Navigation

 

CAPSULE GUIDE

Message board musings for those films without a main review.
A mixed bag of genres for you to explore.
In Alphabetical order.

 

Q - Z

 

RAISING JEFFREY DAHMER
Started off okay. This was actually a pretty interesting look at the effect Dahmer's crimes and arrests had on his family...far more "Living with what Jeffrey Dahmer Did" as much as "Raising Jeffery Dahmer".

Acting varies, the film is low budget and there is actually very little of Dahmer's crimes or actions on show here at all, but it managed to hold the interest as we saw the stress and hardship (and lies) the parents faced from the media.

But then the film throws Bo Svenson in 2 scenes as a fictional Detective and promptly has him do absolutely nothing at all plotwise...until a completely farcical, totally made-up, action that seems like it comae from a completely separate film.
From here on the film seems to have run out of things to say or show and frustratingly (despite the film's title) jumps over too many interesting events in the older Dahmer's life with his Dad (like his Dad's realisation about Dahmer's first killing...which amazingly gets mentioned in the film and then ignored by the film in the same scene).

As such it all plods to a weak finale that's a real shame because it started out well and had potential but ultimately fails by simply giving up on its own story after an hour.

RAMBO: First Blood part 2"
Although not as well scripted, well acted or as serious a drama as "First Blood", this still makes for a fine slice of chest thumping, violent, fuck the liberals, entertainment.
Remembering that actually there was a half of Vietnam who did not want to be overtaken by mass murdering, Russia and China backed, communists (despite what Jane Fonda may have thought) this sequel sees John J Rambo released from hard labour (following his antics in the first film) and teamed up with a South Vietnamese woman (the truly striking Julia Nickson) to help him find out if missing American POW's are indeed still being kept prisoner. But all is not as it seems...

The ever welcome Charles Napier makes for a wonderfully slimy burocrat (with traitorous fall back plans) and an even cheesier Richard Crenna returns and entertains, in a slightly reduced role, as the walking Rambo billboard Col. Trautman.
But no one has the impact of Brian Dennehy from "First Blood" and although The Berkoff makes a cameo appearance as a dastardly Soviet it's really left for Stallone to caryy the film this time.

The action is as good as 80's Hollywood action got really with loads of, ever essential, exploding bamboo huts, oodles of blood squibs a huge bodycount and those gloriously famous exploding arrows.
Stallone is even better here action-wise and although Rambo himself has now become a comic book creation he still does well. But so many years of parody have hurt his performance here, where it's still remained untainted in "First Blood".
The speech at the end as well (even more infamous than the unjustly maligned speech in the first one) is badly acted, thus making the sentiment (rather cloying anyway) rather less than successful in relating pride and dignity than it is in delivering unintentional smiles.
Not great, but still damn good.

RAMBO III
Easily the weakest and most ridiculous of the 'Rambo' series (and in fact the one that really shows how serious and well done #4 is) and one that is now fatally flawed by the about turn that history took as far as the Mujahideen goes, where the Soviet fighting resistance fighters seen here mutated into the truly vile and murderous Taliban in the power vacuum that followed the Soviet defeat.
Ironic to now see the fictional Afghan women rescued from a Soviet run prison in "Rambo III" only to have their real life versions end up in the Taliban run prisons their own homes became.

As such the speeches made by these noble fellows in the film now grate indeed, although amusement of a bitter kind is had from the conversation between the American Col. Trautman (Richard Crenna back again for the last time in slightly less fun and cheesy form) and the Russian baddie where Trautman says that the Russian should have studied the history of Afghanistan and known that the Afghan's never surrender against invaders etc etc....OUCH.
Now it is the general Afghan people fighting alongside British and American forces to try and rid Afghanistan of the same Mujahideen/Taliban fighters seen as the heroes in "Rambo III"!

The action is good though and you can see how much the budget has gone up from the previous film.
But the structure of the film is a mess (why have a long failed rescue mission sequence then almost instantly follow this up with a second rescue mission that is basically the same plan only this time it works?) and the comic strip absurdity is overpowering.
A sign of the good and the bad is perfectly shown in two bits of dialogue.
We have a great moment of perfectly judged hyperbole like this;
Russian - "One man against a hundred commandos! Who do they think this man is, God"?
Trautman - "Oh no. God would show mercy".
BRILLIANT! A spontaneous whoop of laughter escaped my lips!
But then we have groan-worthy garbage like this;
Russian (into radio) - "Who is this"!?
Rambo - "Your worst nightmare".
Oh please! Spare me!

So we have some good action and a nice big budget spent on it, some class horsemanship by Stallone, and the odd groovy line of dialogue.
But we also have a major drop in IQ all around, some 'ready for the video game' crap dialogue, a laughable Rambo hairstyle, a messy and repetitive structure, far too much absurdity in general and a (now, at least) fatally flawed political set-up.
All of which means we should give even more thanks to "Rambo 4" for seeing that Rambo the character, as well as the series in general, regained that grooviness, seriousness and (dare I say it) dignity that made the first 2 films so successful.#

RECKONING DAY
The first feature film from Julian Gilbey who would go on to make the equally violent and bloody, but far better made in every other way, "Rollin' with the Nine's" and the more famous "Rise of the Footsoldier".
Shot over 3 half years from 1998-2001, it's basically a souped up, micro-budget (not much over £7000), student action film.
The budget, the inexperience and the technical limitations do sadly hit the film hard, especially in the dialogue scenes and general plot mechanics, but there is still much to enjoy here.

The various action scenes are spectacularly visceral and violent (these are superbly created, bloody as hell, squibs that would look at home in a Hollywood blockbuster) and generally very well directed, shot and edited with some wonderful stunt work.
And unlike every other zero budget film I have seen with gunfights (where the scenes are truly awful and never work) the gun battles are brilliantly handled in every way, from how they look, sound and feel.
Add some full on car violence, a chainsaw fight and a brutal axe/electric saw execution to the splattertastic gunfights and you have a film that delivers as far as brutal thrills go.
But sadly we have all the bits in-between.

It was a huge mistake to have a guy spend the last half of the film, parts of which were shot a year apart, in a blood soaked white t-shirt. Continuity problems anyone??
See the shirt switch from total crimson, to simply blood spattered but still very white, and then back again in the space of one scene.

Sadly the lack of live sound recording also means that, a near crippling blow as far as the non-action scenes go, all dialogue is dubbed on after.
This would be bad and distracting enough anyway even with good actors, but here we have some very bad actors, reading often bad dialogue.
It's extremely hard going, not helped by a very messy, overly complicated plot (that needs some deadeningly long exposition scenes).

Anyone who knows the UK comedy/homage show to badly made TV called "Garth Marenghi's Dark Place" will cringe whenever these cheesy/bad actors read cliche hard man and/or melodramatic dialogue, that does not quite fit the lip movements and sounds like it was all recorded in the same studio.

So "Reckoning Day" is too long, has too many dialogue heavy plot exposition scenes, features bad acting, bad sound recording, technical black holes and a dodgy script.
And yet...The numerous well crafted action scenes, the full on gore and violence, the ambitious ideas and the sheer enthusiasm that runs through the entire thing do make for an ultimately rewarding viewing experience.
And with the better budgets, better actors, more experienced writing, professional crews and technical improvements that would thankfully arrive for his next two films (cliche though they may often be) Gilbey certainly came good with the promise he showed here.

To know just how hard these guys worked and the hurdles they overcame to make some of these brilliant action scenes, just look at this;
A single fight sequence on a cliff top utilises the following;
Footage shot in two completely different locations, featuring shots filmed a year apart and with a total of three actors/stunt guys playing one character.
That takes commitment. We salute you.

RED DAWN
Lots of well done, big budget action is the order of the day here in this iconic slice of 80's action movie making.
It'a also far less silly and gung ho, and far bleaker and serious, than often given credit for.
Nice suppport cast of adults to back up the up and coming 'Brat Pack' youngsters as well (Ben Johnson, Powers Boothe, Harry Dean Stanton and William Smith speaking fluent Russian!).
It holds up. Watch it!

RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE
VAST improvement over the first film and it played pretty faithful to the spirit computer games (Nemesis was perfect!).
Lots of action, lots of zombies some unexpectedly staged deaths...good stuff.
And in fact watched right after #1, it improves that film a great deal.
Good, high tech, slam bang entertainment..nothing more nothing less, why the moans?

RETURNER (THE)
A really entertaining and expertly crafted slice of Japanese sci-fi/gun play action film with some excellent characters, some great FX (including some marvellous CGI renditions of apocalyptic destroyed cities with alien ships and huge transformer robots roaming the ruins).
It also delivers some solid and violent action scenes, a solid cybertech/Industrial soundtrack and a nice streak of gentle humour.

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD
loads of fun is to be had with this gem.
Anice mix of humour and horror that gets surprisingly dark and downbeat at times.
Full of classic moments like Linnea Quigley dancing naked and her great zombie scenes, the Tar Zombie, the spurting bitten head, the numerous Romero in-jokes, the spine twitching female zombie, the excellent soundtrack, lovely performances/characters and that unexpected ending.

REVENGE
A tough Brit drama that somehow misses too many chances for real tension that the plot offers up.
Always a pleasure to see Kenneth Griffith and the sadly underrated and used James Booth though.
And Joan Collins looks very nice in her underwear!

RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY
Early Peckinpah flick is well thought of, but failed to impress me.
Nothing much happens for nearly an hour, no gun is fired until about 70 minutes in and the end seems to be the kind of forced cliche the basic set-up of the film (aged gunslingers trying to find a place in the changing West) was playing against.
Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott (Scott especially does good work ) should have been given lots of fine dialogue moments about aging and change but their time together seems rushed so we have less great character moments between them than we should have as too much time is spent on their younger partner and a wayward young woman who joins them...to less than interesting effect.

Eventually some kind of plot kicks in and we have a great support cast (L.Q Jones, R.G Armstrong, Warren Oates) and a smattering of effective action (including a surprisingly shocking for the time zoom in on a dead face, complete with bullet hole in the head)...but the bad guys are not initially that bad and seem to be having a lark more than acting like hardcore killers and the finale is, as said, forced and unlikely.

If you want a look at the changing West and those old guys trying to live in it Peckinpah's masterful "The Wild Bunch" does this much better and if you want an aging Western star playing an aging gunslinger facing up to his fate watch the wonderful "The Shootist" with John Wayne.

RIPPER
A killer sees to be offing obnoxious student types in ways similar to Jack the Ripper.
Hmmmm....After a pretty good opening this then gets rather plodding (long running time for a horror film actually) for a while until coming to life again.
It has a few bloody moments and keeps you guessing.

The finale is chaotic, reveal filled, fun and the very end....well....seems to have really been the thing that has given this film any sort of profile.
I for one thought that very final twist (simply a 2 second scene before the credits) was pretty easy to understand and that the movie had a perfectly satisfying explanation.
But it seems other people have other ideas and much debate still goes on on-line.

A forgotten and generally hated sequel has a continuing (though not needed, the first film does end) plot that seems to confirm the obvious as well.
Not bad. Just average fare.

RISE OF THE FOOTSOLDIER
Brutal Brit flick about real-life general thug and Gangland villain Carlton Leach and the changes in the English crime scene he experienced over 2 decades.

The first 3rd is rather choppy and jumps all over the place as far as 'years passing' goes, while the film covers his football hooligan period.
The middle 3rd covers his low rank entry into gangsterism via some violent as hell doorman work.
The final 3rd is the full crank into lethal Gangland territory as the astonishingly nasty 'Range Rover Murders' is covered as Carlton's best friend, and his two equally unhinged partners, go on an out of control rampage only to end up blown apart by shotguns.....
Generally well directed, very well acted and only slightly hurt by the sometimes over the top 'Cockneyisms', "Rise of the Footsoldier" was wrongly ignored on it's theatrical release, hopefully this high profile DVD will improve things.

Battering and brutal in its language and gory violence (the 3 different views on what may have happened during the murders are all shockingly extreme in their shotgun shredding explicitness) the film is a pretty solid and engaging watch and very well made with it...the cinematography is superb (especially the snowy, moon glow shrouded reconstruction of the murders).Strangely Carlton Leach, who was indeed the main focus of the film, almost vanishes visually (he narrates the film throughout though) as he was not directly involved with the 'range Rover Murders'. To help this he is even placed in scenes where in real life he was not present, but this does not stop a strangely lopsided feel to this otherwise extremely effective last 3rd as our lead character becomes a distant support player.

Craig Fairbrass does his best work ever as the psychotic Pat (the attack on the pizza parlour manager with a pizza cutter is truly scary stuff) and is far more effective than his dreadful support turn in "Cliffhanger" or his lead turn in the putrid "Proteus".
As Carlton Leach, Ricci Harnett ("28 Days Later") does a very good job at essaying a thug who eventually tired of the insanity he saw unfolding around him, while still retaining no regrets about any of it.

Overall a truly brutal, bloody and nasty slice of British Gangster film making that is only hurt by perhaps being too late down the line (now hip, but wrongful, contempt has crept into critical reception of Brit gangster flicks) and the lopsided nature of the final 3rd.
But these are small problems in what is overall a superbly made Brit flick that any general gangster movie fan, and especially Brit gangster movie fan, should check out.

ROAD (THE)
There was certainly enough stuff going on here, away from just the father/son relationship, to keep this moving drama interesting and even exciting and it had some great visuals and excellent acting all round.
The cannibal 'basement' scene was suitably creepy and grotesque, and the film did a good job at ramping up the tension while still being a genuinely moving, serious, movie.
So I 'enjoyed' it and will re-visit it.

But....it felt more lightweight than I was expecting somehow, and perhaps a bit too low key and even a bit short.
But still a good, well crafted, engaging, worth owning movie.

ROLLERCOASTER
One of those 70's large cast (though not as large as some of them) disaster/terrorist films we all have a soft spot for.

The unfortunately named Timothy Bottoms is the nutter in question here and he is targeting amusement park rollercoasters by blowing up sections of track to cause 'accidents'
The always welcome George Segal (with bad 70's moustache) is the safety inspector helping Richard Widmark's FBI guys to catch the killer.
The legend that is Henry Fonda pops up in 2 or 3 scenes as Segal's boss and Susan Strasberg is wasted as Segal's wife.

The film sadly lacks 'incidents' (we only have one, pretty groovy in a 70's squash the dummies way, successful rollercoaster attack at the start) but thankfully the good cast are all in fine form, there's some smatterings of light humour that work, Bottoms is a pretty damn clever nutbag and there are some really, really, well crafted suspense scenes.
The best of these is a great 'run Segal around every damn ride in the park' money payoff sequence as Bottoms makes fools of Widmark's wonderfully grouchy FBI guy and his men as he attempts to pick up his cash off Segal.
the end is also a well done suspense piece...and the finale for Bottoms is a GREAT one!

And look out for some early support/walk on roles for:
A very young Helen Hunt as Segal's Daughter, Craig "Body Double" Wasson as a patron and Steve "Police Academy" Guttenberg in an uncredited one scene walk on (with a huge as afro!).
The really weird appearance though is from barmy art pop/rock/Hitler on the piano group 'Sparks' who play at the gala during the finale!

Needed more BOOM, but that aside "Rollercoaster" was still a lot of fun.

ROLLIN' WITH THE NINES
Before the excellent "Rise of the Footsoldier" film makers Julian and William Gilbey made this tough thriller about Black gangster violence in London.

Most of the Black actors who play the criminals are very good (especially Vas Blackwood and Robbie Gee) but the film is really hurt (at least from a serious drama point of view, if not a straight entertainment one) by some dreadful miscasting and general bad acting (and writing) as far as the Police go.
The two main (actually corrupt as they like to skim from drug hauls and sell it!) Cops are without doubt the most unconvincing Cops put in screen.
One is just a weak actor and the other is simply a Cockney Gangster thug throughout and never a Policeman. No wonder the actor, Terry Stone, was re-used in "Rise of the Footsoldier" as a brutal Gangster. In that he was fine, but as a Cop in this he's completely unbelievable.
That's not to say the Cops are not enjoyable, comic strip, tough ass character s though. And we can only hope that real Cops get this hardcore with criminals!

Talking of which the action here is superb. The low budget is completely invisible as thundering multiple gunshots, fast editing, slick styling, well constructed set-ups and excellent blood FX all combine to deliver some brutal as hell shootouts.
The action highlight (although it plays like no shootouts I've ever heard of happening in the UK, even now!) is a truly nightmarish assault on a Yardie (Jamaican Gangsters) drug house where the cramped setting provides real edge of the seat suspense as the Cops move through a house filled with truly psychotic Gangsters as well as booby traps.
It's astonishingly bloody and violent and the sickening discovery in an upstairs bathtub in the middle of the brutal chaos truly makes the sequence a trip through hell.

The budget is again ignored during a very well done extended car chase that's wonderfully shot, edited and performed and when added to the location footage and crisp cinematography results in a film that, from a technical level at least, can holed its own with almost any Hollywood production.
All in all then "Rollin' with the Nines" is only really let down by some genuinely poor acting in a couple of key roles, at least one miscasting blunder and some overly hip and comic strip dialogue (worse when said supposedly by Cops).
Everywhere else though it's top notch, fast paced, great looking, superbly crafted thriller making that may revel in cliche, but does it very well.

ROSEMARY'S BABY
Hack about 10 minutes out of this and things would improve in leaps 'n' bounds.
There are too many repetitive scenes and events and the whole Satanic plot (if it exists...but I think by the end we are meant to realise it is indeed real) seems rather flawed and long winded in execution.
The plan of the all powerful Lord of Hell has to rely on the complete consumption of a chocolate mousse?

And although I like John Cassavetes he is never, ever, anything other than rather unlikeable and suspicious. With his endless forced smirks and bursts of rage you never, not once, feel this is a trustworthy guy and innocent Husband. He seems to be on the wrong path (indeed the left hand path! LOL!) from the start.
It would indeed have been far more effective (and fascinating) if the clean cut, likable, Robert Redford (who was originally up for the Husband role) had taken the part.
As quite frankly to have had a "Barefoot in the Park" style Redford be exposed as pimping out his young wife to Satan would have been a real shocker...and completely unexpected to a virginal 60's audience.
With Cassavetes though, you think he's up to something as soon as he appears!

This aside though, Polanski has delivered a surprisingly engaging Satanic slow burner that has some engaging characters and a nice air of sinister mystery and dark conspiracy.
Mia Farrow is just the right side of twee and does a great job later on as her character's natural shrewishness valiantly tries to fight back against the all powerful witches plotting against her.

I have to wonder why this still rates an '18' in the UK though. A nicely bloody body aside (and I'm still not sure why and how this character died either...her existence in the plot seems rather strange and unexplained) we have nothing else at all except some mild nudity, Halloween costume Devil claws and the most sedate rape ever filmed.
This is '15' material.
I still refuse to see this as a real classic in 2009 and I put it far behind "The Omen", but it does hold the attention for the most part, is well made and directed and delivers a stonking finale.

ROYAL WARRIORS - aka "Police Assassins".
Top class old school 'Modern Day Action' flick with Micelle Yeoh (in her 'Michelle Khan' days) in top ass kicking form against some very nasty, cold blooded as hell killers.
Bags of 80's Hong Kong action entertainment. Awfully done 5:1 audio on the 'Universe' DVD though!

RUN ANGEL RUN
60's biker flick from Jack Starrett ("Race with the Devil"/"The Losers") about gang member Angel (William Smith") selling the clubs secrets to a magazine for $10,000 and then going in the run from them with his girlfriend and hold up on a farm..

Plus points first.
Loved the close-up camera work on the bike riding scenes near the start of the film. Really exhilirating stuff. And the chase scene was good.
William 'Conan's Dad' Smith is always a good watch, and here he played a pretty complex character in Angel. Rotten, mean, selfish and then loving and honourable with dreams.
Mean-ass hobos! They started out okay, but soon turned on the nasties.
There was even a weird sort of master/slave relationship between one White hobo and a Black hobo (named Elmo!). best though was the stuck up, uptight hobo who was disgusted at the idea of them all sharing Angel's girl....But was the first to get right stuck in when the chance came!!
A rape of a young girl was very well handled, especially the way it was edited into Angel and his girl making love, and the way they simply abandoned the beaten and bloodied girl after was pretty powerful stuff.
Angel's relationship with the farmer was good too as Angel saw a possible glimpse into his future that he really can't decide if he wants or not.
And there was some good general "we be mean bikers" scenes as well which were fun.

BUT...this took far too many time-outs to show Angel and his girl having the same arguement again and again. It got veru boring very fast as we had yet another scene of Angel smashing something, grabbing her arm and telling her he's "going to blow".
It overdosed on the fancy editing and multiple split screens as well as if that added life to things.
The promised jump onto the train was an unseen non-event that was just a confused mess due to the split screens.
After such a build-up the finale basically failed to deliver much. Always a damaging flaw.
The roaring bikes in the dark were good as they shot around Angel, but it was not enough really.

Overall? Very good in parts with certain fine set-pieces, a good script as far as Angel's character goes and some good bike scenes. But much of this was to low key for it's own good, with tedious arguements and a rather flat finale.
Average fare.

RUNNING SCARED
WOW!
A real boot in the face bit of cinema.
Frantic, brutal, uncompromising in language and violence, superbly made so as to feel like a hyperkinetic graphic novel come to life, some balls-out performances (esp by the main child actor and Paul Walker) and with some head-spinning plot twists.
It's wildly over the top, totally implausible and packed with comic strip characters and events, but given a brutal make-over with high melodrama to ensure we care what happens to people.
The basic set-up is like a far more serious, far more nasty "Snatch". Only with a gun replacing a diamond, which takes the various larger than life characters on a mind bending journey into over the top (but wonderful) situations.
You either embrace and go with the harrowing, brutal but comic strip plot or you don't and as such miss out on one of the finest American films to come out in a LONG time.
How damn unexpected and just plain scary were that couple!!?

SAW
Very good.
Raging, violent, bloody, dark and with some spot on twists. It did the business as far as I was concerned.

SAW 2
A nice little treat.
Nasty, violent and with some excellent twists.
The actual 'Saw' traps' in this seemed rather tacked on and of no real aid to the plot (the 'wrist grabbing box' really seemed shoved in simply to have a trap in the film at that point) but eveything else was spot on. Great finale as well.

SAW 6
If as far as plotting went you really had no chance following the 'Saw' films after "Saw 2" if you had never seen any of the others...here even those who have followed the series will find themselves needing very much the mass of flashback sequences to appreciate the full goings on in "Saw 6".

And even then, despite all that and despite that the plotlines left dangling are all tied up, "Saw 6" has a few new 'Er?' moments of its own creation thanks to some sadly murky plotting near the end.
As such the need to reprise so much of the plot from flashbacks throughout the film (not just at the end as usual) and the less than clear plotting at times make "Saw 6" not as satisfying as the last 2 sequels imho and the need to flashback means the film never really becomes it's own film until a good 40 minutes in.

Some of the traps are nasty nasty (especially the opening, prepare to wince!) but by now the traps are getting stale in general. As such this is not as good as people have been saying it was.
Still a must for "Saw" fans though...and it has a finale moment that's just great and totally unexpected.
Although for the first time ever in the series, despite this really being an end as far as the past five "Saw" movie plotlines are concerned, the film ends on a genuine cliffhanger. As such it never, ever becomes a real whole.
But the cliffhanger could well pave the way for a (HOPEFULLY!!!!!) final movie that could really deliver and satisfy.

SCREAM/TASTE OF FEAR
Ho hum.
Has some one or two shock visuals (the swimming pool scene is class) but lacks any real horror aesthetic or macabre content and as such plays far more like a drama/thriller then most of the other 'Hammer' mystery films. Very TV movie like in fact.

Okay stuff, but the plot is muddy (given the planned outcome of the scheme, why all the 'trying to scare her' bits beforehand, unless I missed something) and the bungled way the finale is shot/edited makes it look like everyone, including the police, was simply watching this guy do what he did and said or did nothing to stop him!

Poor Chris Lee had only a few lucky moments with 'Hammer'.
He either has no dialogue, only a tiny bit of dialogue, or has to speak in funny accents when he actually has a lot of dialogue. Hi ho. Must be why he likes "The Devil Rides Out" so much.

SECRET KICK OF DEATH
Lots of fun 'old school' Martial Arts action, packed with fights including some good femme action. Very cheap but very cheerful.

SEED OF CHUCKY
A nice way to end the series, in the only style you could really do it in.
Not as good as "Bride of Chucky" but it had some nice moments, some clever in-jokes and self-digs and some delightfully weird and wonderful ideas.
Lacked energy though, and the very final scene was rather silly and strange.
overall the entire "Child's Play" series is easily one of the best franchise's as far as keeping up the quality, the pretty good continuity and at delivering all round solid entertainment.

SEPTEMBER DAWN
September 11th has another brutal religious slaughter to its name.
This time the death, in 1857, of 120 men, women and children at the hand of The Mormon Church.
Christopher "Young Guns" Cain takes too long to tell this foul tale and the love story (although emotionally effective from a narrative stand-point) is told in far too cliche, twee and sickly a fashion.

But the fine cast, headed by Jon Voight, Tamara Hope and Trent Ford, does a fine job and when it comes the massacre is as it should be...a brutal, sadistic act of religiously motivated butchery that is genuienly hard to watch as Cain's camera spares no gender or age when it comes to showing the bloody deaths.

Flawed, too long, sometimes too slow and a bit simplistic in characterisation...but it's a story that needed telling (please feel free to do the same type of telling for other religion's atrocities too though Mr Hollywood) and the movie tells it very well and makes for suitably grim viewing. But at least it's well crafted grim viewing.

SEVENTH SIGN
Sadly forgotten Demi Moore vehicle about the coming of the Apocalypse, but with an unusual twist in the telling as it's all God's work...with no Satan or Anti-Christ in sight.

Jürgen Prochnow is the mysterious guy walking the earth and breaking the seals that move the apocalypse closer (some good scenes of mass death and decay) the unlucky Michael Biehn is Moore's husband and Demi Moore herself does a pretty damn good job as the mother to be who holds mankind's salvation in her hands.
Acting highlight though is Peter Friedman is a priest who is not what he seems (some good Bible based lore here if you like this type of scripture based mystery ala "The Omen") and it all comes to an emotionally powerful (if rather obvious) head.

Different, well made and deserving of a bigger profile.

SHADOW OF A DOUBT
One of Hitchcock's favourite of his films owes much to the great turn (and some great psycho speeches) by Joseph Cotton whose unhinged character saves this from the generally messy and inconsistent in tone screenplay he resides in.

Longer than it needs to be and far too unstructured the film is not helped by the performance in the first half (it vastly improves later on) by Teresa Wright who makes her selfish, drippy, simpering, OTT woman-child character even more annoying with her spot on (so perhaps it's actually a great performance!?) drippy, simpering, OTT woman-child performance as Cotton's niece.

The abrupt, seems rather handy and shoe-horned in, finale is a letdown as well...so only some of Hitch's typically stylistic suspense scenes and Cotton's great turn and character make it worthwhile.

SHEPHERD (THE)
As far as Van Damme's a hand to hand fighting/acrobatics go this was his best flick for a long time.
His physique is looking good too...no Seagal style letting himself go to be seen here. Some of the plotting (or should that be post filming editing it seemed to me) was off and some scenes and minor characters were left stranded, but the action, fighting and Van Damme himself were all top flight, certainly for a latter day Van Damme movie.

SHINER
What a joy!
Is it a black comedy or a serious drama? Fucked if I know, and I don't think the makers knew either.
Michael Caine in top pantomime form, nothing serious about his acting here (another "Get Carter" this is not) but he entertains no end!
And the OTT, foul mouthed, dialogue is a hoot! "Go and have a cup of tea or a wank...but calm down, calm down".
And my favourite..."I'll personally force you to fuck your Mother"!
Saying that, there was genuinely intense scene with Andy Serkis (cock dangling) and his pregnant wife.
Caine sticks a gun to her belly and threatens to pull the trigger if a battered and bleeding Serkis does not tell him what he wants to know.
The whole sequence reeked with violence. Nasty scene.
Totally melodramtic and unreal in general, but very entertaining and extremely violent and bloody at times.

SHOOT 'EM UP
Birthed from the iconic 'Chow Yun Fat with a baby and a shotgun' scene from John Woo's "Hardboiled", "Shoot 'em Up" delivers a film based on the idea that Chow would have to look after and protect the baby throughout the entire film!
And it works brilliantly.

This is not a film pretending to BE a John Woo film, or even pretending to be LIKE a John Woo film (they are separate creatures despite the shared DNA) it's simply a movie being something so out of this world deranged that is exists in its own little universe.
It's a juicy hamburger made of the finest meats and cooked to absolute perfection and served on the best bun ever baked, to John Woo's juicy prime steak cooked and seasoned to perfection and served on the finest bone china plate ever made.
Both bloody lovely depending on what mood you're in.
If Woo's masterworks pushed reality to breaking point in their drive to ensure that style and entertainment come before all else, then "Shoot 'em Up" quite frankly pushes reality out of the frame entirely!

Stupendously creative and over the top set-pieces packed with blood spattered carnage and oh so many guns is the order of the day, with a large side helping of humour and utterly fantastical physics.
But because the film starts out like that from the very start (a guy killed with a carrot should signpost all you need to know about the kind of film this is going to be) then the movie's 'there are no rules' rules remain basically above criticism.
You want a film literally packed with guns, blood, action and stunts that you can just sit back and enjoy with absolutely no pretensions?
Well here it is.
Done in a way so completely devoted to delivering the most outrageous examples of guns, blood, action and stunts that quite frankly, if you walked into the cinema in the first place, and crucially were still there after the first 10 minutes....You've got nothing to complain about!

The creative use of the baby only adds to the comic strip madness of the action (you WILL get close to the edge of your seat at times whenever the baby is put through the kind of set-pieces Tex Avery would find too crazed) and for a film that was basically spawned from an idea in another film, and that hugs and kisses so many past action conventions with great passion, it's to everyone's credit that the damn thing still comes out unlike any action/gun film you've ever seen.

Clive Owen is quite frankly pitch perfect as the mysterious stranger who's a one mad slaughter house. Owen knows exactly how to react to the madness, how to trip out the one-liners and how to handle the action.
And Paul Giamatti is a complete comic strip, pushed to the edge of the cosmos, nasty as hell villain who shouldn't work... but does perfectly in the kind of universe "Shoot 'em Up" dwells in.

This is a gun-play film on speed, acid and grass all at the same time while still managing to pull all the best effects of such a cocktail together with military precision (under Michael Davis' expert direction) to amazingly deliver not a vomit chocked overdose, but a big ass, grin on the face, orgasm.

SHOWTIME
LOADS of fun! Should have been a much bigger hit.
Eddie Murphy is on top form and Robert De Niro gives a lovely performance.
Some good action mixed in with the comedy and all in all it's well worth a watch.

SHUTTLE + Article. *Spoilers*
The recent splurge of extreme Horror and Exploitation movies from America (“Hostel 1 & 2”, “Devil’s Rejects”, “House 1000 Corpses”, “Saw”) has been a mixed bag but has also been a generally effective and very welcome shot in the arm of a genre pretty much on it’s tired, in-joke filled, moronic franchise aimed, oh so bland and extremely vapid and irritating knees in the previous decade.
So far this new Millennium has been as close to the Exploitation/Horror Heaven of the years between 1968 (or so) and 1983 (or so) we could have hoped for.

Even the rather more popcorn munching, multi-plex friendly American Horror film (the re-birth of the Slasher film for example back to its no messing, here for the fun, hack ‘n’ dice roots, “Wrong Turn 2”, “See no Evil”, “Laid to Rest”, “All the Boys Love Many Lane”, “Boogeyman 2”) has given us some surprisingly gory, devilishly sick and violent efforts that have been generally very well made and funded.

Brutal and often bold and risk taking Horror, with a sometimes arthouse sensibility, has been at its most uncompromising in some of the chilling and powerfully grotesque movies from Europe in general (“Cannibal” from Germany, “Cold Prey”, “Manhunt” from Norway for example) and France in particular (“Martyrs”, “Inside”, “Frontiers”).
Even Australia did the brutal Horror business (“Wolf Creek”, “Storm Warning”) as did a regenerated (though often multinationally funded) British Horror film industry (“Mum and Dad”, “The Children”, “Severance”, “Creep”, “Dog Soldiers”, “The Descent”, “Shaun of the Dead”, “28 Days Later”).

All in all, at least in film, the 21st century has been very kind to Horror fans, with only the, still going strong, need to re-make many wonderful 70’s/80’s films (not even all Horror) for no good or welcome reasons whatsoever being the unwelcome stain on the crisp bedsheets.

And into this still young and exciting revitalised century comes “Shuttle”.
A bloody, nasty, bleak little film about 5 people being driven to their various fates (or not) by a sinister airport shuttle driver.
An unusually long running time for such a film and a very quick to get going plot ensures that the film has plenty of time to offer up many twists, events, set-pieces and locale changes to ensure that something new and surprising is always going on, even if it sometimes sacrifices energy for event.

Strong performances are essential to keep an audience interested in what is often just a horror coated road movie and thankfully there are no bad turns here, with some solid work in particular from the lead actress Peyton List and the driver himself Tony Curran (with a pretty good American accent).
The film also delivers some nicely messy violence, all done with deadly seriousness, and lots of well honed terror and threat. It’s good, solid, technically sharp horror movie making that we have come to now expect.

All this dark mayhem finally ends in a conclusion it that is up there with “Wolf Creek” for being so truly horrible. The eventual grotesque fate for the last character, that will also have a long and terrifying build up for the victim, is utterly audience unfriendly and stupendously bleak and ice cold. Not a fun time can be said to have been had!
It’s not nice, but it’s this uncompromising hardness and extremity that has been such a welcome breathe of fetid air to recent genre films for those craving a darker treat from some of their horror.

The problems with the film come from general troubles with the movies’ basic setting and set-up and that old chestnut…some dumb choices by the characters and a shit load of unnaturally bad luck!
The film switches the power and advantage from bad guy to victim more often than any psycho film I can think of. As such, although this adds surprise and freshness to the proceedings, it does start to grate when the would be victims don;t do what you want them to do and what you hope you would do in such a situation.
Too often the victims utterly foul up their chances to our extreme frustration. It is a sadly large problem the film is stuck with, and seeing as the rest of the film is so good and well made it’s a shame some more time and effort was not spent by writer/director Edward Anderson brainstorming the consequences of certain actions and how to realistically deal with them without simply having something foolish happen to get him out of the corner he foolishly wrote himself into.
And it also ignores what would be the biggest problems to any of this happening today, namely the fact that no modern city is ever this empty. Ever. And this place is damn empty believe me!
And in a world full of CCTV and speed/roadside cameras the Police would have been screeching around the corners in hot pursuit before half the running time has elapsed.

But in the end the film’s strengths win out over its weaknesses and the film is (as so many Horror films are nowadays) ultimately saved by it’s brutally uncompromising attitude and extremity that gives the right kind of viewer for such a film the kind of satisfaction (if not exactly fun-time enjoyment) they crave and have come to expect from this kind of Horror film today.

SIN CITY
Wonderfully crafted and amazingly faithful to it's graphic Novel source (these guys really went all out here) this was hip, cool, smooth, nasty, fun, violent, hopeful and very entertaining.
A great cast do a great job, the stories are wonderfully weaved together and emotionally satisfying and it simply looks stunning.
Easily one of the best Hollywood films of the last 5 years.

SINK THE BISMARK
A true classic of the Brit movie golden age (Kenneth Moore was never better), the sea battles are well done, the (mainly) accurate plot is engrossing and it's a ballsy, proud image of Britain.
Sadly though it wasn't just the Bismark that ended up getting sunk it now seems....

SLITHER
This unpretentiously does all it sets out to do.
It has some good gore, some cool FX and creatures, likeable/enjoyable characters, well used humour and mixed various bits from here and there to create it's own film. "The Thing", "Shivers", "Squirm", "Night of the Creeps", "The Blob" and even "Society" were blended together to make a fun horror *new* movie.
The main creature's face gave off a heavy Bilial vibe, "Basket Case's" Frank Hennenlotter was namechecked on a banner, Lloyd Kaufman appeared, Rob Zombie was heard and we had a character named J. MacReady.
Despite some weird criticisms of the CGI, I thought it was very well used, it looked very good for the most part and was utilised as it should be...to enhance 'real' FX and to do impossible things otherwise.
And it was nice to see a film that referenced other films yet still stood on it's own,

SLUGS
Even worse than I remembered. Shaun Hutson's (first) novel that it was based on is not that good (the sequel was better) but it was a masterwork compared to it's movie incarnation.
We have to endure not a single even remotely adequate performance (some lame dubbing as well makes matters worse) , truly inane scripting, stupid as hell plotting, shoddy direction, dire technical flaws, laughable music and basically almost everything here is just plain BAD.
A few moments reach 'so bad they're good' status, most of the time though it's just simply awful and shows just how rare (and well done even) true 'so bad they're good' films truly are.
Some choice gore here and there (especially during the bedroom scene), but that's all there is to even remotely bother with.
This does not reach the heights of 'guilty pleasure', cheesy fun or anything else. In fact it shows just how much better the low budget 60's/70's schlock fests were than people give them credit for.
"Slugs" is truly dire movie making.

SMOKIN' ACES 2: Assassin's Ball
Ball? Balls more like!
Despite snobby critics bad mouthing the original film, it was in fact a wonderfully cast, wonderfully played, superbly made, fast paced, extremely well plotted balls-out action fest.
It managed to deliver a dense, clever, satisfying plot whilst also managing to keep up a constant barrage of high tech action and thrills.
This sequel though manages none of that.

Running 20 vital minutes shorter than the first film this stinking donkey dropping of a movie takes no less than 50, basically action free, minutes to set up a bunch of only marginally interesting characters before placing them all in a couple of rooms for the last 30 minutes so they can shoot at each other (and dodge awful CGI explosions) for no plot propulsion purpose at all.
But actually even that's wrong. As really only about 20 minutes of that last 30 is action, the rest is made up of two scenes (one in the middle of what is supposed to be the big action finale!!) where a couple of the characters rapidly mumble supposed plot explanations to each other as the screenwriters try to make up for having almost no plot whatsoever for the first hour.

I mean it. Almost all the final 10 minutes of what is supposed to be an action film is nothing but, nothing at all but, a rambling stream of plot exposition and incomprehensible twist explanations (that crassly and crudely tries to shoehorn in real life political/terrorist events) that lead up to a complete non-event of an ending.
Plusses? There are two wonderfully gory head destruction scenes and you have to love the exploding clowns. But all that adds up to about 1 minute of screen time.

"Smokin' Aces 2" is witless, stupid, badly made, often looks cheap, has Christ awful pacing, has an outstandingly badly delivered and truly pitiful plot (that only exists just before the film ends) and manages to do everything wrong that the first film did so damn right.
Avoid this turd, even if you liked the first film.
Watch the exploding clowns on YouTube and save your money!

STARSHIP TROOPERS 2
Not great, and someone has obviously been watching "Shivers" and "Night of the Creeps".
But the action was well done, the gore was nasty and explicit, the nudity was very welcome and the end was stupendously ironic and bravely bleak.

STRIKING DISTANCE
Very underrated Bruce Willis flick. Nothing mind blasting, but a solid action thriller none the less
And the great support cast is what really lifts it. Tom Sizemore in great form, nice turns from Tom Atkins, Brion James and John Mahony and some excellent barnstorming by the great Dennis Farina.

STRANGE WORLD OF PLANET X (THE)
1950's British sci-fi flick with that stars Forrest 'I love England' Tucker as a scientist.

Magnetic experimental shenanigans have let in those naughty cosmic rays and thus some people have been turned mad and the insects have all become giant!
Now that sounds like a right winner does it not!?
Sadly though it takes about an hour for anything to happen aside from scientific babble and workplace romance (with a woman dubbed over with an 'Allo Allo' French accent) until we eventually have some truly dire insect attack scenes that are simply footage real bugs blown up and superimposed next to the actors ("Empire of the Ants" would still be using this crap method decades later).

But actually such mind-blowing FX sequences are a rarity here. Most of the 'action' is a handful of soldiers in a field shooting their guns off to the left or right of the frame before we cut to a completely separate 'National Geographic' scene of a real insect scuttling about.
And that's your lot!

This tv print was sadly missing the one moment that sounded slightly interesting (a soldier's face pulled off - a mask pulled off a joke store plastic skull supposedly!) so I was left with nothing but truly dire acting, plodding acing, go nowhere screenplay, crap FX and a shoe-horned in Alien saviour sub-plot that gives us the floppy nothing of an ending.
Bah!

STRIKE COMMANDO
Bruno Mattei atrocity from the 80's (under his popular 'Vincent Dawn' pseudonym) that stars some guy named Reb Brown and co-stars Euro-Trash stalwart Christopher Connelly (in a rare bad guy role) in a Vietnam/revenge flick that borrows liberally from "Rambo: First Blood part 2" (torture, electro-fide bed frame, much belt-fed heavy machine gun misuse, traitorous boss man, voice of reason commanding officer, headband wearing and much bare chest posing) but is so badly made that little excitement is generated.

The fact the, pretty plentiful, action is also almost completely bloodless and often very badly staged indeed is a big problem for such a film (the first 5 minutes of "Cannibal Apocalypse" is better than this entire movie) and we only have that generally fun Euro-Trash styling, enjoyable ham acting and two very late exploding bodies to offer up any entertainment.

And you have to wonder what they were thinking when the last exploding guy manages to shout out the hero's name even while his body parts are flying in through the air...resulting in said hero catching the dead guy's metal dentures in his hand before walking off into the distance reciting a supposedly amusing (but not) fake disclaimer about the "events not being based on any actual persons alive or dead...especially dead". WTF?

Sadly an example of what used to entertain you as a VHS teen, no longer really does so as a DVD oldie as the wrinkles appear and the patience for just plain bad film making gets shorter and shorter.

STUFF (THE)
Not as good as it once was...but this is still a fun flick from Larry Cohen and as with all his films it has many wonderfully weird and quirky moments.

SUDDEN IMPACT
Not as good as the three classic titles that came before it, and far more simplistic humour has been added and the 'hip', cheesy attitude and dialogue has become overwhelming.
But it still has some great moments, some nice links to the other films (with Bradford Dillman from "The Enforcer" re-appearing and some nice variations on the original "Dirty Harry" music), some top violent action.

SUDDENLY
Frank Sinatra plans to shoot the President with a sniper rifle from a window. OUCH!
Sterling Hayden's stiffly acted Sheriff and the most upstanding American family ever seen are out to stop him
This wildly melodramatic and outrageously theatrical movie would probably have drifted into obscurity if it was not for two linked events.
JFK was later assassinated.
And Sinatra stopped distribution of the film because of it.
Such is the way movie folklore is born.

It is very strange to hear Sinatra, when he is told other assassins have never escaped, going through the list of President killers (and why they are inferior to him) and not of course have any mention of Oswald and JFK as that was 9 years away.
If the film was made now it would of course be explicitly mentioned,
Sinatra chews the scenery, it's outrageously patriotic, it's all rather silly (after the Sheriff and the head Secret Service guy go missing and another Cop is shot in the streets...why would Sinatra ever think the Presidential visit would still happen!!?) but it's all very entertaining.
In fact how could a film, where Ol' Blue Eyes slaps around an 8 year old boy and threatens to cut his throat, not be entertaining!?

SUNSET BOULEVARD
A film worthy of its classic status.
The now classic opening (sometimes test screenings can be a good thing) leads to a fascinating study of dashed young hopes, fading stardom and deluded dreams.
And above all it's a study in blind ambition and a ruthless drive for success.
No one here is pure, everyone (even the wholesome Betty Schaefer) is willing to bend ideals and morals to get that big break and is willing to use duplicity and lies even for what they consider moral causes (like Erich von Stroheim's 'Butler).

Famously it's also an attack on old Hollywood and the way it turns its back on those that help make it.
And it's pretty biting about that.
And the ultimate example of that is Norma Desmond herself, so brilliantly essayed by the then also faded (but not mad) star Gloria Swanson, ironically getting the comeback her character never gets.
Her performance is slyly comic (there is, as it's Billy Wilder, some lovely comedy in the first half of the film), tragic, touching and downright scary.

As the opportunist, ultimately doomed, gigilo the young (but also starting to fade before this revival) William Holden is the lynch pin that holds the film together and he gives a gorgeous performance. Not only in looks but also in the way he perfectly mixes comedy and tragedy in his character.
A character, like them all, who's a genius creation by Wilder and Brackett.

The utterly crazy real-life connections between the actors is the icing on top for movie buffs;
Swanson was a big star who made films with DeMille (who has a cameo playing himself as her character's old director) and who had also faded into the background.
One of Swanson's most troubled films was "Queen Kelly" in which she was being directed by Erich von Stroheim, a film packed away and unreleased after Swanson complained about this "madman" making it. Erich von Stroheim and Swanson basically never talked again.
"Queen Kelly" is used as the film to show her character's old film career!
But Erich von Stroheim himself plays her character's 'Butler' who was also one of her characters early directors before she moved on and left him.

How these mighty egos with such a tangled past managed to work together is testament to how professional and respectful of each other's legacy they were.
A wonderful, classic, movie experience that works as a movie in its own right but is also essential viewing for any movie buffs and lovers of film.

TAKING LIVES
A nice sex and nudity scene with Ms Jolie and a nasty decapitation...but otherwise rather silly, very slow and generally ho hum.

TALL T (THE)
Another of the Randolph Scott/Budd Boetticher Westerns that opens with all dazzling smiles and happy-happy dialogue and attitudes (and a typically crap 50's Western musical score that drowns you in saccharine and cheese) before it becomes surprisingly dark and violent.

A verbal plot revelation, involving a well, is certainly hard-hitting and quite shocking and from then on there is an air of genuine menace here as the (ever marvelous) Richard Boone's gang (including a young Henry Silva in full psycho mode) take Scott, a purposely dowdy Maureen O'Sullivan and her husband captive.

The lean running time helps the fact the plot is thin and the top performances from all concerned also help to push the film higher than it's basic set-up (based on a story by Elmore Leonard) and the odd moment of violence (especially a scene involving a shotgun and a face and the finale) add punch to the movie.

TEAM AMERICA
Unrated. Very funny for the most part (the extended sex scene is a bad taste gem!) but it's overly padded and thus too long.
Losing a good 10/15 minutes would have helped it a great deal. Some wonderful jokes and politically incorrect splashings though.

TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (THE)
Not only one of the finest Hollywood 70's movies, but perhaps THE finest example of a thriller and comedy mix ever.
A stunning cast does marvels all round, from the superb comic (yet serious enough when needed) turn by the great Walter Matthau, stoic support from prime era Robert Shaw and nice turns, as the "Reservoir Dogs" birthing criminal gang, by Martin Balsam and Hector Elizondo.
But away from these, we have some astutely performed support (often scene stealing) characters like Tom Pedi's Bronx bulldozer of a Supervisor and Dick O'Neil's ("Cagney and Lacey") train controller.
Lee Wallace as the flu-ridden, hysterically unpopular Mayor and old Woody Allen regular Tony Roberts as the Deputy-Mayor are also a joy.

Add some taught suspense, bursts of action and violence, a wonderfully crafted (and directed) plot and the superbly funky (and catchy) David Shire score and you have a totally wonderful slice of 70's cinematic greatness!
And the final shot, of Matthau's delightful Hound Dog face, caps it all off perfectly.

TAXIDERMIA
Stupendously off-the-wall exercise in arthouse grotesquery from the Hungarians.
The fetid tale of three male generations of the same messed up family.

First is 'The Grandfather' a lowly soldier dogsbody who toils in the filth and the bitter cold with only his sexual fantasies to keep him warm.
When fantasy becomes reality and his penis gets some real pork to mount, his doomed is sealed but his genes live on in his Son, who will become... 'The Father'.

'The Father' grows up to be a speed-eater for the military where he meets his Wife to be.
Much eating and vomiting later 'The Father' has a Son, but the 'The Father' has now become a man mountain of blubber, holed up in his foul smelling room full of chocolate bars and big, fat, hungry cats.
'The Son' is a disappointment to 'The Father' as he is skinny, drawn, weak and has nothing but contempt for his Father and what he has become.

'The Son' does like to stuff things though. He is a skilled taxidermist who keeps the flesh from rotting...But can he keep his own flesh from decaying into the fucked up gene-pool that is his family?

Filled with sights, sounds and smells that polite society keeps hidden away, György Pálfi's "Taxidermia" instead wallows in them.
In full and glorious detail we see;
The rutting (some actual hardcore shots here).
The masturbation.
The wayward cock attacked by the chicken.
The bath of dead pig flesh bathed in semen.
The shoveled down foodstuffs.
The mass expulsion of vomit (as each 'eating contestant' purges himself).
The shudder of blubber.
The stretching of skin.
The removal of superflorous organs...
And the ultimate display of the human form as it bathes in the adoration of strangers and shrugs off the decay of time.
Backed by a deliciously off-kilter score, strong acting, striking visuals and touches of directorial flare "Taxidermia" is unique, weird, sad, funny, grotesque, taboo and a must-see for any of you that likes to dip your toes from time to time into something the rest of society would not see as suitable for the human eye.

TEARS OF THE SUN
Underrated Bruce Willis flick action/war flick with some very well done action, some brutal sequences and a good story.
It has a heart as well and a stroy to tell that needed telling.
Too many so called critics know nothing.

TEETH
Wonderful little horror film that delivers some great black comedy, some well executed gore and gross-out sequences and benefits big time, in the longish build-up to the main plot device of a toothy fun tunnel, from the brilliant performance by Jess Weixler as the teenage girl with a big problem.

The mixture of the comic and the serious is well handled and although you have to wait (though it's a perfectly fine 'n' dandy wait thanks to the script and the lead performance) the penis armageddon the plot idea hints at is delivered in full blooded, shaft separated, close-up and the finale is a grotesque gem of black comic cock carnage.

Predictable for sure (although thankfully this means we don't have a stupid non-sensical twist to mess the film up as the credits roll) but that does not mean "Teeth" isn't wildly entertaining and satisfying.
Highly recommended.

TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD
Too slow and filled with needless padding, but when Amando de Ossori's famous horror film is good it's very good.
With the Templar's being truly wonderful creations as they ride along in slow motion on their undead steeds.
Flawed, but still an iconic title in zombie cinematic lore.

THEM
The best of the 50's 'Atomic Terror' flicks and one that still works today.
Some wonderfully creepy early scenes (with that great 'ant noise' providing some really unnerving moments) nice performances, great finale and really effective FX work that manages to pack a punch (even though the huge ant models don't look very real) because these are real solid creatures being really attacked by real people using real flamethrowers.
As such the action scenes, even 55 years later, are vastly more satisfying than any CGI fart fest made now.

Love the fact the stunning DVD transfers have the original full colour title card as well, unseen since cinema screenings as far as I know.

THUNDERBALL
Connery's 4th outing as Bond is better than the dull, badly staged and generally overrated "Goldfinger" and has less rather nasty sexual content (if the scene with Pussy Galore in the barn in "Goldfinger" isn't a classic example of 'she wants to be screwed really, she just has to be shown the error of her ways', I don't know what is!).

It's a bit overlong and lacks action in the middle portion, but the oft criticised underwater scenes (esp the surprisingly bloody and violent final battle) are actually rather effective.
There's some nice Bond one-liners too and some very nice ladies on display.
A very abrupt ending though with no actual final dialogue or even close-up scene featuring Bond.

TODAY IT'S ME, TOMORROW YOU
This popular Argento scripted Spaghetti Western is easily one of the most out and out enjoyable and straightforward example of the genre out.
Brett Halsey gets 4 mercenaries for hire (including Bub Spencer) to join him on his quest for vengeance against the outrageously theatrical, what the fucking hell was HE doing here, Tatsuya Nakadai who killed his wife and set him up for a 5 year prison term.

Packed with action and pretty violent the soundtrack is filled with those gloriously unique Spaghetti Western electronic gun shots as dozens and dozens of bad guys get blasted by our merry band (who all have specific styles and weapons of choice, including a great sawn-off Winchester repeater) before and extended, guerilla warfare, finale in the woods where the Nakadai's gang are bumped off throughout the day and night be knife, noose and bullet.
Performances are all fun but the 'WTF Award' has to go to the eye-popping, teeth baring, trippy as all hell turn by Nakadai...who plays nothing less than a racist psycho who just happens to be a Japanese cowboy!
Anyone who has only seen Nakadai giving his masterful turns in Akira Kurosawa's masterful Samurai dramas "Ran" and "Kagemusha" in the '80's will be bowled over at the sight of him here with his 'outlaw chic' clothes and insane grin.

It all ends with a wonderfully ruthless and cold-blooded killing before the cheesy score (which pops up whenever out heroes ride, in a macho line, towards the camera) brings up the abrupt 'fine'.
Nothing like art here...but as no-nonsense, action packed, Spaghetti fun it's a winner.

TOOTH & NAIL
A barmy post-apocalyptic plot that has all civilisation virtually destroyed in no time at all because the electricity has run out.
This sudden lack of lack of twinkly lights, PC's, DVD players and HBO is so bad that many humans turn to cannibalism (despite there being rather a lot of animals in the world) and as the survivors try to stay survivors...these cannibal sorts roam around picking them off one by one.

After an effective enough start the tiny budget starts to show, the silly script starts to scream at you about how silly it is and the few good bits in the film start to drown in the rising boredom and general ho humness now swamping all before it.

Despite Michael Madsen playing one of the cannibals he actually appears in only 2 scenes and then without the other cannibals.
Vinnie Jones also appears in only 4 or so scenes and again, he is either alone or with only one other cannibal chum.
Obviously this was because the budget only stretched to having these guys there for one day or so.
Jones is hammy rubbish, Madsen is...er...Madsen again and is soon dispatched in a crappy way.

The fact the cannibals (to keep the meat fresh!) only kill one person at a time adds a certain sadism to the proceedings as those left at the end of a particular grocery trip know they will have to go through it all again the next night when the ribs have all been eaten.
But this methodical way of doing things also means that a dull repetitiveness sets in, not helped by some bad acting and small scale of the set-pieces as it's almost all set in a few deserted rooms and corridors with only 2 or 3 people on ever on screen.

Gore wise it starts off very well with a nasty throat slicing and an exceedingly sadistic axe attack (with Madsen enjoying himself!), but after that there is very little gore and little real bloodshed.
A late twist is also ineffective as quite frankly it seemed blindingly obvious ages ago, so the film is playing catch-up to its audience which is never good.
Plus a weak finale rounds things off badly.
Could have been okay...ended up not.

TORTURER (THE)
Sadly no English soundtrack or subs! Beware the Italian DVD cover is WRONG on this...they are not there.
Anyway.
I sort of know what's going on on a basic plot level, but not much else.
It has some good visuals as Lamberto Bava mixes the recent torture/sadism trend in horror films with that old Giallo asthetic.
But the film is generally uninteresting away from the torture scenes and only the striking attractiveness of the lead actress keeps things interesting as far as this part of the plot is concerned...especially with no plot details being understood as well!

The torture scenes are a mixed bag.
They are certainly gratuitious and all are sexually violent. All the women are toplesss (although, given the events unfolding, the fact that knickers are always kept on seems glaring!) and in three scenes breasts are mutilated.
BUT the FX are so clumsy that what should be a real shocker only works on a trash level because the solid latex breast appliances are so hokey looking! The 3rd scene is marginally more effective though.
There is certainly some imaginative sadism here (women bound and put in wooden boxes then long nails are hammered in, blowtorch to a leg, electrocution in a wheelchair, a woman tied to a spinning wheel and flogged with a blade tipped whip) and the film certainly revels in ghoulish details (after a woman is whacked with a baseball bat and dragged away her teeth are left behind) but the generally shoddy, very latex-looking, FX ensure that we are ultimately reminded in every scene that this is a movie and these are cheapy FX.

As such we are never as horrified, even with the sexual violence which will ensure no uncut releases will ever appear in the UK or in a rated form in the U.S, as we should be at such grotesque events unfurling before us.
The (later revealed) killer is also a rather painful ham, with the actor laughing hysterically while grasping at the air and grinning insanely. All very overblown to say the least!
A pretty good guitar/synth heavy score, attractive actresses, abundant nastiness and some crisp, old school Giallo lighting and cinematography (although it does look all rather digital video and is too bright on the torture scenes, thus showing the bad FX up even more) ensure that the film is not a total failure by any means, but the general pacing, lacklustre characters, false looking FX and a tired basic plot mean this is mearly an also ran.
It's nice to see Bava Jr back in the nasty mode of film making though after being stuck in Italian TV/Video hell for so long...and it's nice to see an explicit Italian Giallo influenced film again. But it could (and should) have been better.

TRAIN
This Thora Birch starring aborted remake, of the crappy Jamie Lee Curtis Slasher flick "Terror Train", morphed from a general horror film to a full-blown exploitation film (which are often very different things from what a true horror movie is), now about body parts/organ donor harvesting set in rusty Eastern Europe.
And as one of the many extreme exploitation films that have crawled out of this most globally vicious and barbaric of decades since WW2 it falls somewhere in the middle of the pack.

It's ultimately too slight to really stand out and is hampered by some silly plotting.
You want to carry out the most delicate operations with just one Doctor, on a wobbly train, with organs/parts brutishly yanked and carved out of people in a filth-coated old box car by a guy who never washes let alone wears gloves?
Really?
You may have a nice 'n' shiny operating room (even if it is shaking all over the place) but given the grotesquely un-hygenic and sloppy way the organs were acquired it would be like hygienically transplanting a dog turd into someone's body!
Plus...I'd just jump off the fucking train.

But, saying all that the movie does deliver in the gore stakes with some simple but very well crafted practical make-up FX, and it opens with perhaps the most gruesome credits sequence seen for many a year.
The characters are cookie-cutter but generally likeable enough and well played, the basic plot is rather silly but is given an added macabre sheen by the fact the needy patients are actually on the train with the unwilling donors whose body parts they crave!
And some of the chase/fight/kill sequences are solidly crafted.

The film also delivers to exploitation nastiness with some wincing moments of butchery, general degradation and one of the most unpleasant fates dealt out to a female character seen in any mainstream film for a while.
Some of the train sets/green screen/CGI visuals are well done too.
So, nothing stand-out, some silly ass plotting, but in general "Train" delivers a solid enough wallow in 21st century extreme exploitation, a genre that has had it's ups and downs but is easily at it's highest peak since the halcyon days of the late 60's/70's.

TRAINING DAY
Supremely cliche and full of contrivance and Denzel Washington's performance, although very commanding and memorable, seems far too theatrical and 'gangsta' to have won an Oscar!
BUT it's very entertaining, full of memorable dialogue and set-pieces, faetures a nice turn by Ethan Hawke, and has a balls-out attitude.
It's a very good film...but it's almost as fanciful as something like "Running Scared", but plays it like it's a deadly serious expose, and it's actually far too much of a Snoop-Dogg groupie, ghetto wigger, wet dream to be that.

TREASURE HUNT
Pretty dire latter day Hong Kong film for Chow Yun Fat.
By this time he should not have been making such a badly plotted, non-sensical bit of fluff like this.
No wonder he went to Hollywood (as the made around the same time "Return of the God of Gamblers" is even worse!)...sadly he had no idea how little America would really do for the artistic side of his career.

TRICK OR TREAT
MEEEETAAAAAAL!!!!
Needed more blood (any blood?!) and jock killing...otherwise good, cheesy as all hell, big hair heavy metal horror.
Ozzy was fun as a metal music hating preacher!

TROLLENBERG TERROR (THE)
A right weird little film.
One of my many childhood initiations into the movie world (thus will always have a soft spot in my heart) this has some memorable and grizzly moments (heads torn off that end up in all the wrong places) and a solid atmosphere and cast.

The plot takes in everything from mind reading, murderous chilly zombie sorts and of course huge wobbly brains with tentacles and one big eye!
The non-eye creatures first 2/3rds is the better and more effective film, but the creatures are at least fun and look great...even if the film now goes off into silly land.

TROUBLE EVERY DAY
Too many 'worthy' silent passages and rather too low key, but it has some impressive moments, a very good score and two genuinely disturbing and grotesque sexualised cannibalism scenes.

TUFF TURF
I was hoping this slice of extreme 80's would hold up and by God it did!
Sure some of the pop video styling is dated (as are the fashions!) and some of the 80's teen stylings/attitudes (not to mention James Spader's piano ballad!) now have a bit of a wince effect...but overall this is still top notch, unpretentious FUN.
James Spader is an absolute delight as the rebel teen new kid, Robert Downey Jr is good value as his musician friend and his bare chested, eye liner, drumming is a hoot!
Kim Richards is as cute as a sexual button as the, crimped hair, object of Spader's affection and Paul Mones (later a Van Damme screenplay writer!!) is great as the villian of the piece.
Nice turn by prolific Hollywood veteran Matt Clark as Spader's Dad too.
Some of the music has dated, but some is still great fun with a nice live turn by Jim Carrol (later to find fame as the writer of "The Basketball Diaries") and his band (with Downey on drums!) and a couple of wonderful 'Blues Brothers' style Rythm N Blues numbers by 'Jack Mack and the Heart Attack'.
A fun film. Just damn well......FUN.

TWO MINUTE WARNING
Rather forgotten 70's disaster/thriller with a bunch of famous thesps in football stadium in the sights of a mad sniper!
Very bloody, flesh flying, bullet hits are the name of the game once the action starts.
The impressive cast includes John Cassavetes, Charlton Heston, Jack Klugman, Martin Balsam, Beau Bridges, David Janssen, Gena Rowlands, Walter Pidgeon and the recently deceased Brock Peters.

UNCOMMON VALOR
Blimey!
Welcome to the 80's!

Despite the generally awful (or perhaps perfect?) score by James Horner (that makes "The A Team" music seem subtle), an inconsistent mix of humour and deadly seriousness, some truly dire acting by a young Patrick Swayze and generally dubious acting by almost everyone else except Gene Hackman (despite such a great cast) and heavy handed, cliche as all hell, moments of 'emotion'....despite all that...."Uncommon Valor" manages to be a very entertaining HOO HAW of a, POW rescue, action film.

Some good action scenes with a nicely epic sweep, a fun mix of comic strip characters (hence the comic strip acting I suppose, although Swayze is just BAD), a smattering of utterly refreshing/good old fashioned flag waving on behalf of 'our boys' (compare that to the cover 'our boys' in dirt we get now from Hollywood war films) and a nice mix of exotic locations are the order of the day here.

And as long as you ignore the 'mature ideas above its station' attitude the film seems to have about itself whenever Hackman does his serious thesp schtick (although the final helicopter scene IS effective emotionally) and accept this as simply a good old fashioned popcorn flick, with a great 80's nostalgia to it, there is much to enjoy here.

And what's this?! One of the 'Executive Producers' was none other than good old nutty Wings Hauser!?
Hell Wings, we needed you in front of the camera!

UNDEAD
Pretty good.
The Alien aspect to the typical zombie fare makes for a nice change, though it did make you hope it all made sense at the end while it was going on. Luckily it did.
A nice change of direction for the zombie film and although it's nothing fantastic it's worth at least one viewing.

UNDER SIEGE
Stevie the Seagul is a ship's cook with an attitude!
Lots of action and some highly theatrical villains in Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones to go with the big budget spectacle.
Fun, but the violence (although quite strong at times) is far more user friendly than his earlier films and Seagal seems to get lost in the chaos at times. The final (very cool) knife fight provides a good and nasty demise for the lead villain though!
His best moments are actually dialogue driven when he butts heads with Busey and his men at the start.
A bit flat...but good fun overall.

UNDER SIEGE 2
Seagal's cook is back to take on nuclear satellite armed terrorist loonies who hijack a train.
A bit more action, but the fault here is (shock!) the lack of any real dialogue exchanges with any of the cast (one of the highlights of the first film).
Once the action starts Seagal is basically mute and the action (although violent) is rather flat and confined by the train setting.
There's also an awful comic relief waiter guy who annoys the hell out of everyone.
The visual FX are awful too, with Seagal's 'hanging off a cliff' blue screen sequence laughable in the extreme.
Barely average fare sadly.

UNLEASHED
Very good!
Some nice fights (too much wire work on the falls and throws though), a good story and a really mixed cast. Jet Li and Morgan Freeman seems a bizarre combination but it works.
Great to see Bob Hoskins doing his Cockney thing as well after too long doing crappy accents and he was lots of nasty fun! Never seen him play such an outright nasty character before. Harold Shand this was not, despite the vocal mirroring!
Two faults with it...Where did all the henchman go at the end?
And why was the apartment building not swarming with Police seeing as Hoskins publically held a gun to a woman shop worker to get Jet Li's address?
Othwerwise...Good meaty stuff with a nice plotline, good score and some very good acting from Jet Li.

UPRISING
Excellent and very well made telling of the Jewish uprising against the Nazi's in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Comes on a very nice DVD as well.
A very interesting, moving and exciting watch.

VALHALLA RISING
Nicolas Winding Refn's swift follow-up from his superb "Bronson" is a strange and otherworldly beast that is (for the most part) nothing like the film the traliers/posters/covers would have you think.

Not for Refn a re-hash of "The Vikings" with added mud 'n' blood. Oh no. Instead he paints a stunning looking picture about faith, transcendence and destiny.
The ever intriguing Mads Mikkelsen plays the completely mute fighting slave, a feared legend amongst the Highland tribes, who escapes his brutal captivity (shades of "Conan the Barbarian" here) and is taken by invading Vikings, who have converted to Christianity, on a crusade to The Holy Land...only they end up somewhere very different.

Getting off to a superbly crafted, astonishingly brutal start (necks are snapped, throats bitten out, skulls smashed open, entrails ripped out), with the stunning scenery, electronic soundscapes (that reach almost "Downward Spiral" era 'NIN' intensity ) and rough hewn production design delivering a mixture of cinematic theatrics and a brilliantly realistic recreation of a barbaric age.
Once the (long) sea journey begins though, and the group get to wherever it is they have got to, the film slows down and becomes a psychological, spiritual and physically extreme journey where drinking hallucinatory brews and walking for miles and miles (with the odd time-out for a death) take up almost all the remaining running time until some more gore makes an appearance and leads us into the melancholy, God becomes flesh, re-birth finale.

Thankfully Mads looks amazing with is one-eyed facial mutilation and tattoos and makes for a brutally physical presence.
The landscapes, dreamlike/nightmarish cinematography, sparse but effective music, solid acting, sudden bursts of extreme brutality (far too much needless CGI blood though sadly) and generally intriguing set-ups manage to lead the viewer through the obscure plotting, murky philosophy, heavy-handed religious (Pagan and Christian) iconography and general lethargy of it all to make "Valhalla Rising" a success.
Although it is certainly a close thing here between success and self-indulgent failure and the film will most definitely not be for all tastes.

The suitably eccentric DVD comm track with Alan Jones and Refn is a must listen as well, as some of the more obscure aspects are at least partly put into focus.
Avoid the trailers though, as they actually give away the Viking's location which I don't think you are meant to explicitly know about until the final scene.

VAMPIRES: OUT FOR BLOOD
Hmmm...Not too bad for the most part and we have some entertaining ingredients like breasts, goth chicks and cheesy gore...but the crap ending put the stake in and killed it.

VANISHING POINT
Nice car, nice cinematography. Good stunts.
Dull, pretentious, badly constructed film though.

There's nothing here. Newman is a nobody character who has almost nothing to do in the entire film but act like he's stoned (more than hyped up on speed) and grip a steering wheel.
The stunts are well done, but with no actual landscape to pass you lose the sense of speed the car is going at and after the 3rd time the samey car chases get very boring very fast.
The DJ sub-pot is a real mess too (especially the attack on his station which comes from nowhere and then seems to vanish out of the screenplay) and is badly handled, the script is a mixture of hippie pretension, general tedium and contrivence and the ending simply weak.

Sure it looks good and has that 70's bleakness to it, but there is never enough reason built up for him to make that choice. None.
It simply exists because it had to exist that way....man!
Started off okay (with the best chases as well) but then drove into that same desert of abject boredom that it's lead character did.

VEXILLE
Stunning CG Anime that utilises a varied soundtrack (everything from 'Dead can Dance' to 'The Prodigy') to great effect and combines it with some great aural FX to create a stunning soundscape that matches the stunning visuals perfectly.

Most importantly though it has an engaging, emotional, exciting, action packed plot and storyline that mixes bits of "Star Wars", with "Bladerunner", "AI", "Dune" post apocalypse flicks and good old slam bang Mecha to create an utterly satisfying experience.

Only negative is a small one.
And that it's a shame a multi-lingual audio track, that's mostly in Japanese with subtitles but flips to English when American characters, in America, are speaking to each other, wasn't utilised.
It's a bit weird to have an explicitly American vs Japan plot set-up with everyone speaking Japanese, even when in America with no Japanese around.
It jars with the actual Japanese characters speaking to each other.

But that's a small thing in an otherwise stunning Sci-Fi Anime that plays out as well as it looks and sounds.

VIDEODROME
It's still pretty much impossible (the point?) to say what is definately real or hallucination but David Cronenberg's superbly crafted techno mindfuck of a film still holds up thanks to some great performances (one of James Woods' best performances), some spot on and grotesque FX, fascinating ideas and an orifice-tight narrative that never wastes a second of screen time.

VILLAIN
An underrated and rather forgotten BrIt gangster film with a fun, if rather theatrical, turn by Richard Burton as a homosexual East End hoodlum.
And yes that is Ian McShane playing Burton's much abused bi-sexual lover!

VINYAN
Looks great.
Well acted.
Creepy.
Unsettling.
All seems well....

Then the end arrives and you realise that you just spent 85 minutes being groped, in the hope of a damn fine fuck to come, only to have the director spurt his load in your face before he runs off laughing at you.
The ending was a nonsensical farce that pushed ambiguity so far it shattered all over the audience's face, just like the director's own release as he finished his masturbatory workout at our expense!

Not explaining all the details is one thing.
Not remotely explaining anything at all, about anything at all, is just taking the piss.
You'll hear 500 differing explanations of the ending, and hear nothing about the other, seemingly endless, unanswered questions at all.
So don't bother to listen, as really they're as fucking clueless as you and each other.

The conclusion is so full of completely unexplained past and current events and is so utterly obscure it makes "Lost Highway" seem like a 'Janet and John' read-a-long book for pre-school kids.
So I have a message for Mr Fabrice Du Welz;
Don't feel me up and get me all hot and eager, only to then laugh in my face, run off and leave me utterly unsatisfied! You pretentious tosser!

WAIT UNTIL DARK
Classic thriller with a blind Audrey Hepburn at the mercy of scheming thieves, including a young(ish) Richard Crenna and Alan Arkin(who does a wonderul psycho turn), and with a finale that (even down to some of the piano cues) must have had an influence on "Halloween".
Needs to be seen at least once by everyone.

WAKE OF DEATH
Damn, this is one hell of a good film..
Van Damme may have been stuck with some stinkers lately but this is not one of them. This should have been a smash cinema release.
Good acting by Jean Claude, who's looking wonderfully mean, lean and as hard as hell here (he could eat the recent wimpy Punisher for breakfast and crap him out by lunch) and his character is the kind of cold-blooded avenger that Denzel should have been in "Man on Fire" before wimping out later on. Van Damme is one guy truly dispensing all out, no one escapes, vengeance.
Some truly brutal and well done action (including a torture scene that is genuinely disturbing, intense, extreme and truly uncomfortable to watch), some good one-on-one fights and stunts, an effective and well used score, hyper kenetic direction and a nice support turn by the ever welcome Simon yam.
Hunt this gem down now!

WARLOCK
Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda and Anthony Quinn star in Edward Dmytryk's epic, multi-layered, multi-plot strand Western that boasts some superbly crafted, three dimensional, characters all expertly played.
The action is sparse but effective and the clever, ever twisting, plot keeps you intrigued and guessing at exactly what will happen and just as importantly...how it will happen.

A streak of 50's melodrama (and some crappy sweeping strings on the soundtrack during the occasional - most dated aspect of the film - romantic interludes) goes against the astute, dark and intelligent screenplay now and again but overall this is stunning stuff.
And it features a truly fascinating portrayal of a driven, noble but ruthless gunslinger, now at a loss at what to do with his life as he and The West ages, by Fonda.
You can certainly see aspects here of his majestic, steely-eyed, complex performance as Frank in "Once Upon a Time in the West" as his Marshall character here could well be the noble flipside of Frank.

There's also a really unusual male bonding aspect between Quinn and Fonda too, that truly is a platonic love story about two men who literally need each other to stay alive.
An intelligent, astute, layered and superbly played Western classic.

WATCHMEN
I'll come right out and say it. I love it.

Thought it a fine (as best as we can hope for, or would actually work as a live action movie) adaptation done with massive care, time, money and love.
As a sane fan of the graphic novel (and with a realistic head on my non-fanboy shoulders) I understood you would have to remove parts and layers of the overall novel experience...but in this (only way to see it) 'Ultimate Cut' the makers have done a stunning job as far as the film standing on it's own goes and a fine job as adaptors.

Rorschach was spot on perfect in every way and actually looked more effective in the film than he he did even in the graphic novel.
The world was superbly realised, the story epic in scope but still personal and easy to follow even for those with no knowledge of the novel, the FX were often stunning, the action brutal and effective and the mixture of macho cliche, parody, homage, observation, commentary, fun, thrills, laughter, heartache and tragedy was mixed almost as well in the film as in the graphic novel.

And until you've seen the proper version of "Watchmen" in it's 'Ultimate Cut' form AND THEN watched the excellent version of "under the Hood" on the 'Complete Story' DVD...you have not really seen the "Watchmen" film.
Taken as a whole the DVD experience of "Watchmen" is a mini marvel as far as adapting such a great and ,multi-layered book and it's one hell of a well made package done with massive love.
In these days of massive DVD/Blu-Ray sales worldwide, with increasingly big and powerful home theatre systems...the cinema version of a film is becoming less and less and important and is almost gone as far as a definitive viewing experience of a film goes.

The excellent (as best an adaptation as we could have hoped for...and if you are against ANY adaptation don't see the bloody thing then) 'Ultimate Cut' and the separate 'Under the Hood' feature (done as a TV documentary) make for a masterwork in my view.
Loved the graphic novel, loved the 'Ultimate Cut' and I can;t understand the hate for the movie (which actually improved the ending of the graphic novel by easily and effectively ditching the, never would work in a film anyway, rather goofy 'octopus' monster).
Essential viewing.

WATERLOO ROAD
A wonderful slice of English life during the WW2 that sees John Mills's soldier go AWOL to snatch his wayward Wife from the arms of Stewert Granger's scheming, draft dodging 'Spiv'!
The GREAT Alastair Sim pops up as a helpful Doctor just to round off this fine cast.
Made in 1944 this is of course very patriotic and very anti-Spiv (those flashy, shady dealers who made a living from the war while others fought it) and the wonderful characters, the fascinating war time London locations and an all round top cast mean this delivers big time.
The final fate of Granger's Spiv is wonderfully ironic!

WARRIORS (THE) - Director's Cut:
I know most people hate this edit, but I enjoyed it more.
The comic book transitions are extremely well done and add (like Hill states on the DVD) to the utterly comic book plot.
There is nothing remotely realistic on show in "The Warriors"...It is a damn comic book. The gangs prove that!

The Greek myth angle was only slight really and the new historical intro was perhaps a bit much, but it still added an extra bit of weight to the plot.
It was also more violent than I remembered as well (though not nearly as violent as it should have been...an oft stated criticism) and the cast did a great job.

The new Director's Cut transfer is also a joy! It looks and sounds superb.
Perhaps the best thing to do would have been to re-master the original edit as well and make a double disc release of both versions.
As it is if you hate the DC, you also miss out on the stunning new transfer.
Better than I remembered, I enjoyed it a lot:
1) For all it's comic book camp charm.
2) For the acting funstuffs.
3) For the silly gang costumes.
4) For the great David Patrick Kelly essay in childish psychosis and his bottle banging abilities
5) For Deborah Van Valkenburgh's unfettered breast and nipple display.
6) For the well used songs and score (which in parts is a very close preview of 'Tangerine Dream's' later score for Michael Mann's "Thief" actually).
7) And yes...Also for it's comic strip make-over and superb new transfer.

WEREWOLF OF LONDON
Before 'Universal' gave us the now iconic Wolfman with Lon Chaney Jnr we had this Werewolf flick Starring Henry Hull.
For me the design of the Werewolf here is much better than the more famous later design.
Chaney kind of looked like a teddy with a silly black snout...But Hull looks far more feral with his bottom row fangs and pointed ears and although perhaps more human looking than Jack Pierce's later Wolfman make-up it looks far more savage.

The problems here are that in a 70 minute film the Werewolf takes too long to appear, Hull is amazingly stuffy and everyone else is so overly theatrical that much of the film looks like a stage play.
The film also makes a major mistake with the way the Werewolf acts.
Despite uncontrolled howling, Hull has presence of mind the dress up in a big coat, put on a cap and cover his face up as he skulks around (in one scene, despite the fact he leaps through a window after he changes, Hull puts on his hat before doing so!!) as such the film actually plays far more like a 'Jekyll and Hyde' film than a Werewolf film.
Hull never loses control or goes totally animal like Chaney did...he's basically a wolfy looking Mr Hyde and acts like a skulking serial killer rather than a feral beast.

BUT...The film is still fun, the Wolfman looks good, there is some nice atmosphere and there are two great support characters (two gin swigging old women who spend their time trying to put one over on each other) who provide comic relief and give the film much needed energy.
Strange mix of sci-fi in this too, including a way before its time CCTV/video phone set up that lets Hull see who is at his door, and a huge meat eating plant with tentacles!

If they had got the Werewolf in quicker and have it acting more like a feral wolf this would have been improved greatly, but it has enough successful moments to pull it through and make it worth a watch.

WHEN THE LAST SWORD IS DRAWN
Stunning, epic, superbly acted, majestically crafted, deeply moving Samurai drama that, through flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks, tells the moving and tragic tale of Kanichiro Yoshimura a low grade Samurai who, during the turmoil of the collapsing Shogunate and the open ing up of Japan (as also seen in "The Last Samurai") gives up his standing, frriends and reputation to make as much money as possible to feed his family.

The action and violence are sparse for the most part (the third quarter of the film piles on quite a lot though) but when used it is powerful and effective and the large cast and period detail make for grand spectacle.
An ambush in a town is a superbly edited, directed, choreographed and played set-piece that delivers some exciting action while also pushing all the right emotional buttons.
The drama is sometimes melodramatic but it always works in the context of the piece and is often also just as sublime and always beautifully handled by the cast, Kiichi Nakai as Yoshimura is simply amazing but literally everyone here gives their all.

The wonderful cinematography and set design compliments the tragic drama, the romance, the bloodshed and the sacrifice of the story and some scenes will pull at your heart with a genuine power...for example a night scene, on a snow covered little bridge, as Yoshimura and his 5 year old daughter say their tearful farewells is an avalanche of emotions that completely overwhelms the viewer.
The extended last quarter of the film does perhaps go on for too long and can get quite tiring as what seems like numerous places to end the film successfully continue to play out.
But in the end the patience of the viewer is rewarded with some highly emotional revelations and a deeply moving ending.

"When the Last Sword is Drawn" is a sometimes funny, sometimes violent and exciting, sometimes tragic and deeply moving and always superbly acted and crafted Samurai drama that is truly essential viewing.

WHISPERERS (THE)
60's British drama that's as dour and bleak as they come.
The barely touched upon at all reason for the titles is that the old lady of our plot , Mrs Ross (superb turn by Edith Evans), hears whispering voices in her house (we don't).
This sounds like a psychological horror premise but its not as these few and far between 'whispering' moments are indeed all in her head (this is never in doubt) and have no more plot importance than any other aspects of her general state of mind.
As such it's a strange, rather misleading, title for the film.

Really this is a grim, 'kitchen sink', 60's drama about an old lady becoming more and more senile and being ignored by and taken advantage of by those around her. Including a seemingly kind middle aged woman (in a shocking scene of blatant cold blooded thievery), her off the rails son (a typical weasel turn by Ronald Fraser) and her wayward Husband (nice scheming turn by the great Eric Portman) and a cold, brow beaten, young neighbour (a good acid turn by the cinematically underrated Nanette Newman).

Director Bryan Forbes (Newman's husband) does a good job guiding the performances and layering the film with grim hopelessness...but it's hardly a barrel of laughs and the overly long running time and deliberate pacing mean it can be a bit of an uphill climb. But worth a look for yet another underrated stab at British life by Forbes.

WILD BUNCH (THE)
Pekinpah's truly iconic and vastly important Western.
The finale is still as mesmerising, powerful, exciting, cool and poetic as it ever was and just as brutal.
And it's also the blueprint for almost all action scenes to come.
John Woo's gunplay movies may have come from a 'Shaw Brothers' Swordplay movie seed, but there is far more Pekinpah in his Hong Kong masterworks than Chang Cheh.
The finale drips with what would become familiar Woo trademarks (and other directors in the HK action 'Nu Wave').
Not just in the style of the violence and how it is shot, but also in the deeply personal and emotive moments of 'calm in the storm' where friends and allies share a moment together and look at each other in silent conversation before going out to face their destiny.
To see the end of "The Wild Bunch" is to look into a crystal ball and see the finale to Woo's glorious "The Killer".
An exceptional film, from an exceptional Director, and both would be the well-spring from which, years later, many more exceptional movies would flow from.
And what a fantastic cast.

WILD GEESE (THE)
Superb cast of British thesps, great characters, top notch acting all round, intelligent and engaging plot and wonderful score by Roy 'Get Carter' Budd yet again.
Volent, ruthless, bleak, cynical but with some well judged sadonic humour mixed in with the action and spectacle.

WILD MAN OF THE NAVIDAD (THE)
Here be spoilers....as quite frankly (despite what some review sites who should know better may try to tell you after watching their freebie screeners) no one else needs waste their fucking hard earned money on this.

Yes, the makers got the look right (cheap white-out contrast problems aside) to give this the style of a 70's Drive-In/Grindhouse flick and the compositions and framing are genuinely astute at carrying this off.
As were the great retro looking titles.
But that's as much as this lifeless, dull, badly written, just frustratingly weak and generally naff movie gets to the real thing.

I don't know of any 70's 'creature' flick that would let over half the running time go past without barely a glimpse, or one single attack (let alone death) from the creature.
At the very least these films gave us pre-credit/opening sequence establishing the creature's presence and threat the essential hook to thrill and pull in the audience while (YES) the often long build-up occurs to the next attack...here though we literally have nothing at all offered up to us.

At about 55 minutes (of an 83 minute film) in we finally have an attack, on characters we have spent a good five minute of constant screen time following.
And what are we given after this agonising wait?
A single shot of the creature, in the dark, bloodlessly attacking a tiny tent (the two characters are nowhere to be seen) with just dubbed on over screams to represent people being present.
Just over an hour in we finally have a tiny bit of real gore. Which is simply a bit of blood and some endlessly recycled, dried up looking, offal strips resting on the actor.
And as in all these weak, badly shot, attacks there are no meaty sound effects at all to represent what we are constantly not shown. Something real 70's movie makers were adept at providing to cover up their visual limitations.

Nothing much happens again then until the very end with one more attack that is once again just a splash of blood and bits of sad offal strips resting on the actor before the 'creature' is despatched, after a thrill free hunt by some bored and confused looking guys in sweaty shirts, in a totally bloodless fashion, by one single bullet, by what sounds like a cap gun.
The End.
Thank fuck!

As a creature on the loose flick it utterly fails to deliver the thrills, kills or chills and even the gory fun.
The creature is a worthless looking, threat free, guy in a bunch of old rags and skins...that is never in doubt...and yet the makers still try to make out this may be a creature.
As such we get neither a successful rendering of a monster OR a successful rendering of a mad man.
Real deals like "Don't go in the Woods...Alone" shows how to deliver a wild man killer in a satisfying way (and a damn huge, gore-filled, body count besides) and yet that gets slagged off while this junk gets praised.

And even as a 'backroads' hick flick it fails due to the schizo writing and dull characters.
Shadowed plot points about the 'creature' are brought up (the main characters even know about it and - in endlessly repeated scenes of boredom - leave food out for it) with even the Sheriff knowing something even before any killing starts and yet he does nothing at all to stop any of it happening.
And exactly what retro movie world do the makers think a cheap Drive-In creature flick would be half in Spanish with subtitles?!
Make your minds up!

This also brings up the awful character writing for a guy named Mario who seems to be the live in (?) help to the main guy and his invalid wife.
One minute Mario is a total sleaze who tortures and sexually assaults the wife (even that's done in a dull fashion)...the next minute he's a wise friend to the husband and...wait for it...the moral backbone of the story!
But hold on! Next scene he's molesting the helpless wife again!
Worse, his eventual demise (basically he's the joint lead as far as screen time goes) happens off screen!

"The Wild Man of Navidad" may have the look of a 70's exploitation film but it has NONE of the scuzzy energy, passion, wonderful characters, wonderful dialogue, cheap thrills, bloodlust, eccentricity or simple thudding violence of the real thing...and that's despite what the bogus quotes on the DVD may say to make you part with your cash.
Go watch the real deal.
Don't be suckered like I was with this failed retro effort.

WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION
Billy Wilder's almost masterly adaptation of the famous Agatha Christie play sees the great Charles Laughton (with delightful, Oscar nominated, support by his Wife Elsa Lanchester as his fussy Nurse) as a cigar and whiskey consuming English Barrister hired to defend an American man (Tyrone Power) accused of bumping off an elderly spinster for her money.
The man's wife (Marlene Dietrich, in uber-firey form) is summoned by Laughton to support her Husband but he is surprised to find out she's actually hostile to him. And the case gets more and more complicated from then on...

A fine cast indeed and Laughton (in a role that was one of my most memorable filmic moments as a youngster) is an absolute joy.
All the players work well off each other and Laughton's comedic jousting with lanchester's Nurse are as effective as his rather more serious jousting with Dietrich's hostile witness, as the well scripted case unfolds.
The failings then come mostly from Power's turn as the accused.
But I'm not sure if it even is a failing!
If you know the outcome then you will know what I mean, but Power seems so theatrical and overwrought in all that he does you can't help but come to the conclusion the guy's as guilty as sin and have to wonder why Laughton does not think the same.
But I'm truly not sure if this entire performance is meant to be like that to make the plot twist mechanics work. Either way Power becomes an air grasping, lip quivering, ranting annoyance.

Dietrich is wonderfully memorable as the wife with a scheme and truly radiates sexual power while at the same time coming across as vulnerable.
Una O'Connor (sadly in her last role) is also a complete joy as the bad tempered, un-trusting old Scottish housekeeper to the murdered woman, and is representative of the perfect mix of comedy and murderous drama that Wilder does so well.
The outcome is fun if rather melodramatic (as well as having to rely on a less than convincing bit of dated movie audio trickery) but sums up the twist upon twist convolutions of the case perfectly as, even as the film ends, the plot carries on in the same 'all is not how you imagined it to be' fashion.

WOYZECK
A truly stunning performance by Klaus Kinski in Herzog's adaptation of the unfinished play of the same name.
Overly obscure in the dialogue in the first third as a basically simple story, of a man's sanity being ripped apart by all those around him and their disdain for his being, is made needlessly impenetrable.
But the rest of the film is excellent as we focus more on Woyzeck and less on the speeches to him by those around him (though at least the other actors, especially Eva Mattes as Woyzeck's wife, turn in good performances) and it is here that Kinski truly starts to own the entire picture, not the other actors or even Herzog himself...just Kinski.
A slight picture, but one worth watching for Kinski's breathtaking, tour de force example of the actors art.

X312: FLIGHT TO HELL
Good ol' Jess Franco and his deranged shaky zoom lens deliver a curious exploitation/adventure hybrid that offers up some nice and hairy nudity, a pretty hot (despite Franco trying to make it not so with blurred zooms into tops of heads and shoulders) lesbian scene and a rather good Euro Trash cast.

Sadly Franco turns all coy when it comes to the violence. As such we have almost no blood and no real violent deaths (despite one being a rape/murder) that means the film lacks punch.
Take out the occasional full frontal nudity...and this would barely scrape PG13.

Thankfully though the cast is fun:
Franco stalwart Howard Vernon is great value as a leering, fake tan smeared, fake moustache wearing villain named Pedro.
Spaghetti Western regular Fernando Sancho is good as a scheming flight attendant.
And the voluptuous Esperanza Roy ("A Candle for the Devil") looks hot, gets naked and gives a good femme fatale performance.

Okay stuff in general with some great exotic locations to make up for the super-cheap production values (no on-screen plane crash here, just Franco rolling the picture around!), nice nudity, good cast...but far too shy in the blood and violence department despite the numerous deaths.

YEAR OF THE DRAGON
Michael Cimino's more modest comeback film is pretty much spot on.
The positives are the great location shooting and sets, ballsy/bloody action, some great support characters for Mickey Rourke's suitably hard as nails Cop to bounce off (the best being the wonderfully witty 'Surveillance Nuns'!!), Ariane's naked body (she was introduced here and went on to do nothing of any worth bar a blink and you miss cameo in Ferrara's masterful "King of New York") and the general atmosphere.

Negatives are rather too much soap opera moments with Rourke's overwrought Wife and some far too melodramatic dialogue. Plus a rather rushed ending.
Otherwise though this is still a solid, superbly crafted, bit of action/thriller movie making.

YOUNG & DANGEROUS
Very good.
Solid tale about young Triad members that launched a sequel/prequel/spin-off explosion!
Looks impressive (great Hong Kong sights, especially at night), solid, enjoyable acting, interesting characters and excellent pacing. There may not be many fights, but they are placed at just the right intervals and all in all it was a satisfying watch. A must for fans of Triad movies looking for something different from the gun toting/older actor norm.

ZOMBI 2
Fulci's Zombie icon.
The highly effective mysterious opening kicks into the excellent Fabio Frizzi score played over those ominous white on black titles and you just know that something special is happening here.
This rushes into first attack and it's looks and sounds unlike anything else in any Zombie film seen before.
Add the bizarre Shark/Zombie fight (certainly unlike anything else ever seen) and you have a film that may only exist because of another movie...but went on to break its own ground and to develop its own style.

Nice turns by all the cast ,with Richard Johnson especially using his great voice to perfection, a bit of nudity, some great sets, truly superb looking zombie make-up, some amazingly executed gore effects (Sadly marred by the overly bright new DVD transfers) with the oft forgotten throat bite easily being the jaw droppingly bloody highlight and the slow and sadistic splinter scene is as undying in it's appeal as the zombies themselves and stunning Cinematography.
All is in place to deliver a memorable movie.

And this is also a film drenched in apocalyptic atmosphere.
As the corpses mount up in the mass burial pits, as the cast is munched down, a real sense of bleakness sets in.
Fulci expertly milks this atmosphere for all it's worth in the majestically designed Zombie shots where the rotted dead shamble into view (and these wonderful creations walk in the definitive 'Zombie way', in that head down, dragging monstrosity of human movement).

One of the finest visuals, in any horror film ever, has to be the lone zombie stumbling through the deserted wind swept village. And in a magical mixture of fine make-up FX, camera movement, cinematography and music Fulci delivers one of the great horror shots as the camera sweeps around to reveal the Zombie's half destroyed face.
And lets us not forget the best damn chowing down sequence ever as the half eaten body lies on the table like an all you can eat buffet as a group of shadowed ghouls consume it...and the shot of the zombie with it's head down who eats by shoving his face into the bloodied trough of his hand is perhaps the most horrific example of a living corpse eating human flesh!

Plods a bit in the middle, but otherwise this is essential Horror viewing and always will be.

ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST
Far more a Cannibal film really as the zombies don't appear until late and then they don't do much.
But some good gore, a great loony turn by Donald O'Brian, some very nasty experiments, great atmosphere, a smattering of nudity and the hysterically bad FX scene where an arm flies off a dummy, as it hits the ground following a fall (only for the guy in close-up to have both arms firmly attached) all means that this is a fun slice of Euro trash!