Born Innocent (1974)

Every now and then with a child star, particularly one from the '70s, you have to wonder what their folks were thinking. I don't really plan on questioning how well juveniles are taken care of on set: it is a tricky topic, given the often inevitable outcome of the poor soul's trip to Hollywood. Some (Jodie Foster and Brooke Shields) turned out to be well-educated, classy and talented adults. So after The Exorcist (all dubbings and doubles aside), was there anything Linda Blair's parents weren't OK with? Video interviews with Mr and Mrs Blair show them to be very decent, loving and caring parents, which is all the more baffling: at least Terri Shields made herself obvious as a maniac with such ludicrous claims as "people want to see a sexy child". Linda's Act I consisted of regular victim roles, and one would surely be excused for questioning her overseers' choices. But then, despite being far less mainstream these days than Foster or Shields, Linda also turned out great. Solid B-movie credentials over the decades, solid commitment to various charities and animal organisations, including her own, and a good sport at horror conventions galore.

Exhibit C in the Blair Victim Files, after The Exorcist and Sarah T. respectively, is Born Innocent. Another (many more came) made-for-TV movie which took advantage of Blair's cute face and apparent lack of parental controls. Sarah T. was a good girl really, who became sucked up in depression and addiction and expressed remorse for the damage her troubles caused to others. Chris Parker is different. At least in the end. The sour-faced youngster is introduced with a swell of sympathetic string music that reoccurs throughout the movie. Chris is a young runaway who has been arrested again, and makes herself scarce in the holding cell crammed with young, female Peter Stormare types. She seems out of her depth in the whole runaway business: the other girls look ready to chew the balls off a wrestler, but Chris crouches in the corner, her sweet face obscured by her hair.

When hauled up in court, the ball is dropped on Chris at the same time it is on us. The Judge rather compassionlessly reveals that her parents have handed over full custody of her, making Chris a Ward of the State, a.k.a. Hapless Victim of Society. So off she is carted to a half-way house for unruly girls, where she is swiftly and clinically examined by the Nurse Ratched of the joint, a steely woman named Lasko. Stripped off and her cavities searched for substances, Chris seems further still out of her depth when told, "Girls get drugs in here any way they can." At this point, she's probably starting to wish she had smuggled in some dope.

Cute little Chris quickly comes to the attention of the resident aggressive dyke, who leers at her and seems to have a gang of cronies at her disposal. The staff are all incompetent, and mostly very hostile, with the exception of counsellor Barbara (Joanna Miles) who defends Chris from punishment when she offends the others. However, none are efficient enough in dealing with juvenile delinquency, as the tough lesbian proves when she and her gang corner Chris when she's in the shower. They pin her down and rape her with a toilet plunger. (So Mr and Mrs Blair, about your supervision of your 15 year old daughter's role choices...) That said, this scene is incredibly powerful, and is tackled with gritty realism by the actors and cinematographer. Without this scene, we would not have a full understanding of either the abuse of Chris, or the abuse in general of institutions. At this stage in the game, Chris is the softened victim, who recognises her own pain and feels sorrow.

Having earned a little merit, Chris is granted a visit home. Being that she was an affluent runaway, it's safe to assume that this is not such a privilege after all. Within minutes of being home, shit is going down. Her dad is one of those short, wide, balding assholes who goes red all over with rage. Her mum is a hopeless neurotic who just sits home and chainsmokes. The dad beats the mum, and Chris helplessly looks on. The dad later abuses his daughter, remarking on her tight jeans and smacking her about. The one person left to turn to is Chris' brother, who, although seemingly regretful, offers up every excuse he can muster as to why he cannot save his little sis from the abusive background he fled himself.

It is a sad situation when, actually given the option, Chris returns to the institution in favour of staying on at her parents' house for a few more days. And isn't it a miserable statement about the realities of child abuse? This incident cements the poor kid's downfall. She finds herself with nothing to live with, no life to return to, no goal to work towards; she might kill herself if she hadn't found some evident comfort in her bitter surroundings. Accompanied down the muddy slope by the same mournful string instrumentals, Chris eventually hits the bottom. She is finally just another runaway, problem child, young convict. Another brick in the wall, graffitied with 'Jesus Saves' and 'I Wish I Was Dead'.

Sadly, some forty years later, this is not one of those films we can say feels dated. The message, or warning, still rings hauntingly true. Life is easily fucked up. Especially when you're a parent fucking up your child's life. Talk of The System, and all its atrocities, is no less nowadays. Some may argue that it's only ever gone downhill. Children, being taken from or discarded by their parents, being circulated like unclaimed luggage on a carousel, through a stringy network of homes and institutions, and finally deposited on the other side of parental responsibility, with no qualifications, no support, no home and very little other than crime to turn to.

Wes Craven: The Guy Who Guided Generations of Gore

Whether you know me in everyday life, or through my reviews, you will know that my favourite horror movie of all time is Last House On The Left, and I regularly bring it up, as well as its creator Wes Craven. The movie, and the novice young hippies who made it happen, have served as great inspiration to me in the last few years. It taught me about how to make a brilliant picture with minimal resources; about those magic moments where exactly the right people make exactly the right statement at exactly the right point in time; about appreciating a piece of art as it was intended to be viewed, in the context of its surroundings at the time of conception. Not to mention it introduced me to the music of David Hess.

I have loved horror movies for as long as I can remember. I think it began with R.L. Stine's legendary Goosebumps books, and the subsequent TV series. My village library had the episode The Haunted Mask on video; the scariest episode ever made, and even the cover of the tape scared me. But no matter how many nights I couldn't sleep, I couldn't stop bringing the tape home. I just loved to be scared. It was at the shamefully late age of 20 that I discovered Last House, and it did as Roger Ebert promised: it "rocked me back on my psychic heels." It was a whole new level of horror, yet it was one of the oldest levels of horror.

Wes Craven was a cool and interesting guy. When he started out making movies, he was a married philosophy graduate, a father of two young children, with liberal hippie ideals who was breaking out of his fanatically religious family background. His pal Sean Cunningham (later creator of Friday the 13th) recruited him to write and direct a mind-blowing horror picture he'd been given funding for. The whole production was cheap and unofficial: lack of union relation, lack of permits, and nothing but KFC on the menu. And somehow, the talented guerrilla crew of just 28 people, created a bold, fierce work that Ebert, who solely appreciated and recommended it, correctly predicted would be a sleeper hit.

Despite an early struggle, and ultimate submission, with typecasting, Wes went with his strengths, and established himself as an icon of Horror. Many of his legendary works have proved inspirational enough to be remade, spun-off and sequelled, and his imagination has given birth to some of the genre's most infamous figures. And this morning, the sad news has broken that Wes has passed away, at the age of 76. What an incredible legacy to leave behind. What a fascinating, diverse journey his existence was.

Four years ago, as I sat in the lecture room of my Film Studies class, I found my calling, when my analytical essays turned out to be really pretty good. I started doing it in my spare time, and dreamed of becoming a real-life Film Critic, with a big shiny Press Pass that got me straight into the theatres, and a column in actual print with my words upon it. About a year ago, I was hit by a tornado of cynicism, and told my mother I thought I might train as a teacher. Writing would just have to be my hobby. But the experiences of several NQT friends of mine were no real picnic, and the all-consuming nature of their careers left it clear to me that although teaching may be the safe option, it would ultimately wipe out any real ambition I had. What sealed the deal was when I watched a documentary on horror movies, and I felt totally, and weirdly, at peace. Scary movies, enjoying them, writing about them and discussing them, was what I really loved to do. And I was actually good at it. It took some daring, but anyone who ever made it had to take the leap. And I'd rather have tried and failed, than resign myself to an unfulfilling life.

The work of Wes Craven has communicated with me in many ways, and his lifelong activity in service to the great Horror genre, and its hoards of fans, is what will see his spirit and wild imagination immortalised, in all its dark, bloody, fantastical, gory glory. Mr. and Mrs. Craven, lunatic Baptists that you were, thank you for giving the gift of your son Wesley to this world. It is probably the greatest thing you ever did.

Creep (2015)

Netflix can't keep up with me in bed. Honest to God, every night, I lie there, scrolling endlessly for a new horror movie to watch. I've watched them all, and they send a new one our way perhaps once a week, once a fortnight during a particularly dry spell. Despite its periodic impotence, Netflix continues to do good for indie movies and original series, offering a widely visible platform for their hard work. I have seen some obscure movies thanks to Netflix... Willow Creek to name a terrible one...Devils Backbone Texas to name a moderately better one, Afflicted to name a very decent one. And following these three titles in their found footage style, comes a movie far more daring and bold in its approach, in the form of Creep.

Not to be mistaken with British picture made in 2004 with Run Lola Run's Franka Potente and Harry Brown's terrifying Sean Harris, which is a far more disturbing experience than this, but only because it really goes there with the physical violence. This Creep really likes to play psychological games though, and on the most vulnerable of people. The movie taps into the widely held fear of strangers from the internet. As almost any freelancer could surely tell you (and I can certainly vouch for this), while scoping for suitable jobs to lend your skills to, you are liable to come across a bit of a weirdo every now and then. Creep's freelancer is Aaron, a cameraman, who has answered a Craigslist ad for a $1000 working day at some remote (albeit fucking fabulous) house up in the mountains.

Now just as much as $1000 for a maximum of 24 hours of your time is a pretty tidy sum, it is also almost so much that you rather expect you'll be fellating some hunchbacked hermaphrodite in a dirty basement by the end of the day for it. I mean, at least when Nev Schulman goes poking around with internet weirdos at their very own houses, he takes Max with him for backup (not to mention the considerable MTV crew, but still...). This cameraman goes it alone, and although this particular error doesn't see him to his fate, it seems a stupid move for a seemingly intelligent, college-educated fellow like Aaron (Patrick Brice). His personality, his sensibility and sensitivity are what escort him to an early grave, when that classic puzzle of Etiquette vs Instinct kicks in.

Up at the beautiful house in the mountains, Aaron finds nobody home. He is suddenly snuck up on by a weird looking fella played by Mark Duplass who, for better or worse, was adorned by the Lord with the face of the world's most prolific child molester. He reminds me somewhat of Michael Shannon's darker roles, but with the deadpan hardness of Ted Levine. One look at the dude, in his gorgeously sculpting running lycra, and we are certain who our titular Creep is. He is Josef, and he is weird. He is instantly very hands-on, hugging Aaron, insisting that this is by far the least weird thing that will happen today. Very encouraging. He swiftly invites the cameraman in, and hands him his $1000, thereby ruling money out of the equation, and making the encounter a 'relationship.' Further encouraging.

Josef explains that he is a cancer survivor, whose illness has returned in the form of an inoperable brain tumour, and he has little time left to live. Thing is, his lovely wife, who remains absent throughout, is expecting their first child, and so he wants to make a video diary of a day in his life, for his son to watch when he is older, in memory of the father he never knew. Very touching, and a pretty decent premise. For Aaron is no street-smart yob who throws a curse out every second word, he is sensitive and discreet, so he is never going to tell this poor dying man that this idea is very creepy and that he'd rather leave the premises post haste. He is going to suck it up, and sit tight, camera in hand, no matter how bizarre it gets. Cos let's face it, guilt stings worse than a knife wound.

It starts off as an 'Uncomfortable' reading on the Weirdometer. Josef strips off and bathes, holding his imaginary son in his arms and playing with him in a manner that would instantly look innocent were there an actual baby present. They go for a hike in the woods, during which Josef continuously runs off and jumps out at Aaron. He seems to get off on shitting people up. When they get back to the house, Aaron is talked into staying for a drink, despite his intention to leave. During this time, Josef makes a very queer confession. The cameraman has pulled one of those "oh yeah, the camera's definitely off" tricks. A while back, he found his internet browser history full of bestiality porn, and conceded that his wife had some sick fetish, which she flat out denied to him. So he went away under the premise of a work meeting, then broke into his house that night, wearing a fearsome wolf mask (Josef names it Peachfuzz, and brandishes the thing throughout the movie) and raped his wife, much to her delight. But when he returned from his 'business trip', she never mentioned anything, and was suddenly happy, and the internet history was clear again. By now, the Weirdometer is registering a solid 'Fearing for one's orifices'.

After Josef's shaking revelation, Aaron can't find his keys, and starts to get agitated, as he has been trying to leave for quite a while now. Josef plays it cool, and convinces Aaron to stay the night, but the poor stranded one drugs the weirdo's whiskey, and he passes out. While he's unconscious, Josef's phone rings, and the woman on the other end warns Aaron to get the hell out, as her brother is crazy, and there is no wife or child. This is the glorious 'Oh Shit' moment that sends the rest of the movie into its delicious downward spiral. Every good horror movie needs at least one of these moments: the impact that provokes a physical reaction in you, where you feel a thud in your chest, or a prickling in your stomach. I think to enjoy a lot of movies, we must temporarily resign our consciousness to that of the film, in order to fully receive its intended effect. When a picture lacks this artistic climax, it can fall dismally short of its potential. As Above, So Below is a recent demonstration of this.

From here, Aaron finds himself the subject of a dreadful stalking, which is handled in a sensitive and surprising manner. Many a horror victim have found themselves hunted from afar, but it is unusual to see a lone male stalking another lone male, with zero supernatural influences involved. The movie starts to steer towards the Fatal Attraction route, in which the perfectly plausible actions of an unstable human can be not only scary in a jump-out-of-your-seat, in-the-moment way, but also in the slowly-building-sense-of-menace way. It achieves what the better horror movies do; it's like the film version of clitoral and vaginal orgasms: they are quite different, singularly enjoyable, but best used in well-crafted combination. That we can be jumped out on and given the rushes of adrenaline whilst viewing, and later be haunted by a sense of real-life dread that could follow us home, is horror movie magic.

Found Footages are not usually known for their artistic camerawork; they are more of an excuse for the sloppiest and most negligent of production values. But movies such as Creep effortlessly demonstrate the making of an effective movie with minimal requirements. The one camera which records the story is used thoughtfully, and maintains a perfect balance of potent and meaningful shots, and spontaneous realism. When the camera (or Aaron, or us...it's all basically the same) finds itself suddenly in some symbolically-constructed scene, it is believable as coincidence, or accident. We are never reminded of our passive safety as an audience, not even when this stunning money-shot is thrown our way...

Duplass and Brice wrote the movie as a duo, with Brice directing, and it seems like acting in their own creation was a good move, both artistically and financially. Brice appears to be your typical Film School grad, with this being his first feature length credit. Duplass has far more works to his name, but they make a formidable team. Brice's academic and practical expertise help to make the entire picture look and feel beyond its means, and Duplass' acting experience lands him a role which he seems to be remarkably comfortable in. I say this, not to flippantly suggest that he has an extracurricular penchant for stalking or murder, but to emphasise the realism he achieves. Serious horror antagonists must be handled as such, not as a character to pretend to be, but as a being who we are to believe exists, and so has regular, human feelings and emotions. Ted Levine's Buffalo Bill is a great example. He is ridiculous, monstrous...and yet we know him. He could be that scruffy guy you see shuffling around the supermarket sometimes. More terrifyingly, Duplass could be your kid's school principal.

I believe professionalism is the key to Creep's success. It is not treated as a thrill ride, with a jump quota to fill and millions to make in box office dollars. It is treated (thank you, Mr Brice) as a serious, compelling story. Minimalist and realist. No need for effects, fancy equipment or even a cameo by Robert Englund. This, as a former academic film student myself, is what we strive to achieve in the field. It's got 'it'. Now, you see that long white bar across the top of the screen upon which you read this? Click it, type in Netflix.com, and thank me later.

The Pagemaster (1994)

"Just because something is a part of my childhood," writes Tommy Nelson on IMDb, "doesn't mean it's good." I must somewhat guiltily admit that I agree with Tommy. The Pagemaster was one of the movies of my sunny Cambridgeshire-based '90s childhood, with basically everybody I knew owning a copy on VHS, and all of us watching it, joyously and frequently. My copy had a Making Of featurette after the movie, which I would watch, fascinated. My stepmother would ask why the hell I wanted to watch that, and I would tell her because I wanted to know how they did it. She said, "well with artists and computers, of course", as if that were the extent of the effort involved. It was the need to know the secrets of the movie industry as a young child that really made the critic I am today.

I still own a functioning VHS player, for those few tapes which do not exist on DVD. To my absolute (and completely unexaggerated) horror, there has never been a UK DVD release, and the best I can get is a Region 1 import, or a Blu Ray, which I have no means of viewing. But the other day, a friend cleared out a bunch of her now grown-up kids' old videos for my daughter, and what the hell was among them? Yes, one of the top 10 movies of the '90s years of my childhood! (and that will surely become an article on here in due course!) So yesterday, my daughter and I sat down to watch it together. And I ended up noticing several things about it that I never saw as a child. Not bad things, necessarily, but some really leapt out at me.

For example, the movie is only an hour long. When you consider the then-advanced technology, big name stars and voice artists... it cost 27 million fucking dollars to make! And sure, three mere years after that smarmy git James Cameron broke new f/x barriers with the epic Terminator 2: Judgement Day, it's nothing terribly special. But it was a lot for its time, especially when you take into account the meagre box office performance of $13 million (yet, I suspect, the video - and video game - sales must have brought it closer to profit). So it's interesting that all of these resources would produce only an hour's worth of material.

Look at that little face!

But I primarily digress; let's get to the plot. Macaulay Culkin (who I only yesterday realised was a very cute kid) plays Richard Tyler, a bespectacled, paranoid little geek, who is obsessed with accidents, and the statistics that protect him from them. His bedroom is adorned with homemade 'No Smoking' and 'High Voltage' signs, earthquake survival kits and fire extinguishers... it's bordering on darkly humorous. But in reality, it's sad that a kid is already so haunted by fears that shouldn't have crept up on him for another ten years or so. So this is established as the situation that will be rectified by whatever adventure he happens upon. His poor parents desperately try to encourage their son to take the most banal of chances, like climbing the ladder of the treehouse his Pop (Ed Begley Jr.) is building him, and sending him to the hardware store for a pound of nails.

Suiting up in reflective jacket and motorcycle helmet like a knight going to battle, Richard mounts his trusty pimped-up Safety Cycle, complete with tall warning flags, windshield and double headlights, and heads out. Thing alert: when Pop sends Richard out to get the nails, it is a bright and sunny day, and when he actually heads out, it is almost dark outside, and storm clouds are brewing...how long did it take him to get kitted up? Anywho, Richard heads cautiously off, gets caught in a storm, and flees to the nearest building -- an ornate old library that looks more like one of the big museums in London. It is the library of dreams, with massive high ceilings and dark marble pillars and cases of leather and gold bound books reaching up out of view. Here he is met by eccentric-as-ever Christopher Lloyd as Mr Dewey, who has a "talent for guessing what people need", so perhaps could have done financially better in Deuce Bigalow's gig.

Whilst looking through the vast, maze-like bookcases for the public telephone, Richard comes across a wild mural on the dome of the ceiling, depicting several classic literary character, and the wizard-like, robed Pagemaster (Dewey's alter-ego). The kid slips on the wet floor and knocks himself unconscious, waking up to great globs and geisers of paint gushing down from the ceiling to form a giant CGI dragon, which consumes him and transforms him into an illustration in the book world. Here, he is instructed by the Pagemaster to pass three tests of Horror, Adventure and Fantasy, before he can find his way home, each of these genres materialising as anthropomorphic books, brilliantly voiced by Frank Welker, Patrick Stewart and Whoopi Goldberg respectively.

Whaddaya know?! I found a pic that demonstrates the terror!

From here to five minutes from the end, Richard and his friends run through incredibly short episodes with the classic literary characters, who are each depicted as very one-dimensional villains -- nothing more than a menacing obstacle to temporarily delay Richard's progress back home. However, they are all unusually dark. The entire picture is, more so in imagery than in theme. Colours are dark greys and greens, and there are a couple of images that still haunt me to this day. I actually regretted, at these points and others, showing it to my five year old. What a stupid bugger, I thought. The shot that takes the cake, is when Jekyll transforms into the hideous Hyde, coming straight up to the 'camera' with his hands concealing his face, and suddenly whipping his hands away, scr
eaming his name and giving the poor kids in the audience a full-screen close-up of his truly hideous face, and their parents a haemmorage-inducing earful of that shrill scream-pitch that only youngsters can reach. The close runner-up is during the friends' tackle with Captain Ahab in the middle of the ocean. Moby Dick, here depicted impossibly large and fierce in the eyes, charges their boat vertically, and shown from a bird's eye view, thundering imminently upwards towards them and chomping the boat to toothpicks.

The dark visuals and themes of the movie mentioned, another Thing pops up: the skies in the Pagemaster's world have an uncanny knack for turning dark green or red the instant the latest villain rolls up to be slain. And that's the other thing... these villains are in the habit of disappearing without actually being slain. Moby Dick savages the boat, and is never seen again. So what, did he just get bored and swim away? Surely he's still very much in the area. What does the evasive nature of these villains' pursuits teach Richard? Because this is, of course, the classic Wizard of Oz format, with a youngster with life lessons to learn being swept up in some fantastical journey away from their comfort zone and befriending three characters who will help them reach the correct realisations. Labyrinth adopted the same format, as have many, far less superior family pictures.

So what is Richard supposed to learn from this, quite frankly terrifying, ordeal? The animated portion of the movie's swift conclusion seems to summarise that he needed to learn to be brave. What did books, or reading, have to do with this lesson?... *cricket chirp*.... *tumble weed*...
And why exactly did he need to learn this? I suppose his neurosis wasn't completely healthy for a kid so young, but Roger Ebert rather correctly points out that the lesson here is that Richard needs to toughen up, take it like a man...he is basically trained to be a marine. And all with literature providing a false facade for the lesson. I almost scold myself for being so fucking cynical about a movie that brought so much excitement to my young life, but in a proper, grown-up review of a family film, the truth can hurt.

On the odd occasion, I have come across my hero Ebert dismally slating one of my favourite movies. The Lost Boys was a good example. The Pagemaster is another. One of the many phenomena to occur when you watch certain movies with frequency from childhood into adulthood, is that you come to realise that just because something has sentimental and nostalgic value, does not make it artistically rich or masterfully created; although The Lost Boys is very much both of these things, The Pagemaster is not. And it's often difficult when you hit the wall of maturity, when you see the product through adult eyes, which are lensed by knowledge of life and reality and common sense. One may be inclined to feel sadness, disappointment, emptiness as a result of this phenomena. Thankfully, I have learned to separate the quality from the nostalgic, and so, all these years later, can still enjoy The Pagemaster, and feel like I'm five again, whilst acknowledging with myself that it's not a well made movie.

Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers (1988)

Sleepaway Camp is probably my favourite slasher discovery of this year. Campy, with a brilliant twist and material you quite frankly just couldn't and wouldn't make nowadays, it's the one out of every ten or twenty that you remember vividly, that you come back to watching again. It's a riot.

So it's only natural, in the big money-making machine that is often filmmaking, that someone would want to come along and mooch off of the original's success. In fact, it'd be fun to play a game where whoever thinks of the most horror movies without sequels would win a cookie. Along with action, it must be the most sequelled genre of all. But the difference with Sleepaway Camp 2 is that the usual 'big mystery' is already solved: we know Angela, the poor psychotic he-she from the original, is back with a vengeance, ready to slaughter slutty and insubordinate campers. Yes, as she reveals towards the end, thanks to a ton of good references from the doctors that treated her, she is cured and ready for gainful employment. Especially the kind that takes place in the exact same setting as her previous ordeal.

Angela is played quite nicely

Yeah...awful lot of this goin' on.

by Pamela Springsteen (yes, I found out, she is related to Bruce), and is the counsellor who surely has a problem with uppers, if her wide eyes and Osmondy grin are anything to go on. But while she is first to whip out a guitar for a round of Kumbaya, she is also the strict schoolmarmish one, who insists that "nice girls don't have to show it off." And who would she impart this wisdom to, if this camp (not Arrawak, but Rolling Hills) were not at least partially populated by teenage hoes who enjoy waltzing around naked? It seems Angela has found her calling.

Ultimately, there is nothing too remarkable about any of Sleepaway Camp 2. It is tamer in almost every aspect than the original: although there are a lot of young boobs, there's no full frontal that the original is so infamous for; the murders are far less graphic and imaginative; the bittersweet sleaziness that characters like Artie the paedo cook brought to the first is largely absent. And in absence of any tangible originality (especially in view of no less than six Friday the 13th movies preceding this picture), a lot of ideas are borrowed from elsewhere, with particularly glaring reference to the legendary Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

As Angela slowly but surely builds a scene straight off of the Sawyers' family Christmas card out of dead campers, each murder under the guise of sending the kid home for bad behaviour, the staff start to suspect something is going on. But not in time. They just become tally marks for Angela's body count, which seems to be the main driving force of the plot. In a story with this many minor characters, it is surprising to see a conclusions that leaves every single one dead, campers and counsellors alike.

What's more surprising is how little is made out of such brilliant source material. I kept trying to remind myself throughout viewing that this was a professional production. It's just that acting is largely dreadful (with the conclusive survivor-on-aggressor scuffle shockingly choreographed and edited), camera work is slow and unadventurous, little decent use is made of soundtrack, and the script is poor (not even in the 'so bad it's good' kind of way). In fairness, it is a decent enough movie for one of those fun film nights with friends where you laugh and drink and eat pizza and stuff. It's a laugh... but it's by no means a great horror.



Although it may sound like a typical alternative, I still feel that some kind of corny reunion special back at Camp Arrawak with the counsellors and/or campers who we can assume survived the first movie. Because that would have more meaning to it than this movie does, which seems to exist as nothing more than an under-the-radar slashfest with little further context. Sleepaway Camp left us asking questions, wondering about motives and morals, about pasts and futures. Sleepaway Camp 2 leaves us wondering, and then suddenly not wondering, why Felissa Rose didn't reprise her classic role.

As Above, So Below (2014)

A fortnight ago, I was several hundred feet under the streets of Paris, wandering through endless tunnels walled with human bones, holding my video camera in one hand, and finding myself surprisingly regardless of the camera screen. I was focused on the real, what was going on around me in the place that I was at this very time. The footage was incidental; it could be looked at when I got home. For now, I was going to really have fun and learn a lot exploring the Catacombs. Having been alerted to the release of As Above, So Below from its exciting enough but rather usual marketing campaign last year, but not having seen it yet, I thought a lot about the idea of a handheld picture being made down there.

The Paris Catacombs only allow 200 people down at any one time, hence the often lengthy queue. The strange thing was, the place was so vast that we only saw perhaps six or eight other people the entire time we were down there. The majority of the time, we were alone. That sheds a little light on how huge the tunnels are, and that's the guided route. Visitors will observe alternative routes leading off of tunnels, the tourist route marked out by gates. Some of these alternative tunnels ride off into complete darkness. If people arrogant and intrusive enough to be found in a movie like this were to cut the locks and skulk off, it could most definitely end pretty disastrously.

What would make a movie like that even better, I decided, was my realisation that I paid no attention to what my camera was capturing, but what was in front of me. This offered massive potential for forces/creatures unseen to the characters but acknowledged by the audience. This could be really chilling. It was obvious: the Catacombs made for a brilliant horror film setting.

In fairness, As Above, So Below ended up going in a somewhat unexpected direction towards its conclusion, and although a bit messily constructed, it is a highly researched film. Respect must be paid for effort made. There is a lot of mythical and legendary namedropping, such as the philosopher's stone and Nicolas Flamel, and a lot of that irritatingly vague cryptography that the characters must battle their baffled little selves through. There is also a lot of jaw-dropping stupidity from one solitary character.

Leading lady Scarlett (Perdita Weeks) is a middle-class parent's wet dream. She looks no older than 25, yet she holds two PhDs, a Masters degree, and speaks six languages fluently (two of those being dead), and to top it all off, she is a university professor! She is everything I aspired to be at the naive age of 13. She is like Lara Croft. Because not only is she a painfully qualified academic, she is also a badass (which in this instance is synonymous with moron). She doesn't have the sexual prowess and ridiculously tightly clad bod, but she unlawfully trespasses on an Iranian cave system that is minutes from being demolished by dynamite, knowing the legal ramifications, and presumably, just how mindblowingly stupid and death-welcoming the decision is. All the warning alarms are blaring, and she finds the Rose Key, a large relic that her scholarly father sought his whole life. Lo and behold, explosives start going off all around her, and there is a frantic, and admittedly tense, run-for-life back to the exit, via helmetcam.

This is the format for most of the movie, plonking it in the increasingly cloudy subgenre I know and love...the Found Footage. The more people make this kind of fad movie, the more audiences ask, 'Who finds the footage?' The early and more classic examples of FF offered explanations as to the recovery of the materials, but of late, the genre is straying from being 'found', and settling as 'homemade'. There no longer has to be a barely-believable reason that this footage, exactly as it is presented to us, was recovered from some unsurvived crime scene or tragedy. It is now more of a medium, just a different narrative perspective, which continues to be exercised to varying levels of success. The premise for filming the incidents we witness are ever up for question: it helps if one or more persons has some kind of professional business in filmmaking or television; those assholes who just inexplicably film every mundane thing that he and his asshole friends do, with seemingly limitless battery power, are far less likely to keep our attention.

Scarlett is the subject of a documentary being filmed by Benji (Edwin Hodge) about her uptake of the search for the philosopher's stone, which drove her father to self-destructive madness. She seems minimally deterred by the stone's blatantly negative psychic affects, or by anything else for that matter. She breaks into demolition sites, churches, large underground tombs, and when her old flame George (Ben Feldman) is reluctantly recruited on her latest mission into the Catacombs, where she is convinced the stone is hidden, we find out that her shenanigans formerly resulted in the couple's incarceration in a Turkish prison. She is irritatingly relentless in her carelessness, which she masquerades as determination and adventurousness.

George speaks Arabic, which is why he is recruited for the various translations needed on the quest, and his skills are centre stage as he gives the English form of an Arabic riddle. And whaddaya know?! It still has perfect rhythm and rhyme, as though it were originally written in English, although this is surely impossible. Then, in a Paris nightclub, Scarlett ropes a semi-suave looking dude named Papion (not sure where the 'butterfly' symbolism occurs in any part of the film -- his parents must have seen in him some gentility which we do not). He is en garde, and swaggery, and he can show the group a non-official route to the treasure. And old Pap is a package deal: he brings relatively professional cronies along, who are experienced climbers, potholers, etc. Seems like a fairly safe setup for what is inevitably doomed to at least partial failure. Scarlett will still have her documentary regardless, we can concede early on.

It follows a fairly standard pattern at first: caves collapse, no way but forward, group leader arrogantly insists they take the tunnel of doom rather than the legit ones, a whole bunch of rather juvenile-feeling clue-busting, which Scarlett continuously solves quickly and inexplicably. It's always one of those things that could refer to fucking anything, and that only Jonathan Creek could solve, and only after several days of non-active conversations and thoughtful stares in a duffle coat. But then, a few peer-deaths down the line, things start getting... I dunno...not theological, not existential, perhaps a little spiritual. In another problem-solving scenario, and probably the most risky one yet, Scarlett concedes that the reason the world is going crazy and rooms are shifting and weird cloaked figures are stalking them, is that each of the survivors has some guilt, some personal demon which haunts them, that they must release before they are to get out. With a little Inferno referencing and a generally Abrahamic Damnation style, things steer away from the lower-market FF movies with many quick flashes of ghostly faces, and go in a far more big-budget direction with its ideology, leaning more toward the likes of Insidious and The Possession.

The plot and setting seemed relatively original for a movie of its kind, but it constantly felt like something was missing. We had the slow and subtle build-up, with plenty of calmness and establishment of plan and walking and talking, and the first few 'encounters' are typically ambiguous in nature, warranting the characters to shrug them off or not recognise them at all until shit really starts going down. And for the first hour or so, I believed that some kind of dramatic peak was imminent, but this movie left me totally blue-balled. All great (or good...or even just mediocre) horror movies must have at least one moment of forceful impact, the Oh Shit moment, in which everything that you have watched so far comes to fruition, and you feel thrilled. You need the moment in which everyday existence is turned upside down, and the hapless characters find themselves within a scenario that they never imagined they'd experience. We need the world to fall away.

And the crazy thing is that in this movie, it quite literally does, yet it is never enough. It's like 100 minutes of digital foreplay followed by the light going out...and not even a cigarette to conclude. It's all good stuff, but it didn't have any real climax. And moreover, the ending leaves everything unnervingly unanswered. From the course of action they've given us, we all make assumptions about the condition of the world the few survivors escape to. It's no real conclusion. But the movie is far less shaky and so more watchable than a lot of its kind, and gets some interesting shots, and some pretty great atmosphere from its sets.

I feel like I want to give As Above, So Below more credit than it truly deserves: the use of the Parisian catacombs is brilliant, themes are interesting and performances and camera work is somewhat above average. But the scary bits are far too diluted, and most of them turn out to have been contained in the trailer, which is one of my pet peeves. It seems unfulfilled, and that's how it left me feeling. Not all that I had expected. It's worth seeing, and it's fun enough, but if you're looking for a Found Footage movie that packs a punch, go for the Blair Witch Project, or even low-enders like Crowsnest and Grave Encounters 2. If you're strong of stomach, go straight to Cannibal Holocaust.

Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (2014)

 What is Sean Astin - former Goonie who pulled off the most convincing regional English accent perhaps ever performed by an American in Lord of the Rings - doing starring in the under-the-radar third installment of the Cabin Fever series? Perhaps the answer is: bringing a shred of respectability to the movie. The answer is most certainly: absolutely going to town on it! My very initial reaction to his involvement was pity - the poor thing's prospects must have dried up pretty sharpish since LOTR, as often happens in Hollywood. And that would have been a shame, as there is no doubt Astin is a very good actor. But quite honestly, after a mere minute of watching him perform in this picture, sympathy melted into admiration.

Astin stars as the titular Patient Zero, a.k.a Porter: a medical lifeline whose natural immunity to the virus he carries is of great interest to a sinister team of scientists. He wakes to the chilling news that his child has been claimed by the flesh-eating virus sweeping--- well, sweeping some area or other. It's sweeping enough to have killed off all that Porter knows, but contained enough for a runaway labmouse to cause unwitting terror to a yacht-driving stag party.

Now it is not an uncommon premise for a character to be held against their will with the knowledge that their former lives and companions are gone forever, but it's far less common to see such a role performed with a tangible nihilism. From his first delirious jabberings about having to buy school supplies for his little boy to his final questionable actions of the finale, Astin encapsulates a wretched man with about as many reasons to carry on living as methods of doing himself in.

Right?! Classic laboratory get-up!

Thankfully, for supposed PhD-holding medical research professionals, Porter's captors are remarkably stupid. Not only do the females wear full make-up, stiletto heels and blouses unbuttoned to their breastbones in a sterile lab environment, and drop infected labmice without even attempting to recapture them; they also reply "with my life" when their sleazy superior orders them into the cleanroom to restrain contaminated patients while he hogs the only bunnysuit and menacingly asks, "Do you trust me?" Needless to say, this particular scenario holds some rather disastrous and contagious consequences which were a probable joy for the F/X guys.

Now while all this is a fairly decent plotline, particularly given Astin's performance, one may actually wonder what the movie would have been like if solely focused on Patient Zero. As it happens, a full-length sci-fi feature seems beyond the makers. After all, fake blood and brains is easier to produce than meaningful scientific dialogue and plot. All good Cabin Fevers must have young and relatively attractive idiots to consume from the outside in: first it was college students vacationing in the woods; then it was high school students getting eaten up at a remarkable rate whilst attending Spring Fling. This time we have a stag party, containing groom Marcus (Mitch Ryan), who of course is being forced to grow up by his straitlaced wife, much to the despair of his Stifler-like friend Dobbs (Ryan Donowho) and brother Josh (Brando Eaton), whose girlfriend Penny (Jillian Murray) once fucked Marcus but that's their annoying secret which warrants her casually whipping her top off in front of him. We already have her down as 'the dead slut'.

They have done one of those The Beach things of paying a local fisherman to take them out to a supposedly deserted island. When the group question the huge institution looming on one side, the fisherman assures them "nobody home." They settle into their tropical paradise with tents, beers, snorkels and a bag of the local good stuff that looks more like ground-up tea leaves than any ganja. The couple go swimming and find a piscine graveyard. The girl flips out about it, and storms off to the tent where she soon notices weird grazes which quickly turn into gross lesions. Her helpful boyfriend first produces a whopping black dildo (complete with suction cup) which some weirdo brought along, and then reassures her that the skin condition is just a reaction to the local grass they smoked (ambitious idea). Then they treat us to a hardcore homage to the first Cabin Fever movie...

Remember when Karen and Paul are getting intimate and his bloodied fingers set the whole gruesome ball rolling? Well didn't you always want to see a guy's head emerge from between his girlfriend's thighs  to be sporting a bloodbeard with rotten bits of labia dripping from it? Didn't we all? And we anticipate it horrendously when Penny shoves Josh's face into her crotch with a squelch. It's a bit of a money shot in terms of shock and gross-out value, and it works hilariously well, producing a simultaneous gag and giggle.

Well, with Soon-to-be-Dead Slut's pussy dropping off like Danniella Westbrook's septum, the fellas decide that perhaps they need to seek medical attention, especially as the grazes are now starting to show on Josh. The girl waits at the tent patiently and quite calmly for someone whose sex organs are disintegrating. Exploring the bowels of the huge building on the other side of the island -- which in places is a fully functioning structure, and in others, nothing more than a cave complex -- the guys come across the remaining idiot scientists, who are pissed to be dealing with the escape of their prized subject. The cleavage-exposing blonde who dropped the mouse and said "with my life" tries to con the guys into assisting her, covering her deformities with a face mask (yes, the face is gone, but that rack is still perfect -- praise the Lord!).

Her boring colleague Camila (Solly Duran) warns the guys that the blonde is contagious and hasn't taken kindly to her newfound state, so shouldn't be trusted. Camila is perhaps the one true drawback of the film. Although I see that Solly Duran currently has 10 acting credits to her name, it feels as though she couldn't deliver a natural line of dialogue if you held a gun to her head, let alone paid her a moderate low-budget production wage to do it. Her presence is grating, her every word mechanical and painfully unconvincing. Typically, she is the irritating bitch we are stuck with til the end, as the female half as the Remaining Couple.

Which means, naturally, that the other dicks have to die. Only the two-in-one is memorable. The diseased scientist with the still-perfect titties is well and truly on the rampage, and escapes the clutches of the group, fleeing to the beach. Except by this point, Penny has grown tired of being left behind with decomposing genitals, and so goes on a little rampage of her own. Ding-ding-ding -- CAT FIGHT! Scratch that -- CAT FIGHT OF THE CENTURY! You know how brown paper bags go when you get caught in the rain...gradually drooping off in great piles of beige slop? As two girls, both in the later phases of a deadly flesh-eating viral condition, set about each other in a ferocious wrestle, bits and bobs start sludging off all over the place, and it's a fight to the death, until there's nothing left but a rapast fit for a vulture king. Awesome.

Cabin Fever: Patient Zero is apparently a prequel to the whole series, and is a semi-interesting way for the thing to go. Just like the laughable Hostel Part III, this movie is also, to quote my earlier review, "emaciated from Roth deficiency". There is little trace of the creator's original zest, and what we're left with in terms of memorability, is a show-stealing performance by one actor who deserves much better, and a beach that looks like a butcher shop fell of the back of a truck. Not bad, but not necessary either.

Spring Breakers (2012)

Advertising is a cynical business, isn't it? Whether they're using specific words like "appears" to protect themselves against lawsuits, or downright lying about there being "liquid calcium" in toothpaste, nothing is ever as it seems. Several times over the past few years, I have been completely rocked back on my heels by a movie whose trailer painted it in a completely different light. Summer in February and My Old Lady are a few devious examples. Spring Breakers is another...

When all the movie and its promo stills are so electrically coloured with neon blues and pinks and yellows, and feature the grinning faces upon the bikinied bodies of several young beauties, Disney girls Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez among them, we are set up for an American Pie-like scenario, where hot college girls have a few weeks of crazy, loud, booze-fuelled fun that's likely to end up on YouTube. Even with the knowledge that the girls hold up a restaurant to fund their trip, I figured that this would be played out comically, and that nothing would require being taken too seriously.

But several things really disturbed me about Spring Breakers, the first starting very early on in the picture, and others taking a little longer to show themselves. The girls are Candy (Hudgens), Cotty (Rachel Korine) and Brit (Ashley Benson), who are trouble-seeking party girls and for some reason hang out with church-going resident-downer Faith (Gomez). They decide to bugger off for spring break, as sexy American teens with inexplicably infinite cash sources tend to do. But these girls are broke, so plot to rob a diner, do it, and run off to the beach for a fortnight of fun. The kind of fun they end up having, whether it is really fun or not, and what kind of fun the audience are supposed to be having are all up for question. In particular our part as the audience.

Only a few minutes into the movie, all four girls are fooling around in a darkened corridor, only wearing their underwear. They do handstands against the walls, and eventually fall about on the floor, wiggling their asses in the air as the camera grooms them like an overly-forceful cat lady. I felt uncomfortably voyeuristic watching this, not even voyeuristic, more predatory. Because never in a thousand years would a stranger pass by, happen to peek into the window of this corridor, and have a scene like this playing out by coincidence. The girls aren't doing all this gyrating for their own amusement -- they're doing it for the audience, and it's contrived as hell. The weirdest thing is, as a female of about the same age as the actresses and the girls they are portraying, I still felt wrong watching them. There was just something so obviously wrong with the scene. And from there, it continued down the route of 'Male Fantasy'.

Spring break is fun, and they drink, and snort coke off of other girls' boobs, and get off with slobs. Brit finds herself in a really gross situation, in which she is high as hell, in a bathroom full of guys, sluggishly ripping her bra off and teasing that "you'll never get this pussy." Then the action cuts back to what the other girls are doing. I rather feel that it's because if it'd hung around any longer, it may have subjected us to a gang rape scene. It was upsetting to watch a girl degrade herself in such a dangerous way, especially knowing that this sort of behaviour is really quite commonplace among my generation. I get that this is an adult film, with an 18 certificate, and that there are many movies I have praised that have contained similar incidents, but it's just not what I was up for. It felt cheap and fantasised.

Just when I was starting to wonder how teens managed to rip buildings apart, cause more mayhem than Martin and Charlie Sheen at a father-son picnic, and ingest a steady current of substances without attracting outside attention, the girls are arrested, and stand in a courtroom in their bikinis (honestly, I don't think any of them wear anything more than that at any point). There, they are eyed-up and eventually bailed out by the slimiest geezer I've come across in film since the Duke in Moulin Rouge. In place of a nasally sneer from behind a perfectly waxed moustache, we have cornrows and gang tattoos on a white guy played by James Franco. This dude has named himself Alien, as a result of a lifetime of egotistical self-philosophy that Kanye West holds the record for.

The girls go back to his skeevy place and repay him for his kind bailing. And yep, it is exactly as creepy as it sounds. Only Faith has a problem with weirdo crackheads drooling over her shoulder and groping her. The other girls, in a completely whacked state of mind, it would seem, totally get off on the underground superstar lifestyle that Alien leads, which involves being constantly surrounded by pale, skinheaded gangsters, swaggering around with guns wearing only underwear (which naturally works for the girls) and having sex. Faith is the first of the girls to realise that something seriously dreadful is going to come of this situation, and hops on the next bus home, never to be heard of again. Weird.

The rest of the movie documents the remaining girls' moral and personal deterioration as Bikini Bitches of a questionably-successful white gangster. Lots more sex, drugs and abuse. They get dragged into a violent rivalry with another, far less white, gangster. It is an unsettling, dark underworld story, with not a speck of the comparative joy that the earlier days of their trip involved. Franco, punctuating his frequent stoner collaborations with Seth Rogen, reminds us of his often dormant ability, creating a sinister facade that deemed him unrecognisable to me for several minutes. His cited inspiration from rapper Riff Raff helped him to become a silly wannabe hardman who never matured past the age of sixteen, but whose subsequent years have instilled in him a dark idiocy, and a masked neediness.

The entirety of Spring Breakers plays out in an almost pornographic way; not in the sense that anything explicitly and unsimulatedly sexual is shown, but in the sense that its whole being is played strictly to a male fantasy. Young, slim girls in bikinis, complete exhibitionists, who are putting on a constant stripper act for their unacknowledged audience. It plays out with intention to titillate -- the main factor that can see art house movies such as 9 Songs and Antichrist separated from mainstream pornography. Not only does it titillate the audience with gratuitous young flesh, it also teases its less mature viewers with the idea of the lifestyles of drug-ring prostitutes being the dream life. Eighteen year olds are still perfectly corruptible with stupid ideas, and so I really would question what creator Harmony Korine (surprisingly, not a female) meant by this movie. It doesn't really present any good ideas, but doesn't present itself as a cautionary tale either. The girls who do decide to get out are completely forgotten once they're gone. Faith, and later Cotty, are never seen again, and this seems indicative of the entire attitude of the film. In this sort of crazy lifestyle, not a thing matters.

Don't Go In The House (1979)

I decided to start from the beginning with the Don't... movies. They are a famous figure in the exploitation genre, and if the first installment is anything to go by, the titles offer rather irrelevant advice to potential victims. And for once, we find ourselves concurring with the taglines...'don't say we didn't warn you...' I mean, for God's sake, people: the title told you not to, and yet on you waltz into the house! Don't you know you're in the middle of a slasher movie?! Imaginative viewers have paid far more attention to the assertion of the movie's title than its characters do, and have suggested alternatives. A few of my own might include Don't Hitch Rides With Weirdos, Don't Snoop Around Weirdos' Houses and Don't Piss Off Child Abuse Victims. Any one of these could have served more suitably as the 'warning' of the story. 'Don't Go In The House!'? But all my stuff is in there!

Donny Kohler (Dan Grimaldi) is a quiet, weird guy who looks like a less-striking David Hess and works at an incinerator plant. He is obsessed with fire, thanks to his abusive mother's fanatical religiously-based abuse of him during which she'd 'burn the evil out' of him. So, you may say, 'Good on ya, Donny -- ya landed ya dream job!' But with fire being top of his Christmas list, he is less than responsive in fire-related health and safety situations. The opening scene sees one of Donny's colleagues fishing around an incinerator for an aerosol can. Now, I'm no Incineratory Technician, but I know that where there's a furnace and there's a metallic container of compressed gas, I'm not gonna be around to see out the consequences. So, the can goes boom and all the other guys scramble to put out their professional friend who doesn't seem to know the words Stop, Drop and Roll, while Donny stares on hazily.

The guys get mad at little ol' Donny for being fucking useless in a crisis situation, and he runs off home. The first second you get a glimpse of the Kohler place, you practically see 'Bates' written all over it. The obvious inspiration for this crooked mansion atop a hill sets the ball rolling for several other allusions to predecessors of the horror genre. Now if you thought Donny was having a bad day, you should see the look on his face when he finds his mother at home dead. How awful! But, oh wait, Donny's mother was a maniacal child-abuser. After an initial burst of rage at the cold and pale (yet still visibly breathing) mother, he recognises his newfound freedom, and so decides to live the good life: he turns up his records and swings back on the chair. He even smokes a cigarette!

But now for the real fun... to pretend his mother is still alive, not show up for work for a week, and lure gorgeous ladies back to his house for a little hot stuff. First up is a snotty florist (Johanna Brushay), whom Donny offers a ride home. Then he pulls that classic "I just gotta swing by my place for a minute -- it's right on the way" thing. Donny is no slobbering hick with an eyepatch; in fact he looks deceptively friendly, so when he is the only person around to give a lift, politeness indicates that there is little room for hesitation on this request. But then when they get there, Donny insists she come in and meet Mother Kohler. The girl seems to be with us in imagining that any guy who brings a random stranger in to meet his mother probably has some kind of issue, but it would just be plain rude to refuse, right?

The exteriors of the house are completely Hitchcockean, and the interiors have a real Carrie feel to them, with the long cavernous stairwells and gloomy woodwork. It is, as a drunken victim later comments, in dire need of a paint job. One room in particular is quite the spectacle. Once the girl is knocked out (as was imminent -- these buggers are never man enough to just drag a conscious person off against their will, are they?), she wakes up naked, chained to the floor by her feet and her hands to the ceiling of a steel-lined room, and Donny comes storming in menacingly in his full work uniform. Sure hope he noted the extra hours he put in at home down on his time sheet.

The death of Donny's first victim is apparently what most of the fuss was about, and what landed the movie in hot water with the Daily Mail's dumbass scaremongering campaign. The poor girl is doused in petrol and set ablaze with a flamethrower. My initial thought whilst watching this sequence was that its state-of-the-art CGI (Highlander style) were far more than I ever expected from a picture like Don't Go In The House. And I suppose it is quite horrific. But then, I'd recall the death of Delecroix in The Green Mile as far more painful to watch in comparison. I would say the more disturbing aspect of the scene is the mechanical, laborious manner in which Donny carries it out. Albeit a little batty, so far he has come across as a relatively meek fellow, but the way he torches the girl like he does every day at work...it feels as meaningless as a porn actor having sex with his wife at night.

Donny starts hearing voices. Encouraging him to burn the evil out of others. Seems like the Old Lady is getting bored and jealous out there on th'other side. He collects a couple more victims, and chars his mother's body, and arranges them in a macabre Texas Chainsaw Massacre-style family. Now a colleague, Bobby (Robert Osth), calls to see what has kept Donny from work for a week. He invites him out with suggested hooker arrangements made. Hesitant at first, Donny agrees, and hits the clothing store to purchase some disco-worthy gladrags. There he is served by a hilarious camp salesman, who kits him up in a surprisingly plain suit, so when he rolls up to the disco he feels kind of uncomfortable.

Well, it's uncertain whether the promise of whores is really fulfilled. It seems more like Bobby has met two young women who agreed to go out for the night, and he... filled in the gaps, so to speak. They seem nice. Not really whore material. Everyone is eager to dance except our valiant hero, and the poor girl who gets foisted upon him makes the mistake of being a bit too insistent with a secret psycho. Hey -- easy thing to do. As he is sat at a candlelit table, the girl grabs his hands and tries to pull him towards the dancefloor, rather carelessly holding his bare arms over the flame. *Momma Flashback* Cue the publicly alarming episodes which finally draw outside attention to Donny's shenanigans. He freaks out and throws the flame in the girl's face, setting her hair alight and promptly legging it.

During his workless week, Donny anxiously consulted with Father Gerrity (Ralph D. Bowman), telling him of the abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother, and of his murderous tendencies as a result. Gerrity advises that Donny forget it all and move on, that what's in the past can't hurt him. So Donny tried this, but as the little incident in the nightclub demonstrates, it's not had the greatest success rate. So along with the alarmed Bobby, who is left to deal with two girls whose night has been little of what was promised, Donny also has Gerrity looking for him.

He has meanwhile picked up a couple of drunk chicks looking for a ride to the nearest available booze-jockey. Having developed something of a flair for bringing chicks home, he offers them a much better night at his house. They're drunk, and dumb (deadly combo) so gladly accept and start obnoxiously snooping around once they get to the Kohler place, as dumbass victims often do. To be honest, if I invited a new 'friend' to my house, went to get drinks, and came back to find them snooping through my bedroom, I'd be pretty pissed too.

The Priest-Whoremonger duo descend upon Donny's house, freeing the drunk girls from their topless captivity, and taking on the Fire Demon. Donny suits up, and tries to barbecue Gerrity, who is rescued by Bobby, prompting the psycho to barricade himself in his creepy Family Den. Now here's the cool ending I didn't see coming... the Mother-shaped jerky and her poor companions start to creak to life and edge menacingly towards him. I wonder if perhaps the ending sequence of Tony Scott's wicked The Hunger was inspired by this far less stylish example. But dontcha love it when the Insanity card is played throughout, only for the Supernatural card to be suddenly whipped out like a Thai bride's cock at last minute?! What a riot!

I mean, that's assuming that this isn't just another manifestation of Donny's increasingly menacing psyche. If nothing else, Don't Go In The House lends an ear to the lonely, abused souls who suffer pain and degradation. Donny's seeking of redemption in the form of Gerrity demonstrates his ultimately good nature, and he is clearly a tortured man. But what could be learnt from the movie? I suppose, the only lesson the duration of this pretty decent horror teaches can be best summed up by its title, or better by some of my own suggestions. The aim of Don't Go In The House is to warn audiences Don't Piss Off Child Abuse Victims. 

Crossroads (2002)

Uh...this is legal, right?

Road trip movies may be the most misleading subgenre ever...well, perhaps those and rom-coms. But for every road trip movie I watch, and for every standard requirement box each one ticks off, I find myself asking the same questions, as if what I were watching bore any resemblance to reality. I have come to the educated conclusion that the USA as a whole has no regulations against driving someone else's vehicle uninsured or carrying passengers on the trunk of a convertible. If it weren't for regular doses of Judge Judy, movies like this would convince me entirely that the Great Nation are inexplicably lenient with their legal system.

As a child of the '90s, I was supposedly the exact target audience for Britney's movie Crossroads when it was released in 2002. I was ten. I remember seeing it in the cinema with my dad and younger sister, who would have been eight. We were both massive Britney fans (gimme a break, it was a different time!) and if anyone can be sold an inane package with a famous character's face on it, it's eight- to ten-year-olds. I loved the movie as a child, and don't remember even wondering about the meaning of the surprisingly adult content within. I wasn't particularly alarmed by a pregnant eighteen year old, but the concepts of drink, rape, abandonment, miscarriage and the loss of one's virginity were lost upon my infant mind. Watching it in my 20s, I was sort of surprised at the age range this movie really was aimed at. It's sort of like the Parental Advisory announcement before the Jerry Springer show. Kids could watch it, but is it really a good idea?

Britney Spears plays Lucy, a cute (duh!), hard-working student who's ready to go off to med school and become a doctor, much to the delight of her equally hard-working but slightly abrasive dad Pete (Dan Ackroyd). The use of Ackroyd is a diluted form of his work as Harry Sultenfuss in the My Girl movies, where he had very well-written scripts and a character with more involvement than the statutory duties of the stern but loving father. He's still endearing, but Pete's opinions and actions merely serve the plot; there is no substance to them.


Years ago, Lucy buried a time capsule box with her two friends Mimi and Kitt, promising that they'd be friends forever (oh boy, we all know where this one's going). But on the day of their high school graduation, Mimi (Taryn Manning) is a pregnant trailer chick with dozens of gold hoop earrings and a scowl on her face, and Kitt (Zoe Saldana) is the stuck-up rich girl who has a fiancé over in LA. God knows how long it's been since they all hung out, but as often happens during adolescence, they drifted apart. They all reluctantly return to dig up the box on prom night, and an unconvincing, contrived form of a rediscovered relationship appears.

Mimi is off to audition for a recording contract in LA, hitching a ride with her shady friend Ben (Anson Mount), and invites the others to come along, for whatever reason. The trip is of the strictly-professional type at first: Mimi is auditioning, Kitt is making a surprise drop-in on her fiancé, and Lucy is getting off in Arizona for a surprise drop-in on her long-lost mother. Mimi is streetsmart, hence, the only one who doesn't think that surprise drop-ins on very absent figures is a good move, but who is she to convince her peers? They have their own inevitable fuck ups to serve that purpose.

The movie goes through the classic relationship motions of former friends/lovers/family brought together: initial wonder at the spectacle of being reunited, sudden realisation of why they are no longer friends, the primary threads of repair to the relationship, and ultimately the 'stronger than ever' crap. As with so many formulaic movies, we know what will happen in the end, and can make some pretty decent guesses about the middle. But that leaves us only to wonder about what they will do on the road. Will they have any deeply moving or thought-provoking conversations which really reveal their characters? Only at a 101 level. Will they pick up an interesting stranger who goes on to make or break them? No. Will at least one of them take up a questionable romantic attachment to the only male cast member who isn't the father? Of course, but it has to be the cute, exploitable one. (We're ready for you, Miss Spears!)

Rumour has it that Ben is fresh out of prison for murder (given his youthful appearance, we'd have to guess he was one of those Michael Myers child-convict types to have gotten out by now), and even sensible, would-be doctor Lucy is remarkably undeterred. She gets pissed and calls her father when their car breaks down, but when it is revealed the man driving them is a potential murderer, she just gives him the silent treatment. Of course, rumours are never true, and the reason for Ben's incarceration is very unexciting, giving him free reign to wiggle in as the cute virgin's First. And boy, is he willing. Throughout, he insists that nobody else drive his classic Buick convertible (fair enough), but as soon as the pussy's on the pedestal, he throws the keys to a couple of over-excited eighteen-year-olds in order to get rid of them. This guy's got his priorities in gear!

Is this really a screenshot from a kids' movie?

The more mature themes of the movie are questionable for me. I suppose given the embarrassing, manufactured 'icons' of today like Katy Perry and Taylor Swift and the age ranges they cater to, it's a tough one. No young adult trying to mold a career wants to pander to small children; they want some level of maturity and seriousness to their act. Spears repeatedly prances around in her underwear, the treatment of College Virgins is called up for discussion, the girls drink underage, and learn that performing an abysmally weak cover of a classic rock track and grinding on a pole will leave local hicks clambering to drop dollar bills in the hat. To be honest, the material is diluted, and if it could have broken out into a more adolescent picture worthy of a 15 rating, it could perhaps have performed to its full potential.

This is not to say that the movie would ever have been a masterpiece, but there is a feeling of family-oriented restraint to the whole thing. If a couple of swear words could have been thrown in, and if the scriptwriters could have fully developed the plotlines of rape, pregnancy etc. to adequately demonstrate the consequences, it could have been something. There is an inherent nonchalance to every issue. Mimi may have been raped, but it happens all the time. She may be a pregnant teenager, but she loses the baby, so there's no need to deal with the reality of teenage parenthood. And the ultimate message is definitely questionable: Lucy has worked very hard throughout her school years to build a strong career for herself and move her family up the social ladder. But what is academia worth when you can be a popstar? Encouraging children to abandon serious achievable ambitions in favour of the oldest honeytrap in existence is not the thing to do. And when you look at the fame-hungry Western societies that we live in today, it's hard to feel unconvinced that these sorts of influences over our generation have tainted our views of life, the world, and our self-worth.


The poorly-written caricature for Dan Ackroyd to play sort of seals Lucy's fate as a girl who once had huge potential but will almost certainly end up like the real Britney - used up, spat out and irreparably damaged by the whole experience, with little hope for any longevity. While Pete is required to scorn Lucy about the money he has lost, the professional relationships with her future employers she has destroyed and the general emotional distress her shenanigans have put him through, all she has to do is flutter her eyes and breathily whisper "I'm sorry" and it's all forgotten. What sort of ideas does this give to Lucy, and by extension, to the children who witness her story? These are serious issues in a real-life situation, but hey, money grows on trees and there'll always be some sucker to bail you out.

When dissected, many of Crossroads' elements are detrimental and amateur. Not to say there are no saving graces: Ackroyd is as wonderful as he can be, Taryn Manning is utterly convincing as a tough-skinned trailer park girl, and Zoe Saldana is quite possibly the highlight, with her sterling comic timing and delivery. She really made me laugh. It's deserving that of the trio, she went on to the biggest and best things. And if I'm really honest, Britney takes the few lines that really require any acting and gives them her all. She is no actress, but she's not as bad as people like to make out, and had the role been given to any other young blonde, it probably would have turned out no better. It's not a demanding role in the slightest, so it fits her quite well.

In terms of the Britney machine, the film played an interesting role. Made in 2001, when her image was still squeaky clean, before the likes of Toxic and its transparent bodysuits launched Britney's Madonna-brand sex appeal, it is amusing to see her dressed in frilly pink cardigans that go up to her neck, and insisting, "I have seen one, y'all!" (They're referring to the male sex organ, incidentally). Most of all, it's nice to see her the way she was. My God, she was a pretty girl. She just exuded vitality and bubbliness, and it makes the process of her mid-noughties downfall all the more painful to remember. The industry really did break this girl, and it's nice to see that nowadays her much-improved family life and Vegas residency have given her the happy medium that she could have done with years ago.

People have questioned for years why Crossroads has such a cult following, despite being publicly hated by anyone with the opportunity to voice it. Is it pure nostalgia, for all of us who want to remember a time when our biggest problems were deciding which pair of glitter jeans to wear to the school dance, or which member of Boyzone we wanted to marry? Is it that on the surface, Crossroads is a good-natured, sunny movie which is catchily optimistic? A film for children, I honestly think it is not. It never scarred me or turned me into an inconsiderate, denim skirt-wearing, man-punching potato-chip muncher, but I'm not sure I'd be in a hurry to show it to my daughter at any age prior to, perhaps, eleven or twelve. The transition into high school around this age inevitably catapults kids into a world full of nasties, like rape and teenage pregnancy, as well as a couple of secret joys, like sex and drugs. Kids of this age could really appreciate the movie for what it is, I believe. As long as their parents are still telling them to go be a doctor by the end of it.