Hatchet III (2013)

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

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

This sight is like freakin' Disneyland for Crowley

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

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

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

Fuck yo' sista!

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

Oh no! Ma theory was wroowwng!

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

Hatchet II (2010)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sweet Hostage (1975)

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

The Craft (1996)

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


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

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

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

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

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

The Shallows (2016)

I was pretty stoked for a new shark movie - I mean a serious one. For all the fears and traditions that Jaws began back in 1975, there have been relatively few proper shark movies since. Even Deep Blue Sea - about the only other blockbuster to spring to mind - wasn't really a serious shark movie. To be honest, I'm not sure The Shallows is either. It's a lot sillier than I anticipated a 2016 shark movie to be, and I'm still not quite sure how bad I think it is.

Nancy (Blake Lively) has dropped out of med school, has a strained relationship with her family and a dead mother, and is in Mexico to surf on some mysterious beach. She and the few other people in the vicinity get set upon by one big fucker of a shark, and somehow, she turns out to be the only one who avoids dying. But not through lack of trying!

A few hundred yards out there is a cluster of rocks that appear when the tide is low, and Nancy ends up stranded on them, with a bite on her leg that looks as though she got off really lightly when we see just how big her assailant is. Here she spends the next 24 hours or so doing very little. But she does make friends with a seagull who is also stranded because of a dislocated wing, who she names Stephen. I kid you not, I rooted for him more than for any of the humans in this entire picture.

At first it seems as though Nancy is waiting on the rock for low tide when she might have the easiest chance of getting back to shore with all her limbs intact. But low tide comes and goes and she has done nothing to end her predicament. I got to wondering what she was waiting for. Surely for an avid surfer such as herself, she has at least a marginally better chance of survival by swimming for it than waiting to die of exposure. But she hangs around for whatever reason, and when the camera helmet of her recently-masticated acquaintance washes up near her rock, she makes more effort than she has shown yet to retrieve it, apparently under the impression that the shark is out at the shops or something.

The many inconsistencies in the narrative make for critic fodder, from the small cluster of rocks supposedly being a safe retreat until the script calls for the shark to bellyflop the thing like a gym mat in the finale, to Nancy's attempt to eat live crabs rather than make a run for it. It's all the small things with this one. But the narrative itself - in the most literal sense - was what pissed me off about The Shallows. There is such heavy use of lazy narrative features, I suppose intended to help guide we idiotic viewers through this complex web of events. Nancy talks to herself constantly in a very unnatural way, I suppose intended to reflect on her dealings with patients as a medical student. But it is so stiff and expositional that I felt patronised.

Means of killing a big ass shark in open water without any real knowhow or equipment is a point that has perplexed shark movie makers for sometime, and they never get any more serious or believable! This one involves being pulled down to the sea floor by the weight of a chain that has been broken from the buoy it anchored, luring the shark at such speed as to impale it on the shards of the anchor, dodging it herself at the very last second. And all without decompression/regard for respiration. But the final image of the shark, its anterior smashed in like the crumple zone of a Volvo estate on the motor way, was fairly amusing, so I'll give the makers a little credit.

You won't feel robbed of ninety minutes of your life by watching The Shallows, and the first act has some fairly decent suspense, but it is a silly and inconsistent movie, topped off with a 'family reunion' theme so cheesy it shouldn't be approached by the lactose intolerant. But if you tune in for any reason, it should be to witness your own emotional turmoil when Nancy sets Steven Seagull adrift on a shard of surfboard. I said to myself, If Steven Seagull comes to any harm, I am SO done with this punkass movie! He is the unsung hero of The Shallows, and my new favourite actor.

The Haunting (1999)

I wanna tell y'all, my dear readers, about a little town nestled among the Lincolnshire hills and fields. An old market town full to the rafters with chavs and scum, it has aptly served as the base of my mother's career as a prosecutor for the last fifteen years. With more boarded up shops than open ones and an active disdain for the young, it is the worst place I have ever had the misfortune of spending an extended period of time in. Hell, it is the hometown of none other than the Milk Snatcher Herself, and I went to the same high school that she did. There is absolutely no redeeming quality of this town, except perhaps one... Not five miles outside of this shitheap, is a miniscule green village called Harlaxton, that is home to not much more than an old manor house that now is a campus for US university students. This manor house served as location for Jan de Bont's 1998 'remake' of the classic horror tale, here titled 'The Haunting'.

It is perhaps the most spectacular place you could imagine. Open only a few days a year to the public, my sister and I were once dragged along to the Manor for a string quartet recital. Naturally, we snuck out of the recital room and began to roam the expansive halls of the house, and it was unlike anything we had ever seen. While at this concert, Mum's friends asked her if we had seen 'The Haunting' yet, and she duly obliged maybe a week later with a VHS copy. At 12, it was one of the scariest things I had ever seen, and I was far from a stranger to horror at that point.

OK guys, if you could approach this awful script with only 10%
 of your talent....and ACTION!

I watched it again the other day, having read on forums for years how terrible people thought it was. I had long wondered what I was seeing that they weren't, and I now opine that they were able to get past the relatively few visually-haunting sequences and look at all the primary factors that came together to create this really silly movie. As a film buff, I can now say that director Jan de Bont is one of the culprits. He is another I would classify with Renny Harlin, in that through big and not-so-big budget, they have proven time and time again that they can sustain a respectable movie career without ever really making good movies. They are also both in the habit of starting strong and ending flaccid.

This kid needs a sound beating

Consider de Bont's probably best known picture as director, Speed. We all know and love that movie. But can you show me anyone who doesn't think the whole tacked-on ending with the subway train was the most festering form of overkill to what had been, until that point, a good movie? Harlin often does the same - and often overestimates his genius for good measure - and Th
e Haunting is caught red-handed committing this sin. However, rather like with Harlin's cult classic Deep Blue Sea, de Bont's fate is sealed by his overall directive technique, and his shameless misuse of decent actors.

Yeeeaaahh... if I could get a room with "less to dust", so to
speak... that'd be great!

I like Lili Taylor, and would later go on to appreciate her in such roles as Paula Klaw in The Notorious Bettie Page, but when faced with both her acceptance of this role and her performance in it, I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry for her. Many a good actor has faltered under shoddy direction over the years, and she is one of them. Even the likes of Liam Neeson and the lovely Catherine Zeta Jones are not enough to save this picture, and the goofy addition of Owen Wilson just takes the cake.

Nell (Taylor) has spent the last decade or so caring for her invalid mother, and struggles with insomnia because of her constant need to attend to the old woman, even now she's dead. She receives a mysterious phone call advising her to look in the paper, where she finds an advert for a paid sleep study conducted by one Dr David Marrow (Neeson). Marrow, we see meanwhile, is in fact studying fear, and is luring bad sleepers to this "Addams Family mansion" under false pretense in order to do so. What Marrow doesn't seem to have counted upon is there being some vague familial link between Nell and the builder of the house Hugh Crane, whose horrifying portrait hangs in the foyer of the manor and gradually decays.

Cool portrait bro... paint it again.

One assertion I maintain is that there are still a handful of creepy-ass sequences that shit me up, even now. However, the movie goes waaaaay overboard with the crappy late-90s CGI, turning the third act into one long and ridiculous merry-go-round. As much as they may think otherwise, characters largely neglect to do any real thinking about their situation, and they serve as mere vehicles for a rather perplexing and weak script, so by the end of it, however creeped out (or not) we may be as viewers, we still don't give a toss about any of the characters either way. The patchy backstory of Hugh Crane and what is causing the haunting is fed us throughout, but it never really adds up, and even now, I don't think I really get it all. So either I'm getting stupider, or this is just a bad script. Tough call.

Showgirls (1995)

Showgirls is surely the best bad movie ever made. It doesn’t matter which way you look at it, it’s a really shit movie, but it is sooooo shit that it is humiliatingly enjoyable. I advise from experience that anybody watching Showgirls with a partner or group do so from the outset: I have been driven mad by the many idiot friends I had squatting in my house in the past, who would wander in halfway through and say, ‘What’s this fucking porn you’re watching?’ I guess writers Verhoeven and Eszterhas would be thrilled at the prospect, but it wore my patience thin.
Nomi Malone (Elizabeth Berkley from Saved by the Bell) hitches her way to Las Vegas to be a ‘dancer’, and gets her suitcase stolen. Somehow, by vandalising a car and almost getting mowed down by another car, she attracts the affection of seamstress Molly, even when she is breathing vomit breath like….right into her fucking face. Molly’s a good friend. A few weeks later, the girls are best friends. Molly works on the show Goddess sewing costumes, while Nomi has found gainful employment at the gentlemen’s club The Cheetah (ref: Roger Ebert’s definition of a gentlemen’s club). Nomi dances like a hot epileptic on amphetamines. But she gets naked and I guess that’s what the johns pay to see, so she somehow makes a living this way.

Gross

Meanwhile, she naturally dreams of rising to the top, and becoming the headline star of Goddess. Obnoxious glamorous redneck Crystal Connors (Gina Gerschon) is top of the bill, in the bosses’ high esteem, and the squeeze of sleazy hotel promoter Zach (Kyle MacLachlan). Nomi’s sociopathic attitude makes her a perfect fit in Vegas and a perfect match for the slimeballs she has to audition for to wiggle her way to the top. But her outrageous behaviour, which must surely place her somewhere high on the autistic spectrum, is good for laugh-a-minute comedy. Consider the fate of the poor French fries, having found their way into Nomi’s cardboard tray outside a diner. She is angry at being questioned by Molly, and having practically disembowelled a bottle of ketchup with a single thrust, she sets about the poor innocent fries and shoves them all over the table in a frustrated jerk. This must be some new trendy kind of eating disorder. Everything she orders hits the deck before she even unwraps it!

Showgirls is bad, like I’m bad, chamone, you know it. And almost every line makes me laugh for all the wrong reasons. When it’s not dialogue that’s making you bite your tongue, it’s usually one or another factor of Berkley’s frenetic physical delivery. The infamous pool sex scene between Nomi and Zack leaves us all wondering how she escaped the debacle without either a broken back or water on the lungs; while her licking the strip pole of the Cheetah club leaves us all wondering if she escaped the debacle without several venereal diseases.

I have long wondered to what extent Showgirls portrays the true Vegas underground. I mean, who could resist auditioning for a guy whose opening line is ‘A lot of people say that I’m a prick – I AM a prick!’? What fat slobbery male in the rabid audience of the Cheetah could fail to spunk his pants over the riddle ‘Ya know what they call that useless piece of skin around a twat? A woman!’? That is apparently meant to be a joke, but quite frankly, I have heard funnier things during biopsies. At some point you have to ask yourself how Ezsterhas ended up being the highest paid writer in Hollywood in the mid-‘90s, when his most rousing one-liners were the likes of ‘Dancing ain’t fucking’ and ‘You ain’t just a pain in my head and a pain in my dick, you also a pain in my ass!’ I am of the educated assumption that his status has slipped somewhat in the years since.

However, some of the characters and their whole beings are caricatures created entirely for the LOLs. Al, the slimy cigar-chewing manager of the Cheetah club was born to be in the business, and beautifully describes his profession to new girl Penny in the elevator pitch of the century. ‘He pays, you take him in the back. You can touch him, he cannot touch you. Unless he gives ya a big tip. If he cums, it’s OK. If he takes it out and cums all over ya, call the bouncer. Unless he pays ya. You wanna last a week, you gimme a blow job. First I get ya used to the money, then I make ya swallow.’ Don’t call us Al, we’ll call you.

Nomi, bless her dumb liplined little heart, is an unwitting source of comedy in her idiocy. From her now-legendary mispronunciation of Versace, to her hideously OTT reactions to most situations, she is comedy gold. Of course, in real life, she would have no friends and considerably more mutilations. She talks to people like shit, throws and smashes things continually, and is in the habit of making men feel instantly uncomfortable by talking about her period. Take that Al – your misogynist shit is no match for period talk!

She also has the oddest ideas about what turns people on. Her dance routines are absurd, her boning technique probably the cause of many a fractured penis over the years, and her stripteases are more like paid face-rapings. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Zach having been humped to within an inch of his life in a strip club, who now had to try and enjoy the rest of his night out with cum in his pants. I mean, is that what his girlfriend paid $500 for? The logistics of this could have been better planned, methinks.

Showgirls has to be seen to be believed, and loved. It stands as a favourite of many cult figures such as Elvira and Michelle Visage, and enjoys the same sort of midnight cult following that Rocky has embodied for decades. It is the sort of movie that should be enjoyed responsibly with a crate of beer and some pizza – while you sit back and secretly thank your stars for Nomi not being there… that pizza would be under the wheels of the nearest pick-up truck before the box was even opened.

1408 (2007)

The movie 1408 came out at a pivotal time in my adolescence: my sister and I went to see it in our crappy two-screen local town cinema with our boyfriends, and it was one of the most terrifying cinematic experiences we had ever experienced, or have since. We were both avid Stephen King enthusiasts and were just blown away with this adaptation of his short story. It was not only a movie that made you jump, but gave you chills right to the core.


Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a paranormal investigator/writer/skeptic/world's sloppiest envelope-opener, who once had a career as a legitimate author. He makes his living visiting supposedly haunted hotels and houses and officially debunking all attached theories. One day he finds a mysterious postcard from the Dolphin Hotel in New York City, warning him not to enter room 1408. His manager (Tony Shalhoub) uses a lawyer to bend the hotel's resistance to Mike's demand for the room, and when he arrives, Mike faces further defensiveness from the hotel manager Mr Olin (Samuel L Jackson). Eventually, Mike gets into the room, and his mental and physical undoing commences.

Olin describes Mike as 'an intelligent man who doesn't believe in anyone or anything but himself',

and the writer's skepticism lasts a surprisingly short period, after which Olin's guarantee that 'nobody has ever lasted more than an hour in that room' will be fulfilled, as visualised by a ghostly digital bedside clock. For as long as a logical cynically-atheist man possibly can, Mike tries to apply the laws of physics to his ordeal, and his theory that Olin gifted him spiked whiskey seemingly holds up throughout. In the midst of his wildest nightmare scenarios, there are periodic shots portraying Mike in a perfectly untouched hotel room in hysterics.

Although the entire movie is your average decent-budget-with-several-big-names-attached in terms of style, it serves the space-bending narrative perfectly, and makes good use of perspective in the form of both newspaper articles and 1408 room paintings, all looking back at Mike as he examines them. As his ordeal (I apologise for my frequent use of this word; only I can think of no effective alternative) intensifies, there are some particularly wonderful works by the set designers and constructors, in a movie which, generally, I think was probably pretty cheap to make as the majority of the action takes place in a moderately-sized hotel suite that could be easily replicated on sound stages.

One thing I did not expect this evening was to end up crying at a horror movie I had seen a few times before. But I suppose every other time I had seen it, I was not the mother of an eight-year-old daughter like I am now. The central trauma that underpins Mike's ordeal in 1408 is the death of his young daughter Katie, and the child's implied resignation to her illness as a result of belief in God and Heaven. A sequence in which Mike is approached by a vision of his dead child - one he knows is not real - and holds her, crying hysterically and assuring her of his unending love. Cusack is an incredible actor, and both his sorrow and his terror are so tangible from the beginning of the movie to the very end.

1408 is mainly a one-man show by Cusack, and he is perfect. The role allows him to have fun with many emotions and attitudes in the same character, while Jackson's (sadly) minimal role allows him to oppose Cusack's determined disbelief... and deliver at least one joyously gratuitous 'fuckin'. It's a really good, tense and scary movie.

Grave Encounters (2011)

Found Footage is often snubbed by a certain faction of the movie-going world, considered dull, unoriginal and unwatchable due to the 'shakey camera' cliche; I maintain that it is the same as basically any other subgenre, in that there are a few really good examples and many bad ones, but the subgenre itself does not inherently make a movie bad - or good, for that matter. I have quite a few post-Blair Witch favourites of FF, which include Crowsnest, Apollo 18 and the Grave Encounters movies. The duology is unprecedented proof of that rare wonder: the sequel that lives up to its original. Writers/directors The Vicious Brothers are very much my kind of filmmakers: my generation, grungy as fuck, and worshippers of all good horror. They are the sort of dedicated and learned auteurs that you would be happy to see succeed, and they did exactly that with the Grave Encounters films.

"It's the gayest show in the fucking world!"

In a throwback to the format of the very first FF movie Cannibal Holocaust, the footage that constitutes the main narrative of the movie is set to a realistic framework, in which a TV producer explains to a documentary camera that the following picture was compiled from 76 hours of footage found after the disappearance of his crew on a job at an abandoned and supposedly haunted asylum. The show is Grave Encounters, and it is basically Ghost Hunters, as depicted by South Park ("It's the gayest show in the fucking world!"). Host Lance Preston and his colleagues pout at the camera, desperately try to look hard, and contrive non-existant ghostly experience, while we see their many outtakes in which their disbelief in the paranormal and generally unprofessional attitude is made evident.

They have arranged to spend the night - eight hours - locked in Collingwood Asylum, with the cooperation of the building's caretaker, who chains the door from the outside, and promises to return for them in the morning (how is this very notion somehow unsettling?). For a while they go about their media-whore jobs, but they inevitably soon come to realise that the ghosts they have spent five previous episodes simulating do actually exist, and they are none too satisfied with this revelation.

If you can't figure what happens in the next two seconds, you
have not seen a movie this side of the millennium.

I have yet to investigate any special features on my DVD, but have previously watched behind-the-scenes featurettes on the sequel, and it is very insightful. One of the main objectives that the Vicious Brothers had was that the many old horror tropes would be null and void in their line of narrative.

Like a souped up 1408, the asylum is an entity in itself, and shifts its shape to fuck with its captives. Every supposed escape and exit leads to another dark corridor. When 'rules' no longer apply, we the audience are unable to judge the characters' choices, because there is basically no way out and no way to fight. It is an inescapable nightmare, and this makes for a brilliantly tense viewing experience.

Jaws 2 (1978)

After I had discovered Jaws, my Pop told me and my sister about Jaws 2 and Jaws 3. A good seven or

eight years later, he and his wife were at the beginning of an unprecedented divorce, and Pop took us to HMV to buy some DVDs to keep us occupied while he and his wife had terrible post-marital discussions (true story). We chose Jaws 2, Jaws 3 and Billy Elliot. I watched Jaws 2 a lot as an adolescent, and finally got a cheap copy of it this weekend, having burnt out the old copy years ago, and watched it for the first time with actual attention. You see, as a kid, I watched all of the Jaws movies, and pretty much zoned out during all of the long boring talky bits, and came back when the shark appeared. As I matured, I came to appreciate all the discreet details that made Jaws what it was, and in a lot of important ways, made Jaws 2 an almost worthy sequel.

Jeannot Szwarc directs this sequel (Spielberg's resistance to sequels of his own work, excepted only with The Lost World: Jurassic Park II, is famous), and his employment on this picture went down as somewhat controversial; Roy Scheider, forced into reprising Martin Brody by his five-picture contract with Universal, had an infamously aggressive working relationship with Szwarc, who comes across as a rather stubborn director to work with. But in the face of it all, Szwarc does a pretty sterling job of crafting a movie that feels like a natural extension of Spielberg's, with similar visuals, themes and a great musical contribution, again, by John Williams.

Four years after the ordeal on Amity Island, two divers are expired by an unseen aquatic evil, while their huge underwater camera spontaneously clicks its own shutter multiple times. Martin Brody is past his glory days as the hero of Amity, and doing his best to be a good chief to the Island, and a good husband to Ellen (Lorraine Gary), who is now on the town council and trying to sell the place to tourists. When several cool gory killings take place, and photos from that magic diver camera get developed, Brody becomes convinced that a shark is terrorising the Island once again, much to the repetitive and monumentally unwise denial of the incorrigible Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), who apparently didn't learn his lesson back in 1975.

Meanwhile, Brody's son Michael is now a high schooler, and the local teens enjoy a cruising culture in boats the way most kids do in cars, making them the perfect bait for the latest great white lined up to feast upon some New England chowder. As with Jaws, Szwarc allows a good half of the movie to be allocated to setting scene and establishing characters, making both adults and teens surprisingly well-rounded characters. There are a good dozen teenagers who set out on doomed boat journeys, all of whom are very realistic, both in looks and in performances. Ann Dusenberry and Donna Wilkes, as Tina and Jackie respectively, are particular standouts in conveying histeria.

In spite of some silly moments - including the one in which the hydraulic innards of the pursuing

shark are very obviously visible - Jaws 2 is a solid picture, and marks the finish line of the success of the franchise. Joe Alves, who served as production designer on the first two Jaws movies and did an excellent job both times, went on to helm Jaws 3 as director, and somehow turned out one of the stupidest, most laughable pictures in movie history. Watching Jaws 2 and being reminded of Alves' involvement, I wonder where the hell it all went wrong for him. I must review Jaws 3 sometime in order to elaborate on exactly why it is such a dumb movie. I knew it when I was 13, and I definitely know it now.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007)

REVIEW
THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2

Any reader of my stuff knows of my love for Wes Craven’s work, in particular his directorial debut Last House on the Left, which is my favourite horror ever. Any reader of my stuff also knows that the ‘70s are my time, and how many articles of that decade are very much up my street. Craven’s second horror The Hills Have Eyes (1977) came after an unsuccessful attempt to break out of the indie horror genre, and established him in the genre, at least until A Nightmare on Elm Street. People seem to completely forget my beloved Last House, which stings so much as it still comes across as Craven’s strongest movie ever. The remake of The Hills Have Eyes was a very passable noughties horror, made stronger by the likes of Ted Levine (AKA Buffalo Bill), but a patch on the original, which boasted teenage boys in short-shorts doing somersaults and Michael Berryman’s establishment into the horror genre, making the most of his genetic disorder.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 is a mediocre effort, particularly by Craven’s standard. Funny thing is, this one has major Craven power, with Wes and his son Jonathan (the kid whose balloon Krug pops with his cigar in Last House), concocting the script within a month. Unfortunately, this boast is evident. Wes wrote Last House in a similar timeframe, and allowing all of the admitted ad-lib that went on on-set, it was a far stronger script, and picture in general, back in 1971, with no permits, a meagre drip-fed budget, and no professional credentials. This isn’t to say, though, that The Hills 2 isn’t enjoyable.

I first saw this movie on late night TV years ago, and recently bought it in a cheap DVD shop. I suppose I spoiled the viewing pleasure a little by watching the Making Of featurette (a pathetic 12-odd-minute thing) before the actual film, thereby revealing all of the best jump scares. But this is a good starting point in a horror review – this movie relies a lot on jump scares, far more than the subgenre generally dictates. Hillbilly cannibals were practically invented by Craven, and have gone on to enjoy a prolific, decades-long career in horror, but the FX and utter grossness that they usually entail relieve the need for jump scares: being hunted down by super-strong beings who are also fuck-ugly is enough to put anybody’s teeth on edge.

A synopsis: National Guard recruits are training in the desert of New Mexico where they come across an abandoned camp that was supposed to have people in it, and a mysterious mirror reflecting SOS signals from the mountaintop. The original remake already detailed in its admittedly effective credit sequence the reckless nuclear testing that took place in this area and the devastating effect it had on the remaining occupants of the vicinity, but of course, these are horror characters who have never even heard of a horror movie, so clichés of the field are water off a duck’s back. I needn’t elaborate on the plot from here.

What I will say is that this is a very modern and diluted version of the Hills Have Eyes concept, and I guess Wes knew that when he volunteered his services to a studio in need of a lucrative movie franchise. Money makes the world go round, mein herr. The original movie, and even the remake, did not jump ship for the phoney paranormal technique, but built a tangible atmosphere of dread and fear. This remake should have done the same.

“Oh, my son and I could write that in a month,” quoth Wes to the production studio in need of a cash cow. I regret to say that this movie is unworthy of Craven. True, my like for his work grew lesser as his budget and mainstream acclaim grew, but The Hills 2 is so generic that it could have been one of those many debuts by an ‘80s kid filmmaker that grew up on Freddy.

Effects and make-up are good, as are sets when you find out what is real and what isn’t. The cast and crew alike endured unpleasant conditions to churn out a movie that is, to quote Lita Ford, ‘middle of the road, pansy-ass shit’. It is just one of those movies that teenagers for years to come will say, ‘Oh, how about this?’ to. A sleepover cult favourite for the future perhaps, but a blip on the modern horror landscape for now, it certainly is.

Jaws 3 (1983)

Where did it all go wrong for Joe Alves? His visual work was central to the success of Jaws and, to a considerable extent, Jaws 2. When Jaws 3 came around he landed the director's chair, and turned out a movie that is still hailed as one of the worst ever. It's questionable how much of this is his fault: the plot is silly, the script is terrible, and the visuals are some of the worst I have seen in any movie, but as director, it is all 'his' ideal, so officially he must take some of the heat for this.

SeaWorld's Worst Dolphin Feeder 1983

Michael Brody, son of Chief Martin and Ellen, and his little brother Sean, are the two common threads that run through the entire franchise, and despite all their collective trauma at the fins of killer sharks, only one of them seems to show any signs of wear and tear. Michael (this time Dennis Quaid) works in some senior role or other at SeaWorld, but seems to know nothing of even basic aquatic science, and can't even drop a fish right. His girlfriend Katherine is a marine biologist at the park, and when he lands a dream job, he implores Kat to 'give up your life and follow me'. Cute guy!

For whatever reason, Sean comes to visit, and the three get on like a house on fire, hanging in a local bar and indulging in plenty of 'champagne of the working classes' (i.e. beer). I'm not sure just how 'working class' being a doctor of marine biology is, but it's a fun analogy nonetheless! Sean meets a girl, Kelly (Lea Thompson), a water-skiier at Seaworld, and they hit it off.

Meanwhile, SeaWorld has been madeover since being taken over by business moghul Calvin Bouchard (Lou Gossett Jr.) and is now being reopened to the public to much media attention, following once again the classic Jaws theme of mass hysteria under high public scrutiny. SeaWorld is on the ocean, with pretty flimsy metal gates keeping the open water off-limits...or so we think! For whatever reason, a shark slips through the gate one night and finds itself locked in an all-you-can-eat buffet!

But this isn't any great white shark - this is a naturally-reared, wild North Atlantic great white shark...and it's up the duff! ('Oh, she was such a nice shark - how does that happen?!') First she takes out some SeaWorld operative who is charged with closing that damn gate, and then two rascals who sneak onto the property and venture out in the pissiest little rubber dinghy you ever saw! Credit to the fish, it takes out said dinghy in record time.

As one might imagine, all hell breaks loose when it becomes evident to SeaWorld guests that a killer shark is after them, causing Michael to crash no fewer than three vehicles, ruin a perfectly good picnic, and punch a man to carjack his quadbike - all in an effort to help! The second half's many underwater sequences pick all the stitches on the first half. Any veterans will recall that Jaws 3 was released as Jaws 3D, and the early-'80s film technology that went into achieving that brought overall production quality back several decades. Consider, for example, this CGI shot of a mini submersible turning in the water, with half of the craft dissolving as it goes:

Sadly for Alves, most of the live-action above-surface footage scrubs up into an almost-passable movie. Monster movies don't often require the laws of science to apply, but Jaws 3 takes the cake. As any good shark fan knows from Deep Blue Sea, sharks cannot swim backwards as it causes water to flood their gills and drown them. This young hussy of a shark, however, butt-slams her way through a bolted cage and proceeds to escape it backwards. She then goes on to roar underwater (an inaccuracy Jaws the Revenge took to another level by roaring out of water). Physical bloopers are scattered throughout the movie, while bad dialogue and puzzling theories throw us further off course.

Back when I first saw Jaws 3, at the age of 13, I thought it was a shit movie, and enjoyed taking the piss out of it with my family. As with Jaws 2, my DVD copy from back in the day got burned out many moons ago, so I bought a new copy the other day. I still think it is a shit movie, and it is not often that I have come to this conclusion after twelve-odd years of film education. I am often able to identify redeeming features in bad movies, but Jaws 3 has so very few, and if nothing else, it is good for the movie's long-term health for me to promote it as a shit movie that is worth seeing. It is a good laugh, but it is no Jaws.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Among the furore IMDb caused when they shut down their discussion boards – I am among many who have all but abandoned the long-beloved site now as it became apparent that the forums were its main appeal and function – I went in search of an alternative, finding MovieChat.org. It has the advantage of having transferred all of the old existing IMDb discussions over, so if we can remember the movies we enjoyed discussing, we can find our old posts. On the boards recently, I found quite a bit of talk of The Silence of the Lambs having become outdated; some even argued that Anthony Hopkins did not deserve his Best Actor Oscar. This surprised me not only as a oldtimer lover of the film, but as a general fan of cinema. This movie has been considered for decades already, and it is a pretty contemporary picture. I decided to revisit this old favourite of mine for a review.

At the age of 14, I went through a real tomboy phase, during which I worked out profusely, wore boys’ clothes, and wanted to be a Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger (had I not become a parent and found my energy levels depleted for evermore, I would still probably be living this dream!), and Clarice Starling became another ideal of this phase. A girlfriend and I obsessed over this story, and more specifically the tangibly erotic relationship between Starling and Lecter, which encapsulated pretty much all of our collective teenage fantasies. I have always been into older guys, but some eleven years on, I still get thrills from Hopkins as Lecter, and his undeniable sex appeal in the face of psychosis.

Starling meets a match

Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is a trainee at the FBI academy – a serious, enthusiastic young woman, whose presence in the patriarchal landscape of the federal agencies is underpinned with continual clever use of cinematography. From being, in the words of Ebert, ‘a short woman in an elevator full of tall men’, to her visual POV adopted by cameras during verbal exchanges, in which her male counterparts break the fourth wall and talk directly into the camera, while she retorts slightly off-camera. Starling, notably, only finds three intellectual matches that warrant her direct eye contact: her sole female colleague Ordelia (Kasi Lemmon), Hannibal Lecter, and the wanted serial killer Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine).

Starling’s sharp wit and academic strength prompt her superior Crawford (Scott Glenn) to recruit her assistance in the pursuit of Buffalo Bill, who kidnaps fat women, skins them and dumps their bodies, and has now captured the daughter (Brooke Smith) of Senator Martin (Diane Baker). It becomes evident that the bureau guys think that at least Lecter’s professional capacity as a psychiatrist will lend insight to the case – if not his direct personal knowledge - and feel that Starling fills the specific criteria of being physically endearing while being critically minded enough not to be manipulated and remember to do her job.

Eyes that make you want to fuck

In a chilling and prolonged game of cat and mouse, or quid pro quo, Lecter guides Clarice cryptically to the identity of Buffalo Bill, demanding personal anecdotes in return for his clues. Through his carrot-on-a-string bargaining, Lecter wiggles his way into Clarice’s mind in a sinister but oddly paternal fashion. When Lecter later escapes custody and kills several in the effort, Clarice assures Ordelia that he will not target her, explaining that ‘he would consider that rude’, and strangely, in spite of the several elaborately executed murders we have now seen the doctor commit, we know this to be true. There is some bizarre affection between Lecter and Starling that endears him to her and guarantees her safety and success.

Jodie Foster won Best Actress at the Oscars for her performance, fully establishing herself as perhaps the first and only really successful transition from leading child actor to leading adult actor. Foster is most remarkable in her simultaneous professionalism and friendliness. While undoubtedly polished in her craft and a very serious committee to it, she is charming, funny and approachable. On top of all of this, she is trilingual, graduated an esteemed university at the standard age, all while maintaining a hugely successful and publicly forward acting career.

Ted Levine is a tremendous talent, and what strikes me more and more all the time is just how audacious he was to take such a role as Buffalo Bill. Set among the height of the AIDS epidemic and an increasingly mainstream gay culture, the film drew some criticism (as Verhoeven and Ezsterhas experienced a few years later with Basic Instinct) due to some overly sensitive people considering it homophobic or transphobic. I wonder if now they would even consider approaching such topics in such a politically correct world. But even back then, it would seem that criticism was selective. In addition, every young actor knows not to be too bold in their role choices if they want to carry on, for fear of stigma. Levine storms the set and throws his all into Bill, and his subsequent success should stand as testament to his enormous daring and ability.

Lecter, speaking in learned psychological terms, explains to Clarice that Bill believes he is a transsexual because of a much deeper seeded need for transformation, as manifested in the symbolic moths he uses as calling cards. Bill’s blurred sexual orientation and gender identity are made clear as delusions consequent of his true psychotic condition, and because of this are quite incidental. It continues to stun me when people jump to quick conclusions that films are sexist because one female character is bad, or are racist because one black character is idiotic. Based in some part on the antics of mentally-scarred Mummy’s boy Ed Gein, logic need not apply, as we are looking at a character who is not of the conventional psychological capacity. Bill may like to apply make-up and tuck his penis between his thighs, but is that any more relevant to his killing of women than his love of fluffy dogs or his immense tailoring skills? In these terms, no. Consider the exchange in which Lecter puts to Clarice, ‘what does Bill do?’ Her response is that he kills women, but in psychological terms, that is not the answer. ‘He covets’, Lecter explains. Bill’s rooted covetousness is the main driver of every other characteristic. He covets that which he cannot be or have – the body of a woman being his main focus. Within his mental arena, this same fixation could have been upon children, animals, inanimate objects, whatever. But this twisted character bending the barriers of conventional gender are in no way an indication of wide held view of all gay/transgender people being psychotic murderers. Case closed.

In spite of Lecter’s high regard as a figure of the horror genre, it is questionable whether this is a horror story. It occurs entirely within reality, and its format and focus is much more on the criminal perspective, the investigative thrills. None of the horror sequences – mutilations, that is – are either implied or occur off-screen, and in this way SOTL found its way into the annals of classic horror, scarring people for years to come, in the same way that Texas Chainsaw Massacre did, by allowing the audience to feel the hysteria of the unknown. Had this been intended as a horror, we would see Bill ‘skin his humps’, or Lecter literally deface (LOL, sorry) Sergeant Pembry. This is a sophisticated crime thriller, and plays out in that way, with dramatic red herrings popping up, diverting federal and audience attention, just as the antagonist intends.

Hannibal Lecter – thanks to the collective works of Thomas Harris, Anthony Hopkins and the various screenwriters who revised the script that eventually ended up on the screen – has gone down in history as a horror icon for one prominent reason: the shrewd intellectualism that renders him practically invincible. We are used to the antagonists who pull of elaborate action sequences and blow up opponents in crazy ways; we are used to the retarded or otherwise faceless bogeymen that stalk neighbourhood babysitters and high school girls. What we are not used to is a very human psychopath, who actually can be reasoned with and is capable of developing emotional attachments to other living beings. And we are not used to them using so little violence, and so much intellect, in their murderous endeavours. Hannibal Lecter embodies the level of mental capacity so high that its perceptions border on the clairvoyant, that any audience member surely envies in some way. 

Hopkins’ later performance in Hannibal, that I could never grow to love due to Julianne Moore’s replacement of Foster, ignited the erotic tension that SOTL encapsulated. Although the movie deviated from the novel, when Clarice handcuffs herself to Lecter in Krendler’s house and he traps her hair in the fridge, and their faces are so close, and he asks her, ‘Would you ever tell me, “Stop; if you loved me you’d stop”?’… that is the kind of sexual tension I could get off to every night for the rest of my life. The dynamic between Lecter and Starling is electrifying, and Hopkins and Foster somehow hit on the most explosive formula. Their on-screen relationship is one of those that seems so perfect that the universe must have prophesised it millennia previously, like John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, or Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss.