never existed. And this is not to say that this movie manages to achieve even the slightest feeling of suspense. It consists primarily of repetitive sequences of Sharon creeping wide-eyed around her dark house, convinced that she is in danger but for some reason doing nothing about it.

For some reason, Hilary Duff 'stars' as Sharon Tate, and we are suddenly and rudely reminded of why her repertoire never really expanded beyond Lizzie McGuire and being Steve Martin's stroppy teen daughter in Cheaper by the Dozen. She looks and sounds nothing like Sharon Tate, despite her fleeting attempts at some sort of regional accent. Duff is very strangely directed throughout this picture, in every way from accent to emotion and mindset. There are odd moments at which she seems to react to things in ways that just don't match the action, and her character's thought processes are sloppy. This heavily pregnant woman, whose several friends are literally in the next bedroom, keeps creeping around this dark house when she suspects intruders. No guns, no phone calls, she doesn't even turn on the lights or scream for someone. She just keeps skulking around in the dark.

The main narrative bookending this piece is what pissed me off the most. The movie opens in black and white, and purports to show us Sharon giving an interview in 1968. The interviewer asks her if she has ever had any experiences she considered psychic. Now this in itself is not crazy, as there was quite a trend for metaphysics, spirituality and psychedelia in the '60s and '70s, and this could have been an interesting approach in more competent hands. But Sharon responds that she had a nightmare in which she and her friends are murdered, which "I guess you could consider a psychic experience". We are given no other indication at this point in the story's timeline that could give weight to this idea that a simple bad dream is some form of premonition, and the narrative only seems to show Sharon come to recognise this much later on. This terribly contrived plot device is the frayed string from which the entire narrative precariously hangs.

Now when I did some basic research into this film (which I did when I got to this very point in writing my review), I made a striking discovery about the resume of writer/director Daniel Farrands. Not only is his filmography comprised almost entirely of horror sequels and true crime movies, but he actually wrote the aforementioned The Girl Next Door, which was a very good and considerately handled movie. Interestingly, that was more or less the first thing he wrote in twenty years, preceded by Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers in 1995. This in itself makes me wonder why and how Farrands' ability to craft believable dialogue that propels a difficult narrative seems to have evaporated. On top of this, his more recent credits include another dreadful Amityville movie, and production on an upcoming piece titled The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. There is a definite pattern there, which I might not take such a distaste to if not for Farrands' sharply declining standards. In 2007, he proved himself capable of taking a horrific true crime, dramatising it in a way that gives context to the behaviours of its characters, and approaching what is essentially an exploitation picture with utmost dignity, respect and care. Somehow, he is now a shadow of his former professional self.

Farrands' habit of running with the scrag ends of existing narratives smacks of commercial and artistic cynicism. He demonstrates little ability to create original material, and he has absolutely forgotten - or neglected - the way real people speak, which is so crucial to his line of work. Often when we hear of true crime stories, particularly those in which people are somehow convinced or manipulated into committing crime by others, the mind really boggles at how things get from A to B. What does a person have to say, and how do they have to say it, in order to get another person to commit such cruelty on innocents? With The Girl Next Door, Farrands showed us just how an evil adult could have manipulated neighbourhood children into torturing and killing a young girl, and it was his way with dialogue that made these unimaginable events believable. Now, he can't even convince us that a woman is trying to tell her friends she thinks she is being stalked. I mean damn, that's not a lot to ask of a writer who has previously shown his mettle with conveying difficult ideas on screen.

Although The Haunting of Sharon Tate is nowhere near as technically inept as I had expected it to be, it is just a sad, sorry and puzzling excuse of a film. A film doesn't have to be a masterpiece to be redeemable, but this is just the laziest form of 'retelling', and is not entertaining, scary, intriguing or compelling. As unethical as it can seem, it is undeniable that our nature as humans is to find curiosity in the extraordinary, in the things we don't see every day or have never seen before. Whether this is a motorway pileup or a murdered film star, we can't help but be fascinated. But there are so many elements of the Manson crimes that actually warrant elaboration and exploration, that don't disrespect the memories of the victims, and better filmmakers have explored these. Cult mentality, the transition to a life of crime, the death of a social movement; these are all insights that can be gained from these awful events that people can learn from. We gain nothing from 60 minutes of Hilary Duff creeping around in the dark and 25 minutes of crass crime scene recreation. This movie is utterly worthless.

Terrifier (2016)

Several years ago, I wrote here about a movie my sister got me for Christmas, having seen it at an LA film festival. I wrote about how Rell told me that it was the scariest movie she had ever seen, and how I concurred, and how I had actually had trouble sleeping the night I watched it. This movie was All Hallows Eve by Damien Leone.

In 2017, he made his second movie from the Art the Clown universe, entitled Terrifier. It is very clear from the off that Leone was working with a much higher budget this time around, as well as a more liberal deadline. All Hallows Eve was infamously amateur while being well made, and Terrifier is slicker, cleaner (so to speak) and more polished in its presentation, from framing to credits. The single element of the movie that jumped out at me was use of colour. The whole picture is perfectly coloured, with Art's black and white suit blending seamlessly into the nighttime shadows in an urban street. Every sequence is so aesthetically pleasing that it's as if it has been painted on a canvas rather than storyboarded, and in this way the movie is outstanding.

For putting me through this, you are the middle piece!

The narrative of Terrifier is entirely more conventional than that of its predecessor, with the entire film manifesting through a straight, chronological storyline captured by a traditional invisible camera. Because of this, and the lacklustre plot and action, Terrifier is underwhelming on the heels of the traumatising All Hallows Eve. It is not particularly scary, and of all things that I took away from what should have been a scary movie, it was "Wow, that use of colour was fabulous!" I mean, this movie is not trying to be a Tarantino or an Argento that expects the audience to say, "Wow, this disgusting violence is being presented in a very picturesque manner!" I have a feeling it was trying to be disturbing and gross, like the first movie was, but it just doesn't pull it off, despite a single sequence that was slightly darker than the rest of the movie was willing to be.

Apart from the blatantly higher production values, the other thing that slapped me right in the face within the first few minutes of Terrifier was that we were no longer dealing with the same Art the Clown. This Art is obviously trying to be the All Hallows Eve Art, as played by Mike Giannelli, but he is considerably skinnier, and is just... not... Art. I don't know why Giannelli didn't reprise the role that he played so menacingly, but this time round, David Howard Thornton is trying to carry the movie, and not managing to do so.

I thawt you was in a hurry!

Terrifier has its moments, in particular a demented sequence inspired by Buffalo Bill's darkest fantasies, but on the whole, it is an entirely conventional horror movie, and while it is artistically worthy of Damien Leone and his hard working crew, its narrative is not. Leone proved with his humble origins, from YouTube favourite short film maker, to learned devotee of horror with All Hallows Eve, and managed to creep out two hardcore horror fans, which is no mean feat. I see him developing a career like that of Adam Green: he may try his hand at other stories, but will probably continue to expand with Art the Clown on the indie circuit. He definitely has the craft and the passion, but I hope that for his next project, he develops a stronger scripts, and frames it as powerfully as he did with his first feature length film. I have my eye on this fellow.

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.

ON THE LIST: House On The Edge Of The Park

Two of the major associates of House On The Edge Of The Park had previously found notoriety, and placement on the Video Nasty list before this 1980 collaboration. Director Ruggero Deodato rose to infamy with his previous film Cannibal Holocaust, not only paving the way for the torrent of 'found footage' horrors we face today, but creating such a convincing film that he was formally charged with murdering his actors, and was forced to bring them to court to prove they were still alive! Star David Hess launched his acting career as Krug Stillo in Wes Craven's Last House On The Left. In fact, after Deodato watched Last House, he was so desperate to team up with Hess that he offered him half of all the movie's takings. Regardless of whether or not this happened, the two made their first of an eventual six collaborations, and started a lifelong friendship.

House On The Edge Of The Park is very different to Cannibal Holocaust and Last House, except for the kind of violence it portrays. The plot hangs on a revelation at the end. For this reason, I shall hereby declare a ***SPOILER ALERT***. The movie begins on a bold note,  with scatty cuts between the New York City skyline and lead antagonist Alex (David Hess) driving at night. He eyes up a young woman driving alongside him (Karoline Mardeck - Hess' wife under a pseudonym) and runs her off the road before raping and strangling her. This sort of sets the mood for the rest of the movie, and is the vital key to the remainder of the story.

Sometime after (we find out later a year has passed), Alex is in the garage he works in with his buddy Ricky, who is played with such fluency by Giovanni Lombardo Radice that we don't need to guess if he's all there in the head. This actor has quite extraordinary eyes, which are pivotal to us interpreting Ricky. He looks at times quite vacant, with a sideways expression, but when he straightens up and looks dead on, he is very engaging and unsettling. Alex is shutting up shop and dressing in a way-too-tight yellow suit to 'go boogyin'', when a young rich couple, Tom and Lisa (Christian Borromeo and Annie Belle) roll up with a false complaint of car trouble. Alex wants to boogie, and the couple are on their way to a get-together, so Alex basically invites himself along, and the couple are hardly resistent.

The running theme of class conflict is introduced quite early on, with Lisa condescendingly asking Alex about his living. When they get to the gorgeous pad where the party's at, Howard (Gabriele Di Giulio), Gloria (Lorraine De Selle) and Glenda (Marie Claude Joseph) are waiting. They, too, are unperturbed by the unexpected presence of Alex and Ricky, and everyone starts off having a swell time. Ricky is eager to demonstrate his dance skills, much to the odd enjoyment of the young rich folk, who laugh and yell things like 'Hot diggity!' and 'Strip! Strip!' Ricky's easy coercion by the latter exclamation displeases Alex, who grabs his friends and demands that he stops humiliating himself for the enjoyment of the rich bastards.

So instead they suggest a Poker game. While Ricky is busy getting his ass kicked and his money taken, Alex quickly pursues the sly smiles and batting eyes of Lisa, who pointedly informs him that she's off for a shower. Right at the beginning of a party. OK... She teases him into the shower with her, before making a quick exit and angering him greatly. This puts Alex's real character into motion, and where we may have first assumed that Deodato cast Hess for an effective reprisal of Krug, Alex is quite different. Hess himself noted the intelligence levels of the two characters: while Krug is very cunning and controlled, Alex is childish, stroppy and loud when he doesn't get his own way.

When he returns downstairs and realises Ricky is being cheated in the Poker game, out comes the razor blade Alex decidedly took with him from the garage, and the party turns into a violent home invasion/hostage situation. This part lasts a long time, and sees every member of the 'Young Rich' players being either beaten, threatened or sort-of raped. The rape is the difficult bit, and not really because it is very upsetting, but because it is difficult to class as 'rape'. Two of the three women seem to show some sort of genuine sexual interest in the men - Gloria to Ricky and Lisa to Alex - and when these two couples each eventually have sex, it plays out in quite a passionate and pleasing manner. Lisa having spent a good time being a serious cocktease, Alex feels entitled to payout from her, and although she hesitantly undresses, she soon appears perfectly consensual. Gloria and Ricky share a very sensual scene out in the garden.

Anyway, after Alex and Ricky have had their fill of the present guests, the doorbell rings, and gorgeous young Cindy (Brigitte Petronio) from across the street is here. Where the others take one or another opportunity to manipulate or attack the fellas, Cindy takes none, or rather doesn't get the opportunity. She is stripped naked and slashed up by Alex, in the scene most often noted in 'censorship'-related writings. Her role is not an active one; perhaps it only exists to emphasise Alex's callous cruelty. But - in another touch I'm sure Hess himself added - Alex leers over the girl, extensively, grimly singing a lullaby to her, and it is unnervingly menacing.


But while all this is going on, Tom (who looks strikingly like River Phoenix) finally reaches the gun in the drawer, and Alex having accidentally stabbed Ricky in a fit of juvenile rage, the tables most definitely turn. Ricky is bleeding out, and Alex is at gun point, and Tom drops the bomb...the girl at the beginning of the movie was his sister, and this whole night was a set-up on their part. Wow...so taking in this shocking piece of information, let us reassess everything we have just seen. As a precursor to the revenge of the rape of one girl, six people allow themselves to be beaten, humiliated and sexually assaulted. Some may say that's a little nonsensical or counterproductive. They could be right. Or we just imagine that they are hardcore yuppies who know that two dead street guys in their palatial house would spell one thing to the police: self-defense during break-in. These guys really fight hard for their cause.

Well, after all the havoc he's caused, it's only right that Alex gets a quick, painless execution shot to the forehead, right? Nah, these guys are hardcore remember? So after no less than three bullets to the torso, the youngsters do the unthinkable...BULLET TO THE DICK! This is my absolute favourite sequence in the movie. Because immediately the film cuts to Alex's face in slow-mo, from the moment of impact throughout the recognition of pain, and the effects of this on face and voice are tremendously heightened by the dragging pace. It is true, that as well as being very creative and effective, this sequence is easy to laugh about. I wonder if that is a trick by Deodato, that after such ceaseless aggression and intimidation by Alex, we are finally in a position to laugh at him, to mock him. It carries out upon the audience the same mental switch of dominance that the characters themselves feel.

So after the brutal shot to the shlong, Alex falls back into the swimming pool, and Howard stalks the water's edge, finding himself in a position Alex was in earlier, in which he continually kicked Howard back into the water, and pissed on his head. Howard drags Alex out of the water, offering help. Alex, finally looking like the child he acts, gazes up at his rescuer, wrapping his arms around his neck. He is finally helpless. Howard then throws him back into the pool, where Tom and Lisa take turns in shooting him finally dead, leaving his body floating on the water. I really like the ending of House on the Edge of the Park for the dauntless way in which it reaps what it sows. David Hess' sinister onscreen presence often allows little room for sympathy (except for the beautiful Remorse sequence in Last House), but with Alex he boldly tapped into a vulnerability that we somehow felt was always there, waiting to be provoked, which he responds to with cynicism and violence.

ON THE LIST: Cannibal Ferox (1981)

Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust set a whole flesh-eating trend in motion back in the early '80s, being one of six titles on the Video Nasty list to feature the word 'cannibal'. Many quite correct allusions have been drawn between Holocaust and Ferox, with a particularly blinding one that is handled totally incorrectly in the latter. But there are also some quite major differences between the two that make Ferox a viewing experience dissimilar to Holocaust.

Ferox starts off, as Holocaust does, in New York City, on a bright sunny day, following a funky lookin' cat with a funky disco soundtrack. He goes to an apartment looking for his smack dealer Mike, only to be confronted by two other, dodgier lookin' fellas, also looking for Mike as he owes them $100,000. They shoot the guy dead in the apartment. Then we cut to Paraguay, where siblings Rudy (Danilo Mattei) and Gloria (Lorraine de Selle) begin to believe they have made a mistake by bringing their 'insecure' friend Pat (Zora Kerova) on their vacation with them. Well, hardly a vacation. Gloria is writing her PhD anthropology dissertation, and intends to prove that 'cannibalism as an organised practise of human society does not and never has existed.' This should already strike the average viewer as a bit of a long shot, so why an anthropologist would believe this enough to trek out into the wilderness is perhaps a little beyond us. But we'll go with the flow.

After Pat has taken part in a very metaphorical 'shower' with the local authority, the trio pack their things onto a rickety ferry (including an abysmally parked Jeep) and are off into the jungle. Genius Rudy manages to sink the Jeep in muddy bogs twice in no more than two minutes, the second time rendering the vehicle useless. So they abandon the expensive mobile quite happily and continue on foot. In the jungle they very soon come across their first live native, nonchalantly noshing on bugs, and then their first dead native, with one impaled and a second wedged between a tree and a giant spiked ball. In a crucially different way to the young film crew in Holocaust, the friends show disgust and horror at their findings, and immediately try to help the two victims, despite the futility. These three are seemingly decent human beings, with all their moral and sympathetic tendencies in order.

Then, somewhat unexpectedly, they run into two American guys, Joe (Walter Lucchini) and Mike (Giovanni Lombardo Radice). Joe is injured and traumatised, and Mike is a tough-talking cokehead, with a pouch of his poison hanging around his neck. This little trinket immediately draws Pat's interest. Well, it's a safe bet that this cokehead Mike is the same dealer Mike those guys in NY were after. Mike tells a tale of horror: he, Joe and their Portugese guide were captured and tortured by a local tribe, who apparently took enough of a disliking to the guide to castrate him and eat his genitals. They supposedly got away with the help of two locals - the very ones the trio found dead earlier. But immediately we know something's not right. Joe is visibly distressed, and keeps interrupting Mike's storytelling, insisting that 'that's enough' and 'they don't wanna hear that.'

At first everybody gets along just fine, but the next morning Gloria is missing, and is eventually found in one of those hole-in-the-ground traps. In there with her is a pig. Mike remorselessly butchers the poor creature with a knife, much to Gloria's horror. He is increasingly aggressive, and quite obviously a raging coke fiend. Meanwhile, Rudy and Joe have ventured to the tribe's village looking for Gloria, and come across the charred remains of what is believed to be the Portugese guide. But again, Joe acts shifty, and begs that they go back. Something's definitely not right. Especially seeing as the elderly and youths of the tribe who remain after the supposed ordeal with Mike and Joe, do not seem threatening in the slightest, but actually very afraid of the now five-strong group.


Joe's injury becomes infected and he quickly turns sickly and delirious. In his fever, he confesses to Rudy and Gloria what really happened to them, or rather what they caused. Turns out the fellas came to the jungle to prospect emeralds, and take advantage of local coke supplies, but when a week of work turned out not a single gem, Mike got sniffed out of his head and castrated, tortured and killed the guide. I guess here would be a good point to talk about Lombardo Radice. Due to his use of pseudonym John Morghen, I didn't realise while watching the movie that it was none other than simple-minded Ricky from Deodato's House on the Edge of the Park, making this a reunion between Lombardo Radice and De Selle. Ricky was a rather pitiful character, whose childish trust found him almost coerced into cruelty. Mike needs to such motivation. He seems to think solely in terms of violence, which he proves once the tables have turned, and he is still yelling death threats at the natives.

Poor Joe dies, and Gloria and Rudy decide that the tribe will seek retribution from all of them, not just their aggressors (which seems stupid and illogical, but apparently true), and when they find Pat and Mike have run away with all their equipment and supplies, decide now's the time to make a run for it. But they are caught, reunited with the also captive Pat and Mike, and given front row seats to the matinee performance of Mike's Comeuppance. Unfortunately they don't seem to have anticipated this performance as highly as we have and it is met with mixed to negative reviews. I, however, enjoyed it immensely. It's fair to say that after Mike's shenanigans, a good old revenge castration was in order. But rather than let him bleed out, they take the time to cauterise the wound.How thoughtful. Until my partner pointed out: his urethra is now sealed off too. His bladder's gonna blow up like a blueberry! Ouch.


The group are then taken to another village for the suffering to continue. The girls are shoved down a hole, Rudy is shot and killed with a poisoned dart, and Mike has more to come...obviously! Whilst down the hole, Pat is well and truly freaking out, while Gloria is perhaps not freaking out enough. She suggests they sing to demonstrate their unity and courage, but also theorises with words what Cannibal Holocaust did with images: the tribes only became cannibalistic when threatened by outside forces, so who were the real barbarians? This was a very well illustrated idea in Holocaust, but it feels both too soon and too simple for such a message just a year after Deodato's movie.

I have just realised that my Video Nasty reviews are rather in-depth, and analyse most movies from beginning to end. Perhaps this is a good format, but perhaps a little long winded - I want you to be left with some things unexpected. So I'll now move on to the film's ending. We have one survivor, Gloria, who is seen being presented with her PhD, looking rather forlorn. It is revealed that her dissertation ended up covering the entire truth of cannibalism, presumably on the basis of what she said earlier to Pat. This revelation is somewhat destructive: Gloria's own brother was killed during the expedition, yet she feels it's better to lie to her parents (supposedly) about her brother's fate in order to save the tribe an undeserved reputation. For the greater good, maybe that's a good thing. But from a grieving parent's perspective, that's pretty shitty.

Cannibal Ferox must be compared with Cannibal Holocaust. One striking thing about Ferox is that the actual on-screen violence is far more scarce. The aftermath, like severed penises and skewered breasts, is shown, but the piercings and severings not so much. In fact, there is more infamous animal violence visible than simulated human violence. Ferox for some reason carries on Holocaust's detested tradition of live animal killings on-screen, but the majority of it is actually inflicted on animals by other animals. It's obviously set-up nature is no less disturbing, and we even get a brand new Turtle Death, which plays out in a very similar way to Holocaust. But I've already been there, done it and regretted it, so I actually averted my gaze when it came.

It is filmed and narrated in a typical movie style, with an invisible camera crew following a bunch of characters from all angles who can't see them. It's far more of an action picture than Holocaust as it lacks the documentary-style realism. That may be one reason why it's not so effective. It may also be that we've seen a very similar scenario before, and done better. It's an entertaining enough watch for something of its genre, but far more put-together than Holocaust. The dialogue is rather scripted, the incidents similarly. The one thing that struck me as unexpected was actually the appearance of Mike and Joe early on. It feels lacking in a sense of dread and cruelty which was so prevalent in Holocaust. It is cleaner and far more produced, and feels rather like it was riding on the back of Holocaust's infamy. But it is good, and must be credited for its horror star cast.