Film in general saw another insane boost in comic book adaptations, with Captain America, Thor, Green Lantern, Green Hornet, X Men: First Class, Conan The Barbarian and Cowboys & Aliens (amongst others) hitting the big screen. 2011 was also another year where sequels dominated the box office, with the release of Cars 2, Kung-fu Panda 2, Hangover Part 2, Transformers 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 4, Twilight 4, Scream 4, Fast & The Furious 5, Final Destination 5, Harry Potter 7 / 8 and PREQUELS of The Thing and Planet of the Apes.

What about HORROR? Well finding a superb horror film in 2011 was like swimming through fifty tonnes of shit to find a tiny diamond, but it was worth it. For every ten dull and predictable horror films there was one piece of genius originality. For those who trust our opinion, here’s our top 5 films from 2011 (in no particular order).

Sarah’s Top 5 Horror Movies of 2011

• Attack the Block
• Hobo with a Shotgun
• Stake Land
• Tucker & Dale vs. Evil
• The Woman

Scullion’s Top 5 Horror Movies of 2011

• Attack the Block
• The Dead
• Stake Land
• Troll Hunter
• The Woman

So officially Attack the Block, Stake Land and The Woman are the best films of 2011. If you haven’t watched them, buy them. Now.

Let us know what you think of our top 5’s by utilizing the revolutionary comments box facility below. Or – if you really disagree – send us a dead pigeon in a box. It’s the classic way to say “No. I disagree”.

Unfortunately not even Gorepress is perfect, and we didn’t manage to crawl into the cinema for every film, especially since some films appeared on one random screen in Clacton for three days before disappearing into the ether. The films Gorepress regrettably missed this year are:

And the one we really didn’t regret missing at all:

Twilight: Breaking Dawn (Part 1)

Unfortunately 2011 yielded a much larger crop of bollocks than 2010, with a plopping of mediocre nothingness from Season of the Witch, Red Riding Hood, Insidious, Drive Angry, The Rite and The Roommate. The DVD market might’ve held some true classics (like The Dead) but it also had the usual vomiting cack-badgery. So, onto the least-prestigious award of the year:

Worst Horror Movie of 2011

As usual, we found it much much easier to think of God-awful horror films than superb ones, and there was a battle at the bottom. On the naughty step this year was the straight-to-DVD mess Zombie Undead, which I often cite as the worst zombie film ever made, the laughable Vampire Boys, awful sequels to Mirrors and BloodRayne and – rather upsettingly – the Hammer horror film The Resident, which was just awful.

But there can be only one Worst Horror of 2011 and this is it:

Shark Night 3D

Damn you Jaws. Since Spielberg unleashed that superb horror on the world, hundreds of other “filmmakers” have attempt to homage, emulate, steal and borrow from this seminal classic. Shark Night 3D is just another horror-with-sharks that fails on every level.

Check out Scullion’s respect-filled review HERE

Shark Night 3D sits amongst Shark Attack 1 -3, Deep Blue Sea, Shark in Venice, Megashark vs Giant Octopus, Megashark vs Crocosaurus and Sharktopus as another shockingly crap shark horror movie. And it won’t stop. In 2012 we’ll be treated to the likes of Sand Sharks (Tremors meets Jaws!) and Two-Headed Shark Attack (made by The Asylum, featuring Carmen Electra. Sigh), so expect the “worst horror of 2012” to be dominated by psychotic CGI fish again.

So what does 2012 hold for us? According to the Mayans it’s our untimely deaths and according to Roland Emmerich it’s our untimely deaths unless you know John Cusack. Apart from the end of the world, we’ll be witnessing some (or all) of the following awesomenesses:

With these sequels:

And remakes of:

With unlikely appearances from:

From the list above it doesn’t appear 2012 is going to be a great year for horror, but it’s the little films that surprise, so perhaps flicks like John Dies at the End, The App Killer and Ninjas vs Monsters will provide the much needed quality we’re desperate for.

Considering NONE of this year’s top fives appeared as “forthcoming” movies in our 2010 eulogy, fingers crossed for some superb surprises not yet on the radar.

The 2012 movie with the “most potential to be fucking bonkers” is GINGERCLOWN 3D, which stars Tim Curry, Brad Dourif, Lance Henriksen and Sean Young as (respectively) Gingerclown, Worm Creature, Braineater and Nelly the Spiderwoman. The lack of Danny “fucking” Trejo is upsetting, but it’s still the most exciting film of 2012 so far… despite the TERRIBLE trailer. Check it out below:

We hope you all had a truly spectacular 2011, filled with untold horrors (in film, anyway) and absolutely no Shark Night 3D. Onward towards 2012!

HAPPY NEW YEAR from all at Gorepress! Stay awesome.

FINAL DESTINATION? WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?

Who doesn’t know what Final Destination is? You? Well then this paragraph is for you! All the Final Destination films have a very definite and very simple premise; one person has a vivid premonition of their own death (and the death of others). On waking from this premonition, they realise it is coming true, and they manage to prevent their own death (and the death of others). People think they’re nuts or psychic or evil, then one by one the survivors begin to die… killed off by Death himself, whose original plan had been irritatingly compromised by the precognitive abilities of some random person. What follows is the quickly-diminishing group of survivors trying to find a way to out-wit Death himself, by any means possible…  That’s the premise, and it’s a gleefully fun idea.

FINAL DESTINATION 1

Final Destination 1 appeared in 2000 and surprised everyone. It was a unique premise, and genuinely exciting, thrilling, compelling and memorable, even if it did star Devon Sawa and Seann William Scott. Final Destination was created by X Files aficionados Glen Morgan and James Wong, along with relative unknown writer Jeffery Reddick, who has subsequently gone on to write such classics as Tamara and that godawful remake of Day of the Dead in 2008.

Final Destination was a killer idea executed with charm, wit and smarts; not too serious, not too gory, but tantalizingly brutal. Re-watching it, I realised it has a lot more to it than the sequels that followed – more Tony Todd, more mystery, more foreboding – and featured a dark stalking shadow and some impossible liquid, as if Death itself was a physical thing, stalking the survivors until it claimed their souls back into his demented plan. It featured the symbolic number 180 (for Flight 180, the doomed plane), subtle clever hints at “who’s next” on the list and an interesting twist late on. It is by no means a perfect movie, but it was a solid, excellent start to the franchise.

FINAL DESTINATION 2

Final Destination 2 might be my favourite Final Destination film, simply because of the start. Entering cinemas two years after the original, the beginning to Final Destination 2 features an epic car crash on a motorway, which thankfully doesn’t vomit out CGI explosions but instead just trashes an absolute pile of cars and trucks in a superbly disturbing fashion. A logging truck drops its load onto the tarmac and carnage follows, with severed tree trunks blowing up vehicles and smashing through a policeman’s face – nasty, brutal, and something I can’t help thinking about when travelling down a busy motorway! If I ever see a logging truck careening down the M25 I would absolutely crap myself…

FINAL DESTINATION 2 CAR CRASH – VIDEO HERE

Final Destination 2 travels the same route as the film before it, with the saved-by-a-crazy-person group of survivors disbelieving the nonsense about premonitions and then finding themselves at the sharp end of Death’s cheeky sword. Morgan and Wong did not return for this sequel, however, and left the directing to Dave “Snakes on a Plane” R. Ellis and the scripting duties to The Butterfly Effect’s J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress. Like any good sequel they up the kill count and the extremity of the deaths; we’ve got glass sheets crushing kids, barbed wire fences slicing stoners to pieces, pipes through skulls, barbeques exploding and one unfortunate incident with a fire escape ladder… It’s played more for laughs – and thankfully so – with comical moments punctuating the film, along with shock deaths and slow, creeping ones that are a delight to watch unfold.

Final Destination 2 has its faults – major, major logic faults – and only Tony Todd and Ali Larter return from the first film. Devon Sawa is conspicuously absent, and apparently his character Alex Browning was killed by a falling brick between films (we find this out in a newspaper clipping), suggesting Sawa’s absence from the film was not entirely appreciated.

The ending is a bit naff and the timing of the car crash at the start makes no sense post-premonition, but it’s a dumb, fun, silly, bloody piece of filmmaking that betters the original on a number of levels.

Then – two years later – Final Destination 3 turned up. The creators of the original film returned to their baby, with Glen Morgan and James Wong writing again, and Wong back in the driver’s seat. After the second didn’t miss their influence, their return on the third was neither hailed or dismissed. Until everyone saw the film, that is…

FINAL DESTINATION 3

Final Destination 3 is the start of the franchise’s sag, as it returns to the “school kids” route familiar in Final Destination 1 and begins with an appalling CGI rollercoaster disaster, which is shoddy, confusing and really painfully bad to watch. The beginning is such a shame considering how impactful the airplane explosion and motorway pile-up were in the previous two flicks; high hopes were had and not delivered. Tony Todd is also reduced to a voiceover roll and barely noticeable, which is a travesty. The new characters are far too cartoony and incredibly crass; two boob-flashing bimbo BFFs, a goth couple, an aging pervert geek, a yee-ha! egomaniac jock and a random “she’s obviously important” bit-part role from Amanda Crew as the protagonist’s sister. The protagonist? Rather surprisingly it is Mary Elizabeth Winstead (pictured below) as Wendy Christensen, who – even more surprisingly – delivers a wet n’ weak performance devoid of any personality.

So Final Destination 3 has a bunch of crap clichés and a poor central performance from an otherwise decent actress. So what? How were the goddamn deaths?! Similar to the awful beginning, the deaths are lacking in invention and far too bright and colourful – a weight machine malfunction, a sun-bed disaster, a nail gun accident – and the film’s ending (both endings – one at a fare and one on a subway) – are woeful nonsense where we suddenly have to care about minor characters. It is not 100% awful – the sun-bed scene is actually very brutal and very funny – but it’s not a patch on its predecessors.

Then I turned on The Final Destination.

In 3D.

Yep, me and the missus dragged out a pair of crappy 3D specs and sat in front of our television, looking like two time-teleporting dweebs sucked out of a 1980’s rom-com.

THE FINAL DESTINATION

The fourth in the franchise is called The Final Destination. Why they chose this title is beyond me – perhaps they wanted to begin the franchise again (although this is doubtful, as they constantly reference the previous films) or perhaps they genuinely thought this would be the last of the franchise, ending on an in-yer-face three dimensional “high”. Whatever the case, it now sits amongst the many horror titles that claim they’re the final in the series but are merely a speed-bump during an on-going saga. Yes, The Final Destination has become Friday the 13^th: The Final Chapter.  It is Freddy’s Dead: the Final Nightmare. It is Puppet Master 5: The Final Chapter.  Well it’s the same level of quality, anyway…

The Final Destination is undoubtedly the worst of the franchise, ham-fistedly chucking in some 3D to the detriment of the film’s creativity. Dave “Shark Night 3D” R. Ellis is back in the driver’s seat after knocking out the second film, along with scriptwriter Eric Bress. Maybe it’s the lack of J. Mackye Gruber from the Final Destination 2 team or perhaps it’s the restrictions brought about by 3D, but The Final Destination it is an uninspired, shockingly dull film. But why?

The Final Destination only failed because it lacked a sense of humour and was horribly lazy – and therefore disrespectful – to the franchise. The beginning featured another car crash – à la Final Destination 2 – this time in a Speedway circuit, but whereas FD2 had a powerful and realistic-looking start, The Final Destination features a shockingly bad CGI mess, with tyres and car engines flying AT YOUR FACE and fake explosions engulfing the screen like a cheap episode of Sliders. It’s a slack, obvious start that looks worse than the crashes in Talladega Nights, which was only a ridiculous comedy starring a collection of morons. The start of The Final Destination should have been better.

THE FINAL DESTINATION SPEEDWAY CRASH – VIDEO HERE

The Final Destination features a racist, a dull mechanic, an arrogant mum and a bunch of our heroes’ personality-vacuum friends. Our protagonists are an unbelievable couple and a security guard with a history of alcoholism and child death. It is a woefully morbid set-up and without a sense of wry irony that threads through the preceding three films – even Final Destination 3’s insanely garish, cartoonish feel is better than The Final Destination’s collection of moribund walking blands.

Audiences are not buying tickets to the latest Final Destination flick hoping to feel moved by the plight of the characters, they’re there to see semi-amusing characters – often caricatures – get killed in elaborate, brutal and hilarious ways. Final Destination 1 set it all up perfectly, with Terry Chaney’s “…you can just drop fucking dead!” line being followed sharply by a bus hitting her in the face – it is a shocking and hilarious moment. This is the template for the franchise, mixing comedy with shock violence, and The Final Destination fails miserably to produce this.

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Even after four feature length films there still remain some startlingly obvious questions left unanswered:

1.)    Why do specific people get these premonitions?

2.)    Who is sending them?

3.)    How come the method of receiving the aftershock-premonitions (after the first, massive life-saving one) differs entirely from person-to-person?

4.)    Who or what is Tony Todd’s character Bludworth?

5.)    Why does Death have a plan, and why is he / she so bloody incompetent at sticking to it?

6.)    The first ever Final Destination death: Tod (Chad Donella) slips on some blue water in his bathroom – see video –  which then slides back into a crack behind the toilet, as if it was a living being / murderous patch if sentient Domestos. What was it? And why have we never seen it again?

Perhaps some or all of these questions have never occurred to you, or perhaps – like for most viewers – they literally don’t matter.

WHY SO POPULAR?

When a film spawns a franchise, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s awesome (see the Resident Evil franchise for details). Ultimately Final Destination is a heavily flawed franchise from its conception, but it never, ever tries to be more than it is; a popcorn 15 action horror that means no harm and is there to do one thing and one thing only: entertain. And it succeeds admirably, for the most part.

The more it goes on the more gimmicky it gets; the 3^rd film has a “choose your own fate” feature on the DVD, which means you can actually decide who lives and who dies, and the fourth film is in 3D. Despite these unnecessary additionals, the franchise does reward its followers, with constant occurrences of the number 180, repeating songs and sly references to the previous films (Clear Rivers, McKinley, Hic Pale Ale and Le Cafe Miro 81 all crop up in more than one film).

For those truly obsessing over Final Destination, check out their Wiki Site – HERE

Final Destination never tries hard to be scary or stomach-churning, unlike the original Nightmare on Elm Street or Saw films, but sits in that easy-watching zone where audiences know they’ll see unchallenging death, dealt out to people who kinda-woulda-died-anyway. It does not tax the morals or the mind. The antagonist is relatable and something we all fear – Death itself – but even this isn’t manifest and the “dark shadow” used in Final Destination 1 was dispensed half-way through the movie! It is a concept that is killing these people, an idea of something unstoppable and entirely untangible, and the audience knows it’s useless to fight it; everyone dies, so get on with it and make it elaborate!

The fact Death is the bad guy makes it even more surprising the films have survived this long. Why? One word: merchandise. Whereas other franchises have Halloween masks, collectable statues, gloves with plastic knives attached, Good Guy dolls, killer soundtracks, inappropriately cute plushies, rollercoaster rides, bobble-heads, comics and more, the Final Destination franchise gets what?

This shit.

A keyring with the film’s title on? A T-shirt? Crap, basically. Final Destination has to survive on Box Office alone as it has nothing iconic to grab hold of and buy. Maybe a big statue of William “Tony Todd” Bludworth? Really? You may as well buy a Candyman statue instead.

So Box Office it is then…

BOX OFFICE

Snapping up the box office bucks was made easier because each Final Destination film has a 15 certificate (in the UK), so is instantly more accessible than the gore-soaked likes of Hostel or Halloween.  This is for teenagers looking for cheap, nasty, fun-packed kicks, and it’s immensely popular in the 15 to 30 demographic.

The original film was made for a budget of approximately $23 million, but raked in over $112 million worldwide, a huge return for a horror movie. The sequel made less of a return (only $90 million on a $26 million budget) , which is perhaps why Wong and Morgan returned / were allowed back for the third! On a reduced budget, Final Destination 3 made over $117 million – the biggest haul yet – and the fourth (and final… ahem) was commissioned. Thanks to 3D and some overambitious set-pieces, the $40 million budget was $15 million more than the previous film, but the box office loved it and thanks to the expensiveness of 3D it sucked in a ridiculous $186 million worldwide! Hence the 5^th film…

FINAL DESTINATION 5

2011 sees another helping of the Final Destination franchise – Final Destination 5, or 5nal Destination as it was originally called, which kind of looks a little too much like Anal Destination… an entirely different film franchise (and hopefully not in 3D).

FINAL DESTINATION 5 TRAILER HERE

Released on Friday 26^th August in the UK, those attending Frightfest on the Thursday night will encounter the UK premiere of this beloved franchise, a day before the usual crowd. Maybe Tony Todd will be there? That would be AWESOME.

A review for Final Destination 5 will appear on Gorepress on Friday 26^th August.

THE FUTURE DESTINATION

The future of Final Destination? FD has no visible enemy. They’ve decapitated Michael Myers, sent Jason to hell (and space!), defeated Freddy and killed off Jigsaw, and this has diminished those franchises’ power – their lore – but Final Destination can keep going as long as someone understands what people want; fun, death and a superb start.

Do I think Final Destination 6 will appear? Hell yes. My money is on FD6 hitting our cinema screens in the summer of 2013. Place your bets now…

THE BEST DEATH

So… now for the really hard part. What is my favourite death in the Final Destination franchise? Not many other franchise’s can ask that – especially recently – because Saw is too grotesque to gleefully admit which horribly torturous death you enjoyed the most, and many other films are about how many ridiculous twists you can slam into a film, rather than about the elaborate ways of executing people!

My personal favourite Final Destination death is probably the demise of Evan Lewis (David Paetkau, above) in Final Destination 2, as it’s cunningly signposted and a tight, smartly created death. Ultimately caused by him throwing some old spaghetti out of his window (he later slips on it, escaping a fire) it’s more about how a fridge magnet message of HEY E hints at his fate when the H falls off into a microwave-destined takeaway, leaving the word E YE subtly stuck to the fridge’s side… the “eye” which eventually gets horribly impaled by a faulty fire escape ladder. Packed with irony and so many “almost dies” moments, it’s a gleeful and smart sequence that is funny, brutal, action-packed and genuinely nasty.

Check it out HERE

This is by far my favourite death in the Final Destination franchise, although second has to be Seann William Scott’s decapitation in the first film and third is definitely Jonathan Cherry’s death-by-flying-fence in Final Destination 2. But who knows, perhaps the deaths from Final Destination 5 will knock these three from their pedestals – I guess I’ll find out in a week.

I’ll breeze over the plot, more for etiquette’s sake than anything else. A group of friends return from a cocktail party to a house deep in the Peak District. After starting to settle down for the night they find themselves being attacked by mysterious harlequin-faced killers. There. Job done.

Now: imagine a big film set. Cameras, actors, lighting, sets, props, boom mics. The director, the producer, the cinematographers; the sound mixers, the set decorators, and countless other crew. The works. Now obviously, the large majority of this will be hidden off-screen, behind the camera. The audience will only ever see what the director wants them to see; namely, the actors and the mise-en-scène (a phrase used to refer to the scenery and props), and them alone. The director will then shoot all the shots he needs from that particular angle, and then everyone will up sticks and ‘reverse’ the shot to get the necessary shots from the opposite side . This has the effect of giving the illusion that the whole room (if indeed it is a room) is empty, whereas in reality, it won’t be.

Now this is all very well and good, because it means that all of the filmmakers and their equipment can be hidden at all times. However, if, in this case, the director reason chooses to film his movie in a single shot, it creates the fairly complicated issue of where to hide the assorted filmmaking gear so it all does its collective job whilst still remaining out of frame, and this concern is compounded tenfold (if not moreso) if the director chooses to film his movie in a rather poky house. Which, of course, is what has happened in Cut.

However, it seems that rather than spending the time trying to hide all the lighting and such in-frame but out of view of the audience (whilst still trying to maintain the relevant effect of the said equipment), Dominic Burns has simply just done away with everything. No non-diegetic lighting (in other words, the whole set is lit entirely by the lamps and lights seen within the film). No director monitoring what is being filmed – indeed, Burns actually plays a role in his own film. I’d be willing to bet that there’s no boom mic operator either, simply because chances are he wouldn’t be able to maintain his position behind the camera without getting in the way of the steadicam (look it up) operator. All of this results in a very messy film; characters that should be in view are often either so bright they become blown out, or shrouded in darkness due to the poor lighting, the dialogue consistently sounds tinny and echoey due to the presumably camera-recorded sound, and the pacing is terrible because there’s no editing to augment the tension. The whole thing is kind of an unmitigated disaster, which is a shame, because I really respect what they have attempted here.

And what makes this all the more frustrating is that they could have actually got away with it by approaching it ever so slightly differently. With a little bit of a rewrite, they could have pulled a Blair Witch and turned the camera into a character itself. By doing this, the film would still maintain its impressive single-shot idiosyncrasy, whilst naturally solving most of the aforementioned criticisms – both the lighting and sound wouldn’t be poor as such, they would be ‘authentic’. And replacing the large studio camera with a lighter, more manoeuvrable hand-held camera would allow for both rapid swish-pans and more fluid camera movements, which in turn would make the action sequences much more frantic. As it stands, they just seem clunky.

Speaking of timing, pacing isn’t the only time-related issue brought into light by the single shot. By filming it in ‘real time’, for once the audience gets a truly accurate sense of progression, and the screenwriters need to take steps to make sure the events of the film unfold accordingly. For the most part, this goal is achieved (a highlight of the film involves the camera lingering on a particular clock every time it passes it), but in a few moments it becomes glaringly obvious that the timing is inaccurate. One scene in particular springs to mind: after having drunken far too much, Mia (River George) has collapsed in a bed upstairs. Concerned for his friend, Michael (Dominic Burns) goes to check on her. After a mere three minutes of conversation (with a little bit of boob-groping added in for extra measure), Andy (Simon Phillips) bursts in wielding a metal ladle, having thought – without any discernible or logical reason – that something had happened to them. In the three minutes they were up there. Now to a certain extent this could be forgiven in any ‘normal’ film, because this sort of blatant discrepancy could be easily hidden in the edit, tricking the audience into thinking that more time had passed than actually had. Since Cut was filmed in one shot, however (and thus the timing was entirely accurate), this moment just seemed totally irrational.

The gore effects prove problematic, too. Having had no available time to apply more complex make-up and prosthetic effects, the most gore you’ll see is a little fake blood here and there (and obviously fake blood, at that. Having never murdered someone with an axe in their bedroom – spoiler alert – I wouldn’t know for definite, but I’m pretty sure blood shouldn’t run off a bedsheet like water off a non-stick pan…). A little disappointing, considering the subject matter, but mind you, I suppose in the scale of things this is a minor gripe, especially in low-budget movies such as this.

Despite featuring majorly in all of the posters and such, Danielle Lloyd’s role is mercifully short. Thankfully she only appears for about three minutes, and even then she only appears playing a character on television…so fortunately I managed to retain much of my sanity. Most of the other actors fare a little better, admittedly; Gremlins’ Zach Galligan the most. Mind you, to be fair the plot doesn’t require any of them to particularly over-stretch their acting muscles. As long as they can manage provocative, aggressive, arrogant and / or scared between them, then they’re set.

It’s an odd one, is Cut. From a film perspective, it’s not great; not by a long stretch. But from a filmmaking perspective, it’s astounding. The thing I find most impressive about it is, rather paradoxically, the thing that more often than not makes it as bad as it is; and this is chiefly the reason I haven’t rated it numerically: it’d just be too damn tricky to. It just seems to me that the time and effort spent choreographing and rehearsing such a complex shot would have been better used elsewhere; had the film been better lit, the sound better recorded, the pacing a little more varied it would be much better than it is now. As it stands, Cut’s ‘single shot horror’ distinction just doesn’t seem worth it.

2010 was a mixed bag for the majority of us – it was twelve months of joy, pain, fun, boredom, insanity and horror. The credit crunch bit further into our wallets and purses, special UK snow surprised our transport systems to death and the British government once again dropped its boxers and crapped on the little guy (and some students).

For film in general it was also a mix of great, good, reasonable and God-awful cinema-raping cackbadgers. Cameron pointlessly re-released Avatar with even more sexy Smurf footage, Pixar gave us a 3rd film to add to that miniscule list of awesome trilogies (with the superb Toy Story 3) and Saw 3D finally nailed the coffin shut on its own flagging franchise. Probably. Tron disappointed, nerds kicked ass and Inception broke our minds.

It also seemed like a year were icons died. We lost Tony Curtis, Dennis Hopper, Irvin Kirshner, Kevin McCarthy, Leslie Nielsen and even Corey Haim. Hopes that 2011 will be Brett Ratner’s “turn” are completely unwarranted…

In some ways 2010 was a surprising year – Danny Trejo finally got a lead role, censorship became an issue again when the BBFC scissor-snipped A Serbian Film and Nicholas Cage was suddenly awesome again.

Horror wise 2010 gave us a lot of mediocre Horror, some genuinely great movies and a bulging warehouse of filmic crud. But what really got our attention? What Horror films really made 2010 a year to remember? For those who trust our opinion, here’s our top 5 films from 2010… feel free to send us hate mail or praise. Or both.

Sarah’s Top 5 Horror Movies of 2010

• The Collector
• The Crazies
• The Loved Ones
• Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
• [REC] 2

Scullion’s Top 5 Horror Movies of 2010

• Frozen
• The Last Exorcism
• Monsters
• Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
• [REC] 2

Worst Horror Movie of 2010

Upsettingly, we found it much easier to think of five truly appalling horror films than fantastic ones. Much more than five. In fact, 2010 had a host of poo-moulded Horror films, most notably the likes of Skyline, The Wolfman, the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Mega Piranha, which all received our disappointed faces in 2010. Yet there can be only one winner for Gorepress’s worst horror movie of the year. The much-coveted turd-scooping wooden spoon has to go to the fourth film released in an already dismal franchise, and for a director who quite literally deserves to be dunked into a bowl of putrid zombie bowels for crimes against the Horror genre. And the “winner” is…

Resident Evil: Afterlife

Little needs to be said about this further bludgeoning of a much loved video game empire – read Scullion’s less-than-enamouring review here. With little potential and zero expectations, audiences were treated with another cavalcade of zombie nonsense from writer / director Paul W.S. Anderson. Simply the worst horror film of 2010. And worst director. And worst writer. And worst catering, probably. I’m sure you all really look forward to Paul W.S.’s adaptation of The Three Musketeers, featuring Orlando Bloom, Ray Stevenson, Milla Jovovich and James Corden. God help us…

Next year my money’s on Red Riding Hood for 2011’s Worst Horror Movie, considering the trailer makes me want to pull my eyes out through my scrotum. Think Twilight meets In The Company of Wolves meets a squealing teenage girl with an IQ of four.

But what does 2011 hold for us?

2011 will feature a barrage of sequels, aliens, priests, wizards, witches, weirdoes, werewolves, creeps, comedy and killer fish. Nothing truly excites, but there could be some gems hidden amongst the usual plethora of sequels and bandwagon jumpers. Specifically look out for:

• 5inal Destination (yes, 5inal)
• The Apparition
• Battle: Los Angeles
• Black Swan
• Fright Night
• Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part 2
• Mother’s Day
• Piranha 3 DD (yes, a sequel released less than a year later…)
• Priest
• Rabies
• Red Riding Hood
• Red State
• The Resident
• The Rite
• The Roommate
• Scream 4
• Season of the Witch
• The Thing (this is a prequel not a remake, despite the name)
• The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1
• Vanishing of 7th Street
• The Ward
• The Woman in Black

And some comic book adaptations

• Captain America: The First Avenger
• The Green Hornet
• The Green Lantern
• Thor
• Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon (okay, okay… TOY adaptations…)
• X Men: First Class

And also look out for The Beaver; a film where Mel Gibson uses a hand-puppet beaver to communicate with people… which sounds more terrifying than any horror film we saw in 2010.

We hope you all had an awesome 2010, filled with gore, violence and scares (on film only, hopefully) and you’re all looking forward to the forthcoming madness of 2011. Could be epic, but only time will tell.

Happy New Year from all at Gorepress! Stay crazy.

Place: Carnaby Street in Central London

What: There is a cage. Inside is an emaciated Santa Claus, staring darkly at passersby. Two men are selling him… for the bargain sum of $85,000 dollars.

The men warn there can be no drinking, no smoking, no arguing, no frolicking and no cursing anywhere near the Santa. It would make him very angry. You can take photos, but be careful, he might bite.

This Christmas madness was to celebrate the release of the awesome horror / drama / family / nightmare / comedy film RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE.

Gorepress’s Scullion had the pleasure of encountering this bizarre promotion, and having already seen the film, he was genuinely disconcerted by it. It’s just lucky he had no little children on him (which is rare, apparently).

The gentlemen handing out Rare Exports leaflets weren’t your average douchebags who shove bits of card into your face while muttering something about a comedy club… they were in character as Santa Hunters.

Scullion mentioned that $85,000 was a little steep for a starved old bloke in a dirty curtain, but they claimed they had to pay for expenses, including the transportation helicopter and all the gingerbread men they used as bait! It was impressive and oddly believable.

What the people of London thought about an evil, caged Santa Claus is uncertain, but it’s certainly an impressive and eerie start to the Christmas season… just the way we like it.

RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE is released on 3rd December 2010. Go see it.

Leprechaun (1993)

Warwick Davies in a rubbery leprechaun costume, a pre-Friends fame Jennifer Aniston and a plot that involves an actual pot o’ gold are the ingredients for this particular brand of miniature madness. A defining moment of 90’s ‘so bad, it’s good’ horror and spawning 5 sequels including the woeful Leprechaun In Space and Leprechaun In The Hood, the legacy of this 1993 opus cannot be ignored.

Puppetmaster (1989)

The first of the many Charles Band titles on this list, and arguably the best, Puppetmaster centres on the lonely, old puppet maker who crafts and gives life to five creepy puppets; Tunneller, Jester, Ms. Leach, Blade and Pinhead. Years later and a group of psychics investigating the suicide of a colleague happen upon the puppets and unwittingly become their targets. Featuring some genuinely creepy puppets, some dodgy stop motion effects and a heap of puppets-eye-view-cam, Puppetmaster is a classic and deservedly so.

Childs Play (1988)

Using a voodoo spell, mortally wounded serial killer Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif) transplants his soul into a nearby doll. When little Andy Barclay receives said doll as a present, he has no idea of the murderous terror that has just landed in his life. Like the previous two movies on this list, Childs Play is notable for having spawned several sequels but unlike the other two, the franchise was at the heart of countrywide video nasty witch-hunt in the early 90’s. Sneering, wise-cracking doll Chucky is a creation of absolute genius.

Gingerdead Man (2005)

Another of Charles Band’s efforts, The Gingerdead Man is awful, but in that inexplicably good way. Any movie featuring Gary Busey as both a manic serial killer and a gingerbread man that’s been animated via some cursed seasoning and kills everyone in its path is ok by me. Throw in some truly, memorably shit dialogue (“Eat me, you punk bitch!”) and you have yourself the perfect movie for a boozy night in with some equally immature friends.

Critters (1986)

Featuring the combined immense acting talents of M. Emmett Walsh, Dee Wallace Stone and Lin Shaye, Critters is a whole heap of fun. A sleepy farm in Kansas becomes the target of a horde of furry, flesh eating extra terrestrials and only a couple of bounty hunters can help. Critters is a perfect example of the kind of enjoyably silly b-movies that the 80’s were responsible for.

Ghoulies (1985)

More 80’s than Don Johnson rocking a pastel pink suit jacket, Ghoulies is about a bored yuppie who, at a party in his mansion, decides to use dark magic in an attempt to harness the power of some mythical creatures. Unfortunately the creatures have other ideas and once summoned are intent on killing everyone at the party. Unlike many titles on this list, Ghoulies was intentionally played for laughs and gets full marks for not taking itself seriously.

Blood Dolls (1999)

What more could you want from a film but Phil Fondacaro wearing a tuxedo and an eye patch? Killer dolls, you say? Ok, and I’ll even throw in an eccentric millionaire, an all female rock group and some mild S&M. Happy? You should be, because Blood Dolls is the ultimate in good/bad horror. Truly camp and full of accidental laughs, every Charles Band/ Full Moon fan should own this wondrous movie.

Magic (1978)

Anthony Hopkins plays Corky, a magician and ventriloquist whose dummy Fats takes on a life of its own and decides to make his masters life a little more hellish. When Corky retreats to a mountain resort in the hope of revisiting a lost love, Fats follows and mayhem ensues. Magic is a, sadly, often forgotten slice of psychological horror with an excellent performance from Hopkins and a truly nightmarish dummy.

It’s Alive (1974)

Larry Cohen’s tale of a woman who gives birth to a bloodthirsty infant that kills when it becomes frightened is one of my personal favourites. It was followed by a worthy sequel in 1978 and a piss-poor third instalment in 1987, not to mention a thoroughly dire and pointless remake in 2008. A slow-burn movie that builds some incredible suspense and has a truly tragic climax, It’s Alive is movie magic.

Troll (1986)

Troll sucks, there are no two ways about it. It sucks so much that it actually turns a corner somewhere and comes back around to being enjoyable. It generated a sequel so bad that there’s now a documentary about it entitled Best Worst Movie. One of its main characters is a potential boy wizard named Harry Potter. Sonny Bono gets turned into a plant and Michael Moriarty attempts to out-act every other actor, ever. It’s also the second movie on the list to star Phil Fondacaro, this time as the titular Troll. It’s quite simple folks, I love this movie, and you should too.

And so ends our journey into tiny terrors and maniacal midgets. The sheer number of sequels spawned by our top ten alone suggests that audiences will always have a fascination with little things that kill. Here’s hoping the trend continues, at least we can always count on Mr. Band to come through with his unique brand of shockingly bad, but thoroughly entertaining low budget fare.

Can you actually be a connoisseur of shite horror? It’s like saying you’re a connoisseur of Ginsters pies. Maybe it’s because I’ve got a good sense of humour, maybe it’s because I haven’t, or maybe it’s just because I’m a pervert – whatever the case, it’s filmic sadomasochism – deliberately and gleefully hurting oneself like a modern-day Marquis de Sade. Instead of whips, knives, candlewax and cheese-grating it’s abysmal CGI, brain-crushing dialogue and diabolical acting. But why do we enjoy it so much? I’m not alone – I’ve spent countless drunken hours with friends watching cack-arsingly bad horror, with a few beers and a hell of a lot of laughter. Hilariously bad films are a quality social event – films you can talk through, yell at and cry with laughter while you watch. You don’t have to have the lights turned down, the volume cranked up to 11 and a pillow to hide behind – you just need friends, a sense of humour and bucket of cold beer.

But what makes a terrible horror film actually fun? It’s normally a personal thing, and it’s definitely got something to do with alcohol, but the following is my personal list compiled to tell you what to look for and what to seriously avoid when choosing a hilariously-bad horror film. So read on, grab a beer and have a laugh at the expense of hundreds of people’s hard work…

INSANE PLOTTING

Not to be confused with an insane plot. Insane plotting is where the initial plot is a bit questionable, and then it goes off on completely mad tangents throughout the entire film. It keeps it entertaining, confusing and above-all completely hilarious. An “insane plot” on the other hand is just a single idea that is stretched tirelessly until it becomes boring. It has also become a tragic staple of horror and thrillers to have as many twists and turns as possible, crammed into 90 minutes, which actually just confuse and irritate. This is not insane plotting, just an insane plot badly sewn together. Insane plotting is all about ideas and situations that are baffling, not in context and totally ridiculous. This kind of insane plotting can be found in films such as Street Trash and The Tripper, which lob in all sorts of tangents simply for the hell of it.

Winner: Shark in Venice.

Nefarious gangsters who have the stupidest plan in the history of stupid plans, some genetically engineered fresh-water sharks, a treasure hunt for Solomon’s gold, utterly needless motorbike chases, a surprisingly brutal fight scene in a woodworking shop and a nipple-tastic Stephen Baldwin… all set in “Venice”.

Loser: The Happening.

The plot is this: something is happening. People kill themselves. You can’t stop it. You just run away from plants. It’s a yawn-ride to Boredomland, and you’ve taken the slow train.

A CELEBRITY

Celebrities – not Jordan or one of those vacuous morons from the puke-worthy plethora of reality TV programmes currently raping televisions creativity, but actually talented people that end up doing that one “pays for my new house” movie. Or ten, if you’re Jonathon Rhys-Davies.

The travesty of celebrity is that more people know who Jordan or Kerry Katona are than they do the likes of vastly-talented Jeffery Combs, Clancy Brown and Danny Trejo. But in this so-bad-it’s-hilarious case “celebrity” means a relatively well-known but tragically washed-up actor (or one who’s heading that way) flapping aimlessly in a grossly inept pay-check film and coming across as a complete buffoon.  It’s cringingly bad, but utterly hilarious. The only problem is when you begin to pity them. Sometimes it can backfire tremendously, and when someone you once respected does something so shockingly terrible it actually hurts to watch it. No laughs, just a wincing unpleasantness.

Examples of painful celebrity falls-from-grace into horror embarrassment include Keifer Sutherland in Mirrors and Harrison Ford in What Lies Beneath. Both upsettingly naff. Examples of hilarious-to-watch “celebrities” in terrible horror films are Jonathon Rhys-Davies in Cyborg 3, Stephen Baldwin in Shark in Venice, Gabriele Byrne in Ghost Ship and Steven Seagal in Against the Dark.

Winner: Samuel L. Jackson in Snakes on a Plane.

He knew what he was doing and didn’t give a damn. Still respected despite his rough career, this could’ve been terrible, but his line “Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!” will go down in history. Hilariously bad, and Jackson’s shocking in it, but he knew it, so it’s okay to laugh at him.

Loser: Robert De Niro for both Godsend and Hide & Seek.

His performances in both of these films are terrible, the scripts are terrible, the films are terrible. From being the King of Hollywood, these two pap horror films just sadden anyone who ever saw Mean Streets or Goodfellas. It felt like watching your retirement home Granddad being helped off a toilet – imbuing a mixture of pity, embarrassment and pained love. Woeful.

SENSELESS LINES

A terrible script can go one of two ways, and seriously affect the drunken enjoyment of your so-bad-it’s-hilarious experience. On one hand you get the monumentally baffling dialogue, which seems like a twelve year old dimwit had scrawled something on a toilet roll with his own faeces and the studio accepted it wholesale. Kiefer Sutherland screaming “Don’t make me threaten you!” from Mirrors is a prime example, a line which is both hilariously dumb and cripplingly crud. What isn’t great is a perfunctory script that a studio / pay-check writer has batted out to fit to a formula, removing all character and leaving a hollow and dull film to trudge through.

An example of a decent and hilarious line is in Shark in Venice (yep, this again) when Stephen Baldwin finds his Dad’s maps to Solomon’s treasure and mutters “herein lieth the rub”. Not “here lies the rub” (‘cause that makes more sense!), but “herein” and “lieth”. So insane and baffling is this statement it had me and my friends crying with laughter and quoting it for months after.

Winner: Paul W. S. Anderson’s script for Death Race (2010).

Joan Allen’s threat is both unthreatening and utterly bizarre. She growls “Fuck with me, and we’ll see who shits on the sidewalk”. What? Shit on the sidewalk? Is that a good thing?! Utterly bonkers.

Losers: Declan O’Brien and Berkeley Anderson’s script for Monster Ark.

Utterly perfunctory, with character’s saying lines they clearly aren’t comfortable with and everything simply being plot-movingly dull. Who’s shitting on the sidewalk in this film? No one. That’s who.

THE SMALLER TOUCHES

The Title – a title tells you everything you need to know, and also allows you to laugh at it. Samuel L. Jackson was very angry when a certain snake film had its title changed to Air Pacific Flight 121, telling one interviewer “We’re totally changing that back. That’s the only reason I took the job: I read the title.” Dumb titles include Megashark Vs. Giant Octopus, Big Monster on Campus and, naturally, Snakes on a Plane.

Continuity errors – these give you a smug sense of satisfaction. The winner here, as always, is Shark in Venice. Stephen Baldwin’s t-shirt is wet one second, dry the next, nearly every minute of the script. It even changes colour and style. At least his aggressively fame-hungry nipples are always present pressing against his shirt – wet or dry.

Technical effect – CGI and make-up effects that have been lovingly created on a penny-rubbing budget always cause a laugh. See Loch Ness Terror, Shark in Venice and every series of Sliders, ever. But what isn’t funny is shocking laziness – in the case of Megashark Vs. Giant Octopus, the greyscale pre-coloured models of submarines and sharks is not funny – it’s intelligence insultingly crap.

Length – size does matter, and shorter is better (ladies, listen up). Even the most hilariously bad horror film can outstay its welcome. A short, snappy crappy length is a must – anything over 90 minutes isn’t worth trudging through. Winners include Shark in Venice (88 mins), Megashark Vs. Giant Octopus (85 mins) and The Caretaker (82 mins). Losers include The Cavern (97 mins), The Mutant Chronicles (111 mins) and Orphan, which comes in at a patience-raping 123 mins!

Not a Comedy – they cannot be trying to be funny. Tongue in cheek, perhaps, like Snakes on a Plane, but not a comedy. When a line like “Shit, I’ve left Gordon’s foot on the coach… sorry mate” (Danny Dyer in Severance) is used, you know it’s supposed to be amusing. It’s all about the “serious” films that are trying to thrill but instead just make you laugh out loud at their ineptitude. The least funny films are the “comedies” that utterly fail to amuse – and thus become horribly embarrassing. See Boy Eats Girl, Undead and Eight Legged Freaks for examples of comedy-horror gone wrong…

WINNER OF THE “SO BAD IT’S HILARIOUS” AWARD

Shark in Venice

Well, herein lieth the rub…

It’s got Stephen Baldwin in fat action hero mode, it’s got utterly bizarre dialogue, it’s got completely insane plotting, it’s got shockingly funny special effects and it’s only minutes 88 long!

Is it worth buying? Yes! Being a firm hater of downloading (having worked in HMV and now a DVD authoring and replication facility, illegal downloading is like shitting in my own wallet) I believe you should purchase this. Not for yourself, ‘cause that’d be insane, but as a joke present for a fan of so-bad-it’s-hilarious horror films. Guaranteed that’ll be the option you choose when you’re sitting around with a few drinks on a drunken evening in.

Laugh, jeer, shake your head and point at Stephen Baldwin’s nipples as they attempt to out-act him, and totally succeed. This is brilliantly terrible stuff.

Don’t think I’m right? Well, if you mess with me, we’ll see who shits on the sidewalk. Yeah. Take that.

The PCC is currently showing westerns, horrors, singalongs, every single Star Trek film and is giving out free tickets for a film called Big Tits Zombie… as long as you turn up dressed as a zombie… with big tits. The PCC is fun, brash, shameless and light-hearted. It loves film and celebrates everything about it, happy to host quality double bills of Jurassic Park and Jaws and equally as happy to show the absolutely crudtacular likes of Birdemic. The staff are welcoming and clearly love the PCC dearly, happy to answer questions from idiots who can’t read signs and direct people to the alcohol. People like me.

The PCC doesn’t get funding from the Arts Council, any film bodies or even the National Lottery, but manages to “thrive” through putting on a huge array of films, old and new, and hosting previews, premieres, Q&A sessions and special events for the smaller, more independent films. One such film is The Torment (released as The Possession of Dave O’Reilly in the U.S., fact fans).

Kicking off at 8.30pm prompt, the Downstairs screen at the PCC has comfortable, massive seats and smacks of old school cinema, where the screen isn’t perfectly lined up but no one cares. It’s the ideal setting for The Torment, which is not Hollywood standard gloss, but more shaky-cam, guerilla filming on a personal scale.

After sitting through 87 minutes of darkness, screams, blood, horrible creatures and Giles Alderson wailing at shadows, we’re invited to stay for a Question and Answer session with the Writer / Co-Director Andrew Cull and the films four stars Giles Alderson, Francesca Fowler, Zoe Richards and Nicholas Shaw. They’re all easy-going, funny and open people.

Hosted by co-producer Nick Isles, the following is a slightly cut-down transcript of the Q & A session… cut down because some of the people didn’t quite speak into the microphones provided. The result was a recording of their voices saying this “_________” and “________”, which isn’t particularly interesting…

This is how it went.

FRANCESCA FOWLER: I need a loo break, sorry.

Francesca Fowler and Giles Alderson disappear out to the “restrooms” whilst Andrew Cull, Zoe Richards and Nicholas Shaw clamber onto the stage, microphones poised in their hands.

NICK ISLES: What was it like to make a film like that? Was it intense?

ZOE RICHARDS: Yes.

Everyone laughs, and we pray her obtuseness is intentional.

NI: How intense?

ZR: The crying scenes were intense. Twelve hours crying is not normal. If you cry in reality you cry for maybe ten minutes, and then you stop, and you laugh and say “oops, I cried”, but with this I had to keep crying. Every take, and then they stop to fix the lights and then re-set, and then you get your hair and make-up done and you have to cry again. Tough.

NI: The shoot was three weeks?

ZR: Yep.

NI: And you’re doing long, twelve hour days?

ZR: They were night shoots, so we didn’t know the time.

NI: What was that like? Filming at night. Dislocating? Tough?

ANDREW CULL: I think it is quite tough to do night shooting. As a whole, when we set out to do the film, we wanted to do something that was pretty intense, that was pretty character driven, so people like Giles had a pretty tough time getting that performance. I think he was absolutely fantastic. I think before this he’d done primarily lighter roles…

Giles Alderson takes this moment to return from the toilet, along with Francesca Fowler (N.B. They didn’t go to the toilet together, before you begin reading into that…) to much applause.

NI: So, Giles, how do you prepare for a role like that? What goes into it?

GILES ALDERSON: Um… oh, Jesus. Everything. Mentally, physically. Andy really took us through it. We were given a whole week of rehearsal too. All of us went through a lot, spending an entire week in that house, it really helped us get into it.

NI: What about you, Francesca? You have one of the goriest, most distressing scenes. How did you prepare for that?

FRANCESCA FOWLER: Well, I got pregnant…

We all laugh, and pray she’s not mad or insanely Method. Luckily she’s just got a good sense of humour…

FF: I don’t think you can prepare – I mean, you can prepare mentally – but I always find you have to go with what comes up at the time. I like to keep it fresher that way, so I keep my best performance until I’m doing it, if that makes sense? It’s always challenging when you’re doing a night shoot and you don’t have much time. The pressure’s on and you just have to go for it. I think we had to do [the “pregnant scene”] in two takes, because of costumes.

AC: Yeah.

FF: In two takes, because we only had two costumes that we could get bloody. You just have to do it, really.

NI: How different was that to doing the other things you’ve worked on, like Doctor Who. What’s the difference? Do you prefer this type of intense film?

FF: It’s just very different. It’s always a luxury when you have time, but sometimes if you have too much time you can overdo things. Each job is so individual, so I don’t know what I prefer.

NI: Nick, you have the sort of straight role in The Torment [as Alex], where you’re sucked into the situation. Were you surprised by anything?

NICHOLAS SHAW: Well, like Giles said, we rehearsed it quite intensely the week before – it was also filmed quite chronologically – so we could get into the journey of the people. It was interesting being in the middle of two points of view, and it’s about the loyalties you have with different people in your life and how you respond in certain situations – I don’t think Alex responded to it very well. He gets a bit hysterical, but it’s how you deal with a particular situation.

NI: Andrew, you wrote this.

AC: Yes.

NI: Where did this come from?

AC: I wrote it back in 2003, and at the time it was a reaction to a lot of U.S. horror I’d seen. Basically, I felt we’d lost touch with the characters we see in movies. Most of the time you were basically watching people you wanted to see get a hatchet in the head. In the first five minutes. Because you couldn’t stand them – they didn’t evolve, and you didn’t relate to them in any way. What I wanted to do was create something that was much more character driven and make people feel for the characters in the film and the situations they found themselves in. So that was how I initially set out to write the script. At the time I was living on the ground floor of a Victorian house and that became the setting of the film. I wanted something the audience could relate to – I wanted them to see themselves in the characters, at home, and think “that could happen to me, in my house”, sort of very normal people in a very extreme situation.

At this point the co-producer does the effortlessly dangerous thing of opening the questions up to the general public…

AUDIENCE MEMBER #1: I liked it! I really liked it.

Please note – this was not someone with a question, but someone who just wanted to let everyone know he enjoyed it… immediately. Please note – that person was not me. I’m much more subtle.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #2: In terms of blocking and action, it was so loose at the top of the movie – why was that?

AC: Initially I want you to settle in. Before you got to the action of the piece, about forty minutes in, when the lights go out, I wanted to make you very familiar with the location where it would all happen. You’re plunged into near darkness on some occasions and I wanted you to have a familiarization with the location, even in the dark. What I wanted to do specifically – there were shots early on of Nick, when he’s intending to get the curry ready and we follow him and we’re left just watching a window for a short period of time. Stuff like that. What I wanted to do was suggest something’s going to happen here – get ready – that sort of stuff. Looking into certain areas, and some of those areas are recurrent in the film and do pay off later on. And some of them are mcguffins. That was definitely part of the design of the film.

ZR: One of the films Andy told us to watch was Hidden, a French film, where the camera becomes a character in the film. You start off watching the house, a long shot of the exterior.

AC: That’s an elegant point. Essentially when I wrote it – I write it in a different style to most people – if you read a copy of the script I refer to the camera as “We” sometimes, because I wanted you to feel you’re actually in there. Which is another reason for the P.O.V. stuff – there’s some P.O.V. stuff but not as much as in the other projects that I’ve done – I’d like you to feel that you’re involved. Much more than if you’ve got a static camera, just there, doing a very familiar kind of shooting.

NI: For the cast, have you done anything like this before?

GA: Yeah, I think a few of us have done that sort of thing before. The P.O.V. stuff was really interesting though – you’re in character looking at the camera – it was difficult. It wasn’t so much for me, the other guys did a lot more than me. It was difficult when I had to do it, so I imagine it was very difficult for them.

NI: Andrew and Zoe, you two have worked together before, right?

AC: Ha! Yes. Zoe was Louise Paxton in the internet series – finally the secret’s out!

ZR: I still get hate mail.

AC: Really? Sorry about that. Initially one of the ways we got interest in The Torment was a project called In The Dark, which is a project I shot with Zoe, as a real –

ZR: Well, not real. Some people thought it was real.

AC: A hoax. It was a hoax. It’s still there if you wanna have a look.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #3: Can you tell us more about the true story angle. The “based on true events”. It’s a lot like Balham generally, I guess.

That provides more laughter. Tragically it’s also true…

AC: Yeah, I wouldn’t say it was directly based on true events. But… definitely influenced by some –

ZR: It all happened.

AC: I am a nice person really.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #4: The portrayal is a descent into schizophrenia – how much did that influence you?

AC: What happens to David in the film, I wanted to present a believable descent into madness. We tend to do that rather flippantly in cinema, and that again comes back to adding reality to the film and making people feel able to involve themselves with the characters, so I did research before writing about what happened to David. When you see horror movies, the monsters, ghosts and axemen are all very frightening but not as plausible as insanity. It’s something we see in our everyday lives – not personally – you see it in the news, and very sad cases of things that happens to people, and because it is plausible that’s a very good way to bring an audience into the story, essentially.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #5: There were quite a few laughs during the film. How did you pick where to put comic timing in it – the light relief?

FF: We didn’t realize there was any humour in it!

GA: It’s a Rom-Com!

NS: It was kind of helpful for me in the earlier stuff that there was some of the lighter stuff in the relationship, that I had. It was quite good because I knew it was going to get crazy later on. As Andy said about trying to create an environment where you felt for the characters, and building up a relationship, so later you could be part of that and feel for the characters.

NI: So it wasn’t just intense?

NS: No, it was enjoyable too. I mean, we all got on really well.

NI: But it was scary. Were you scared at times?

GS: [TENTATIVELY] Yes. There were moments – definitely moments. We were in the house, and the house is massive, and they built a set inside it and blocked off some of the walls so we could block off something or put up a door. Because of that there was so much space in that house, where we could go and be on our own for a bit before a scene. There was quite a few moments where we’d all go find a corner on our own and try and scare ourselves silly, but then when you go back into a room and it’s full of crew… then it’s a lot less scary.

ZR: The kids’ room are quite scary. It had been a family house, and I don’t know how many kids lived there – certainly a few – because there’s about three children’s bedrooms in the house that are still decorated with children’s stuff, and mobiles –

AC: They left in a hurry.

ZR: That was weird.

AC: Some kind of horrific event.

NI:Zoe, you actually stayed there, am I right?

ZR: Yeah, yeah. But I wasn’t scared, normally. Apart from the kids’ rooms – I didn’t go in there. [TO ANDREW] Were you scared?

AC: I’m never scared.

ZR: [LAUGHS] Like a true horror writer.

AUDIENCE MEMBER #6: What inspired you?

AC: I love thrillers, I love horror films. I didn’t want to do something that was all “bang bang, in your face” – when I watch a horror film it’s the building sounds, the structural sounds you can hear… When I was writing it I lived in Wandsworth Common, with a really big garden, and in the middle of the night you hear foxes screaming out. Those are the sounds of real life and they’re terrifying at three o’clock in the morning when you’re hammering away at a horror script. I think for me, the sounds of the pipes and the building itself, they slowly move towards gearing the film up – the sound designer is very very important, whenever I’m creating.

NI: How about the fight scenes. How hard was that?

ZR: It hurt.

NI: How long did it take to do?

GS: I donno, a couple of days. The fight coordinator who did the fights with us –

ZR: Is she here tonight?

They pause, looking into the audience for a response. There isn’t one.

GS: Okay, good.

Everyone bursts into laughter.

GS: She really hurt me.

ZR: She really hurt.

GS: She practiced Zoe’s moves on me and she’d hold me down and say “Zoe, this is what you do”, then she’d say to me “Does this hurt?” and I’m “Yes it bloody does! Get off!”. She was fantastic, she really was.

ZR: She was a James Bond stuntwoman, and you’d think they’re going to teach you how to fall over without hurting yourself… in actual fact they actually just say “Now you fall”. And I’d ask “Do I do it with the left foot first or…” and she’s just “No. Just fall. Here’s lots of padding, just fall.” I was bruised.

NI: What are you all doing now?

GS: I’m working on a sci-fi film called Transmission.

NS: I’m off to Liverpool to do a play. It’s called Tis a Pity She’s a Whore. Full of laughs.

FF: I’ve just done a short film called Frequency, which was funded by the old UK Film Council. We’re looking to get funding for the feature film.

ZR: I’m actually recording the voice of the central character in an animation, which my boyfriend is doing the music for, and I have to get up for nine thirty tomorrow morning. And I do the voice… of a little girl…

AC: I’m currently writing a new character-driven horror film.

ZR: Can I be in it?

Andrew Cull sadly doesn’t answer that question… I guess we’ll find out whenever the future arrives.

The Torment is available on DVD 9/8/10

Gorepress have been invited to many interesting events in the past – screeners, interviews, premieres and set tours – but the e-mail we received in the middle of June was probably the strangest.

It was an invitation to the launch party of Zombie Women of Satan. In regards to brilliantly unsubtle film titles, it ranks up there with Snakes on a Plane and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus. We were instantly sold. Then we found out the launch party included the Miss Zombie Queen UK 2010 pageant, compered by Pervo the Clown. All in an evening packed with burlesque shows, undead DJs and finishing off with live band Killer B Movie rocking out into the early hours.

With huge reluctance, The Scullion, Gorepress’s London correspondent (who normally spends evenings reading Sartre and tending to his juniper trees), decided he would attend this tame-sounding evening of zombies, beauty, music and perverted clowns. Dragging two of his more demented friends with him, he entered the Cobden Club in West London with wide eyes, a childish grin and a very open mind…

This is what happened.

Zombies take over the Cobden Club

Clambering the stairs of the Cobden Club, an unassuming venue hidden in plain sight in W10 London, I entered the Zombie Women of Satan ballroom not really knowing what to expect. I was greeted with a sea of interesting-looking people – transvestites, zombies, monsters and half-naked zombie women from hell. I felt oddly at home.

As we grabbed some beverages from the bar our compere came on stage. Dressed in leather pants, open shirt, with white face paint and a lovely black clown’s nose, we were greeted by of one the stars of Zombie Women of Satan – Pervo the Clown a.k.a Mister Warren Speed.

Charming, funny, a little bit mental and surprisingly sporting a solid Geordie accent, Pervo introduced the plethora of Burlesque dancers onto the stage.

Brilliant Burlesque

If variety is the spice of life, this was the biggest spice rack you’ve ever seen. And the words spice and rack have never been more apt. Sexy, rude, bizarre, unique and utterly freakin’ demented, the acts were all fantastic.

Marilyn Monroe look-a-like Banbury Cross kicked off the show with an elegant, classy, very sexy performance and the completely insane-looking Marnie Scarlet ended it, with a catheter drinking, breast slicing festival of madness.

In between were Hell’s Belles and Betty D’Light, who were both as strange and unique as each other. Brilliant, though. All of them.

Zombie DJs

Pervo the Clown left us with the zombie DJs, who whacked on some great zombie tunes for us to decompose to. I took the time to mingle with the gathered crowd, talking to the stars, makers and creators of the bonkers-looking Zombie Women of Satan. Everyone was genuinely awesome, and having a helluva lot of fun – they were friendly, open, slightly insane but always willing to chat.

I even met up with the band (Killer B Movie) and asked a passer-by to take a photo of us. The passer-by was Victoria Hopkins, star of Zombie Women of Satan. Oops! Luckily she forgave me for my rather embarrassing mistake…

I also caught up with Pervo the Clown himself, his make-up hiding the uber-talented actor, director, writer, producer, clown who’s very much looking forward to starting work on Zombie Women of Satan 2. This certainly isn’t the last we’ve heard of Warren Speed.

Miss Zombie Queen UK 2010

The event we’d all been waiting for was suddenly upon us. The Miss Zombie UK 2010 pageant. Pervo the Clown once again dominated the stage with his exuberance, and even flashed us his arse. Which had tassels. And gets a 3 out of 5 for hairiness. Yep, arse-judging. Well, we were supposed to be checking out women all night so I figured Pervo needed to be rated too. We’re all about equal rights here at Gorepress…

The panel of judges included Total Film online editor Sam Ashurst, glam model and “Chelsea’s fittest fan” Victoria Shelley and the film’s lead actress, Victoria Hopkins. They sat on the sidelines, judging the finalists on various categories, including their ‘zombie-ness’, their special skills and overall sexiness, as well as their answers to the questions posed to them by good old Pervo.

The ten contestants were hugely varied in looks, talent and their concept of “zombie”. We had potential Zombie Queens dressed as sailors, strippers, mental patients, nurses, school girls and one even dressed as a World War 2 air-raid victim! They each had their own talents too, from piano-playing, brain eating, escapology and worm-gobbling to ripping their right breast off… Yep. They were all brilliant, but there can only be one winner.

And the winner is…

Von – the beautiful zombie monstrosity was dressed as a school girl and fed the audience members worms from her lunchbox. Her nasty face-burn and general bloodiness showed commitment to being the UK Queen of the Zombies. Humble and funny she apologized to me for being “sticky”. I didn’t mind. I saw it as a compliment…

Von won a cash prize, a £50 gift voucher from Vivien of Holloway (whatever the hell that is) and, mostly importantly, an opportunity to have a featured role in Zombie Women of Satan 2. Makes me wish I’d entered. I would make a fantastic zombie queen. Well, half of that’s probably true.

The two runners-up Misty Moores and Collette Von Tora (pictured above), also received cash and sash prizes.

And the loser is…

Having consumed my weight in beer (and that’s a LOT of beer), I grabbed a taxi home and crashed out at 1am. I then woke up at 5am thinking it was Sunday afternoon. So I spent Thursday feeling like one of the many zombies I’d spent the night gawking admirably at, except less sexy and a lot less naked (which my work colleagues appreciated).

Scullion’s Final Thoughts

It was phenomenal and bizarre and sexy and insane – a dementedly awesome dream. I am now finding it strange that people aren’t walking around with tassels on their nipples. I blame Pervo the Clown entirely…

Zombie Women of Satan comes out on DVD today and is available from all good retailers, and even the shit ones.

A review will follow shortly.

You can visit the official website here

A couple of weeks ago, at Canterbury’s Gulbenkian Cinema, I had the chance to see one of my favourite horror movies on the big screen. First released in 1980 and now at the grand old age of 30 years old, it was still as thrilling, chilling and crucial to the genre as I have always believed it to be. Seeing those rivers of lurid blood pour out of the elevators and down the otherwise silent Hotel corridor on an imposing cinema screen is something that will undoubtedly never be expunged from my memory, whether I want it to be or not.

The Shining, alongside The Exorcist and Psycho, is arguably one of the most referenced and parodied horror movies of all time. Its impact on pop culture is obvious to even the most casual of cinephiles. If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery then that small fact alone is enough to secure The Shining’s place in the annals of horror movie greatness. That fact aside though, Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece boasts an absolutely astounding pivotal performance from Jack Nicholson, a claustrophobic tension that’s seldom been matched, some of the most memorable and iconic imagery ever committed to celluloid and a discordant, menacing score.

For the benefit of the uninitiated, The Shining is the story of Jack Torrance who interviews for, and gets the job of seasonal caretaker at the majestic Overlook Hotel. During the harsh winter, he is expected to heat and repair the impressive building during 5 months of off-peak downtime. Taking his wife Wendy, son Danny and Danny’s curious ‘imaginary friend’ Tony, Jack hopes for 5 months of sobriety, seclusion and productivity. The hotel and its chequered, murderous past, coupled with the inescapable sense of isolation however, have other plans and Jacks sanity and grip on reality, slowly begins to unfurl, leaving his family in grave danger.

The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick and adapted from the Stephen King novel of the same name, is famously one of King’s least favourite of the many adaptations of his stories. Kubrick chose to change certain aspects of Kings story tremendously, which is where the rift is documented to have stemmed from. Much of the most celebrated imagery and unforgettable dialogue are exclusive to the film and feature nowhere in the novel. Some of it, including the now much copied “Here’s Johnny!” was even ad-libbed. King is rumoured to have been dissatisfied with the casting of Nicholson in the central role and wanted the character to be closer to his depiction in the novel, an entirely more sympathetic characterization of Torrance. The bare bones of the story might have been Stephen King’s brainchild, but to my mind the film would have been altogether less accomplished without Kubrick behind the lens. You only have to take a cursory glance at the truly awful 1997 made-for-TV mini-series, of which King is so fond, to see what could have been if Kubrick hadn’t had so much free reign with regard to the plot and characterization.

Stephen King adaptations, as we all know, can differ spectacularly in terms of faithfulness and quality. For every Carrie, there’s a god-awful Langoliers, for every Stand By Me, there’s a Tommyknockers just waiting to suck and for every The Shining, there’s a pointless, author-commissioned The Shining TV mini-series. Thankfully, 1980’s The Shining succeeds in taking King’s idea to fruition and turning it into a wildly memorable and truly horrific affair.

At the heart of the film is Nicholson’s remarkably manic, peerless, tour de force performance. It’s difficult to imagine how anyone else could have embodied the role and made it their own like he did. Nicholson is a living, breathing, Jack Torrance. Not simply an actor playing a part, you get the impression that Nicholson could himself have been on the brink of a descent into madness, so authentic is his representation. Kubrick is rumoured to have considered Robert De Niro and Harrison Ford for the role and even, far more bizarrely, Robin Williams. Thankfully, each was ruled out for various reasons and the role was left for Nicholson to play with.

Shelley DuVall, as his wife Wendy has often been criticised for her exaggerated, cartoonish performance but her gawky, wide-eyed innocence is the perfect foil for Nicholson’s menacing, demented and self-assured soon-to-be madman. Danny Lloyd as the pair’s son also manages to hold his own. As child actors go, he elicits the appropriate level of sympathy and has a believable rapport with those around him. (It’s sad then, that he chose to leave the profession with only this one credit under his belt.)

The real magic of The Shining though, lies in its magnificent, inspired imagery. Trying to choose a favourite image from The Shining is akin to asking a fat kid to choose which of the Baskin Robbins 31 flavours of ice cream he’d like. It’s a near impossible task as there’s so much to choose from and it all looks so damn good. The ghostly twin girls in their blue dresses standing silently and holding hands, the cackling old lady rotting in the bath tub, the lush but terrifyingly complex hedge maze, pages and pages of manuscript that simply read ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’, a hotel employee being fellated by someone in a bear costume, the Hotels regal dance hall, the list is simply endless.

Kubrick’s direction is brave and assured throughout, displaying absolute control of his environment and a vast knowledge of filmmaking from beginning to end. From the opening aerial shots of the mountains leading up to the Overlook Hotel to the prolonged steadicam shots following Danny in his pedal car through the hallways and corridors to the tracking shots in the hedge maze, it all looks exquisite. The Hotel itself is as much a character as any of the actors. Its impressively high ceilings, elegant décor and desolate emptiness all add to the mounting sense of tension and dread throughout the film. Which brings me to the sublime score. Composed in part by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind with the remainder coming in the form of classical pieces, the imposing, discordant music sets the tone adeptly. Sometimes favouring a loud, grandiose backing but occasionally opting for a simple heartbeat as the soundtrack, the film wouldn’t have been nearly as tense or claustrophobic without it and even listening to it without the aid of the visuals has the power to send a chill down my spine.

The Shining had a notoriously troubled history; from certain shots taking up to an entire year to complete, to Kubrick’s infamous disagreements with DuVall over her performance, to the many script changes that reportedly angered cast and crew on a regular basis. Strangely, although many people now reference The Shining as a superb genre-defining classic, reception of the film was not so favourable upon its release. It remains the only one of Kubrick’s films not to have received any Oscar nominations and actually garnered itself Razzie nominations for Worst Actress, not to mention the ridiculously undeserved Worst Director. Stephen King might have been convinced that Stanley Kubrick had no knowledge of the horror genre before making The Shining and it certainly looks and feels like nothing else of that era but it’s impossible not to note the effect it had on audiences and the influence it’s had in the three decades since.

Although arguably containing some impressive subtext pertaining to ghosts, Indian burial grounds, famous literary connections and social commentary, in truth no-one but Kubrick really knows what was intended and he’s no doubt taken some of those secrets to his grave. Whatever its true meaning, The Shining is best viewed as a straightforward exercise in tension. While it may not be able to offer as much to some of today’s ADHD-riddled teenybopper crowd who are solely interested in frenetic, fast-paced, kill-a-minute, music video-esque horror movies (I’m pointing the finger squarely at you, Rob Zombie), those who are invested in the genre in some way and can appreciate a fantastic slow-burn, psychological, nightmare-inducing horror classic, will find The Shining to be near filmic perfection. It will certainly always be one of my firm favourites.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984): A Retrospective

In 1981, writer/director Wes Craven could have had no idea that the script he had just completed, entitled A Nightmare on Elm Street (henceforth ANOES) would be such a phenomenal commercial success; a milestone horror movie that would define the decade, launch his career into the stratosphere (Craven had previously been associated only with low-budget horror such as 1972′s Last House on the Left and 1977′s The Hills Have Eyes), as well as kick-off the acting careers of Heather Langenkamp and a then-unknown Johnny Depp. It would also lead to the creation of a globally recognised horror icon in the story’s loathsome villain – Freddy Krueger – whose enduring appeal as a character has sustained six direct sequels to Craven’s initial picture (seven if you want to include 2003′s Freddy vs. Jason, although it’s probably non-canonical in the ANOES mythos), spawned a short-lived television spin-off in the form of Freddy’s Nightmares and whose image, to this day, can be found on a plethora of merchandise – everything from t-shirts and tattoos to comic books, costumes and computer games.  Freddy’s scarred profile may yet be in the media again as this year has seen his resurrection in a new form, courtesy of a lacklustre and lamentable remake, the less said of which the better. Anybody and everybody knows Freddy…

…Or do they? Therein lies one of the problems that newcomers to the original ANOES face, something to do with the series’ meteoric popularity and that old adage that “familiarity breeds contempt”. Today, Freddy is an instantly recognisable name and image, whether we’ve previously seen any of the ANOES films or not. Even children know him from the media, from MTV videos they’ve seen and the Halloween costumes they’ve probably worn, even when they’re too young to have watched one of the movies. Time passes, the children grow up and that’s what Freddy is to them – a costume, a toy, a brand – he’s not the bogeyman, he’s fun old “Uncle Freddy”.

When these children at some point watch one (or all) of the ANOES films, in some ways this image is solidified. As the series continued and Freddy’s popularity skyrocketed, he inevitably became the star, the single component that was consistent throughout while the majority of the casts served only as disposable prey. Freddy became more visible, both physically (no longer a hideously burned creature swathed in shadows) and figuratively (in that the sequels had expanded on the original story to explain every detail about him, not to mention warping the central concept, taking it down different and not always logically consistent avenues to keep the bandwagon rolling despite ever-thinning plots), meaning that as the sequels lurched on he lost his mystique and his power to scare. By the sixth instalment in the series, Freddy’s Dead (1991), he’s all but indistinguishable from the creature born in the first ANOES, instead he’s become a quipping funnyman with an extravagant, comic way of dispatching his successive victims – for instance, one scene has a death sequence that could be right out of a Looney Tunes cartoon, like something that might be inflicted on Wile E. Coyote when one of his ACME devices backfires. A victim is plummeting from the sky (making a whistling sound as he falls), and Freddy appears beneath him, wheeling from right-of-camera a giant bed of nails ready for him to fall on. Freddy then breaks the fourth wall, looking directly into camera and miming over-exaggerated, comical wheezing at the weight he’s just pushed. It’s effectively winking at the audience, all that’s missing is him pulling out a carrot and in a Bugs Bunny voice adding “Ain’t I a stinker?”

In essence, the monster that Freddy was when he first appeared has been diluted, reduced to a friendly, comic presence. There’s an element of practicality in this – as Robert Englund once noted: “If we had tried to top the primal horrors and gore in part one, we would have hit a ceiling very early on… There is not much more we could have done unless we had Freddy…go around decapitating babies; instead he turns you into a giant cockroach. There is a sense of humour which is almost Kafkaesque in the Nightmare films.” It can’t be ignored that there was also a very canny financial reason too – as Freddy became the pop-culture icon that kids loved, the studio became as complicit as the adults who let them watch and realised that there was a huge market to be tapped, and so Freddy, who was the draw and the entire reason for commissioning a sequel regardless of whether the script was any good, was made child-friendly, his claws were clipped.

So here’s what you need to do. In the words of Yoda, “You must unlearn everything you have learned”. Whether you’re a Nightmare virgin or a confirmed fan, to fully appreciate ANOES you have to mentally go back in time (flux capacitor not included). Forget the sequels, the remake, the merchandise – they’re gone. It’s 1984 and this is all brand new, you’re back on Craven’s territory. Eyes drooping, sun setting, it’s time to sleep. Let the nightmare begin afresh…

When the film was released in 1984, ANOES was something new and original. The concept was very astute – as Robert Shaye, producer of the movie and founder of the then fledgling New Line Cinema (a business that this franchise effectively saved from liquidation and afterwards it affectionately became known as “the house that Freddy built”) said: “It was an original idea, dying in your dreams meant really dying. And four kids all had the same monster come to them while they slept… Here was the perfect common denominator. We all have to sleep.” This takes the mechanics of an otherwise normal slasher picture and elevates it to something more psychologically disturbing. The killer is no longer a mere physical being; he has the ability to attack his prey mentally and at the point when they are at their most vulnerable. Nightmares, like dreams, have an elastic reality and Craven exploits this to great effect, such as when the wall behind a sleeping Nancy suddenly becomes rubbery and indents with the impression of Krueger hovering over her prone form, ready to pounce. One sequence has Freddy appear almost as a living shadow, stretching his arms impossibly across the whole expanse of an alleyway, preventing one victim from escape, and though the low-budget FX used to create this are a little creaky by 2010 standards, there’s something still primal about it that recalls tales of the bogeyman, or those twisted Victorian childhood tales of the great, long, red-legged Scissorman who’d appear out of nowhere to cut off the digits of naughty boys and girls who suck their thumbs, or any number of nightmarish archetypes from childhood stories. This is where Craven’s picture is leagues ahead of the remake and most of the sequels, because he understands the power of those sequences is in the symbolic imagery of nightmares as extensions of the subconscious, metaphors and ideas that goes back to fairytales and to the things that haunt us from childhood, and it’s what he draws on to make Freddy in this incarnation a figure of fear rather than fun. What makes it worse, and is the genius of the whole concept, is that just as there’s no escape in the dreams, there’s no escape from the dreams – we all have to sleep eventually, it’s something we can only fight for so long before giving in. It’s the ultimate setting, because it’s not a haunted house or a patch of woods, places we can avoid or entertain the hope of running from in reality; it’s our cosy beds in our quiet suburban homestead, the place we feel most secure, or it’s the sly nap at work or school, or even just the quick droop of an eyelid and nod of a head – the killer is inescapable.

For a film to blur the boundaries of reality and fantasy was not, at the time, an overused concept and Craven’s execution of this is extremely subtle (unlike in the new remake, which hits you like a ton of bricks with its big-budget CGI and loses the point entirely in doing so). It takes but a single flutter of a character’s eyelids and that’s it, they’re in Freddy’s domain. It’s not always noticeable at first to the audience, which is intentional, putting us in the shoes of the dreamer who doesn’t yet know that he/she has finally succumbed to sleep. Slowly, the revelation comes through small injections of surreality, followed by more identifiably nightmarish elements, a process which allows the tension to build as we, along with the character, then realise that the beast is lurking somewhere, waiting to psychologically torture us before striking with his wicked blades. And Craven doesn’t skimp on the gore, though it never reaches laughable excess and none are played for comic value. In the bloodbath of Tina’s infamous “ceiling crawl” demise, the lurid neon blue lighting of the scene and the almost black splashes of of blood are reminiscent of some of the Italian giallos – gripping, haunting, instantly memorable. Compare it to the remake’s cack-handed re-staging of this setpiece, which in trying to outdo the original fails miserably by having the victim bouncing off the walls like she’s in a psychotic pinball machine and looks ridiculous, it has none of the power of the image from Craven’s picture nor the dramatic impact.

Then there’s Freddy himself. He’s not loquacious here, though sometimes he displays a black, cruel wit and sadistic pleasure radiates from him as he plays with his prey, wearing them down before striking. Aside from an explanation that he was a child-murderer and that he met justice at the hands of the children’s parents, there’s no real history to Krueger. At best, the film intimates that a more raw, cosmic evil may reside in this entity (a theme that became more thoroughly developed in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare), through the speech delivered by the high school English teacher as Nancy tries to stay awake in her class: “What is seen is not always real… According to Shakespeare there was something operating in nature, perhaps inside human nature itself, that was rotten – a ‘canker’ as he put it…” So again, Freddy is more mythological, more terrifying for this, he’s the local urban legend that lives on to haunt generations of children.

Even Freddy’s choice of weapon – the now iconic razor-tipped glove – was something original and far more disturbing than the average slasher killer’s mundane machete, axe or kitchen knife, before it again entered pop culture and lost its power. Think about it, especially that opening sequence where we see Freddy lovingly construct his glove, caressing it tenderly – the blades become an extension of his own body, giving him sensual pleasure as he penetrates his victim’s flesh and tears them open, a true sadist feeling ecstatic as he bathes in the pain and death he inflicts on others. And who are these “others”? Society’s most innocent and fragile – children. Although the film only explicitly defines him as a child murderer, everything points to more, hinting that Krueger was a paedophile (something which the 2010 remake goes at with all the subtlety of a brick to the face). Englund recalls the original script: “Wes wrote the most evil, corrupt thing he could think of. Originally, that meant Freddy was a child molester.” But this was changed, he goes on to state, because at the time of shooting a child molestation scandal broke out and Craven did not want to be accused of exploiting a terrible situation, happy to go for a more subtle approach, which ultimately works out better.

Speaking of Englund, his contribution into the creation of Freddy cannot be underestimated, as much of what makes Freddy so menacing is given through Englund’s jaunty, swaggering performance. Since the character in the original ANOES is virtually an unknown predator, Englund’s decision to put so much into sheer body language was a masterstroke, and it also helped to separate Freddy from other stalkers populating the slasher films of the day. “The stance was just trying to be as far away from any kind of monster or Frankenstein walk; I decided to put in a bit of cockiness, sexuality and threat.” He also decided to take the initiative and “play” the glove, taking inspiration from Klaus Kinski’s performance in Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht, which put alongside the series of teeth-setting metallic scratching, squealing sounds used to announce Freddy’s presence long before he’s seen really amp up its cruel purpose.

In all, these elements – the hideous killer, the concept so ripe for a fertile imagination to pick up and run with, and the psychological nature of the horror – are what make this movie formidable. Even today it still retains that initial power to get under the skin and into the mind. The sequels may have diluted the idea, but when given the due respect and consideration it warrants, A Nightmare on Elm Street remains a unique and frightening experience, well-deserving of its accolades, its popularity and its status as a true horror classic. Remember, kids: Evil never sleeps…and accept no substitutes.

My, how this one had the morally righteous brigade positively shaking with apoplectic indignation – “Donkey Punch is the vilest film I’ve ever seen” is the header of one article the Daily Mail saw fit to print, which you can peruse here: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1035810/Donkey-Punch-vilest-film-Ive-seen-says-AMANDA-PLATELL.html . For a horror fan this vilification is a wearily familiar press tactic and brings to mind the whole “Video Nasties” debacle once again, for just as the author of this thoroughly uninformed and confused piece tries to justify her opinion by first stating that she has no prejudices against the horror genre (and sounding for all the world like those people who, when they’re about to launch into a bigoted diatribe, preface it with “Some of my best friends are [insert group in question], but…” as if it somehow manages to balance their hate-fuelled bile), her attempt to seem balanced merely shows that she is versed only fleetingly in the genre and at its most mainstream (referencing her liking for The Blair Witch Project and even commenting “Gory as it was, I adored Silence of the Lambs…” – she must have been watching an altogether different version of Silence of the Lambs to the one I saw to call it “gory”, since apart from in the final act when we see Lecter escape there’s hardly so much as a drop of blood present, Christ alone knows what she’d think if confronted with Pete Jackson’s Braindead). This is reminiscent of the events which led to the “Video Nasties” furore in that it reflects how, back then, people who had no exposure to the genre outside, say, Hammer horror movies (and that might have been at a push) were suddenly having The Evil Dead pushed in their faces, so naturally kneejerk reactions from already conservative-minded individuals followed, and the rest is history. The same applies here, Donkey Punch will be absolutely nothing extraordinary to anyone who’s into horror and that’s even if their tastes don’t extend towards the sleazier shades of the exploitation spectrum, but for anyone with mainstream tastes who comes to this then yes, there’s probably enough on display (drug and booze-fuelled sex, loose morals and death, oh my!) to send them into a tizzy. If Ms. Platell’s comments weren’t enough to display her relative genre-ignorance, at one point in the article she calls Donkey Punch “torture porn”, and the semantic debate as to whether this phrase is idiotic and misleading aside, it’s clearly misused here as it has nothing in common with the “torture porn” stable of horror.  This has to make one wonder whether she was being careless, clueless or perhaps just bandying around a particularly evocative buzzphrase which, like the article’s headline, would be bound to whip up a certain core readership’s fury irrespective of whether they’ve actually seen the movie or not. But then that would be to suggest there’s sloppy, sensationalist journalism allowed to be published in tabloids, and who could ever think such a thing, eh?

In some respects Donkey Punch has this criticism coming, because not only does the film knowingly pick subject matter which is bound to be controversial and stir-up the “This film is the end of civilisation as we know it!” groups out there (who coincidentally also seem to argue that the behaviour on display is a true representation of society’s callous youth – although how they can say that the art is imitating life in one breath, thus implying that the “wickedness” is already out there, and then claim that it’s the movie which is the corrupting influence, thereby suggesting all was innocent and pure before it came along, is a logical Gordian knot that’s yet to be unravelled), but it deliberately feeds that frenzy as the script never has the nous to deflate or turn around these stereotypes, or offer them up in a light that’s thought-provoking (I’d cite Hard Candy as an example of a recent film that does just this, courts controversy with its subject matter but has a script that’s clever enough to defy expectations and never becomes prurient). There is a seed of recognisable reality here and there to the characters, certainly, but it’s taken to excess and caricature, not unlike the recent Eden Lake which also has the potential to divide audiences in that its depiction of the “evil hoodies” does have some recognisable basis in reality, but at the same time can also be seen as somewhat pandering to the overwrought media hype machine over the perceived menace to society. Eden Lake might just about get a pass, but where Donkey Punch goes wrong, however, is that there are times it genuinely feels as if there’s an almost infantile desire to deliberately exaggerate not for the sake of the plot, but merely to appear “edgy”, to outdo its competitors in the shock stakes.  This creates a sense that it’s trying a little too hard, something which disengages the viewer at a time when they really need to be drawn in, because there are plenty of aspects of the plot leading up to and including the titular act which don’t stand up to close scrutiny, the most clunking of which is the way that the explanation of what the “donkey punch” actually involves is worked into the script, it displays the same jaw dropping lack of smoothness that George Lucas employed with the “What are midichlorians?” dialogue from the rueful Phantom Menace prequel.

If it were some rough exploitation flick from the 70′s, these might be traits that were not only forgiveable but desirable, and naturally controversy can sometimes be its own reward in terms of free publicity – after all, what self-respecting horror fan wouldn’t be enticed to see a film that the above article touts as “a morally bankrupt tale of teenage group sex, violence, drugs and sadism”? – but in such a high gloss production which was bound to capture attention, then it’s a substantial failing. Basically, if you’re going to paint a bullseye on your back then at least have the smarts to duck and weave, especially since horror is already a maligned genre in many eyes, so playing into their hands does it a disservice and will have knock-on effects to productions beyond your own. Afterall, is Ms. Platell not in that very article spitting blood over how it was funded by National Lottery (i.e. public) money and government-backed via the UK Film Council? Clearly Donkey Punch is not the second coming, but it’s not a bad film and nor is it devoid of merit, the fact that it got made at all is something that’s a minor miracle with the state of the UK film industry, and if responses like the one featured in the Daily Mail can stir up enough of a hornet’s nest you can bet that the same institutions would think twice before backing another project in the same genre if they think it might involve any supposed “risk” of media-fuelled public ire, even though the journalism that’s causing the fuss is based solely on something as arbitrary and personal as the author’s cinematic tastes.

Speaking of that comment “a morally bankrupt tale of teenage group sex, violence, drugs and sadism”, it’s worth mentioning that this again shows the author of said article’s misreading or deliberate misreporting of certain aspects of the film for the sake of her story having more salacious content – the most important of which is this “morally bankrupt” comment, which she expounds upon further, saying:

“For the sad truth about films like Donkey Punch is that they not only apparently glorify the worst of human behaviour, they also serve to normalise it. They desensitise a society where young people are unsure of the rules any more, where children can be led to think it’s not cool to say ‘No’ to anything not to drugs, to knives, to sex, to violence.”

Steering entirely clear of that whole debate about the media being able to create monsters (although I will say that her point about the young being desensitised and led astray is entirely irrelevant – Donkey Punch was given an 18 Certificate in the UK, minors are forbidden from seeing it, something which she completely skates over in the attempt to link the two points together, and any kids seeing this is a whole other debate, one to do with responsible parenting, but of course by this time the rabid peanut-crunching crowd who are buying into her argument are more than happy to skip such details when they might interfere with their hubris), the sad truth about Ms. Platell’s statement is that it is entirely and wilfully false – Donkey Punch no more glorifies the acts that it shows on screen than Hellraiser glorifies sticking pins in one’s face. Apparently, though she adored Silence of the Lambs and Blair Witch, Amanda must have missed out on Scream, because if she had seen it then she might have had more chance of realising just how formulaic the plot of Donkey Punch is in that it follows the “rules” – in the time-honoured tradition, those who do “bad” things (drugs, sex, booze etc.) more often than not come to a very sticky end. So how can what is essentially a morality tale be “morally bankrupt”? Furthermore, anyone who watches these idiotic characters make one bonehead move after another and sees the predicament they find themselves in as the film progresses and thinks to themselves ”Wow, how glorious! I must go forth immediately and emulate this display of awesomeness!” has to have a slate loose in the first place.

In the long run, Donkey Punch is an average film – I’ve touched on most of the flaws, so on the plus side, the acting from the young cast is decent (albeit it does occasionally feel like Hollyoaks meets Dead Calm), the direction from first time director Oliver Blackburn is tight and the pace enjoyably brisk and even affords some suitably tense moments as it reaches its climax, particularly if you can enjoy it for what it is and not question the leaps in logic too much. It helps too if you recognise it for what it is – for although it initially has the traits of a psychological thriller (and occasionally seems to have pretensions of being a black comedy in the Shallow Grave mould), by the final act it devolves into something that’s more familiar and along the lines of a teen slasher flick from the 80′s, which in one sense is somewhat disappointing as it becomes predictable and with a more adept script the psychological twists and turns in the characters and how far they’ll go to save their own necks, coupled with the confined locations, would have been more intriguing, but at the same time is perfectly serviceable. In fact, if you approach it in the manner of a slasher and don’t expect too much, then many of those concerns about logic go away since idiotic teenagers doing dumb things that get them into trouble is a staple of the genre, not to mention T&A and violence, which it also delivers. On these terms, you can do a hell of a lot worse and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was sufficiently entertained, despite the obvious flaws. If you’re going into it with the idea that you’re going to be blown away by something extreme, then you’re going to be disappointed; if, on the other hand, you’re interested solely for the purposes of tutting and commenting on the depravity of it all, then let’s face it, this film’s not for you…in fact, this genre’s not for you…hell, I’m not sure what is for you, maybe crocheting. So rather than getting worked up and letting your blood pressure rise, why don’t you just walk on by and leave it to us sane people that can differentiate between reality and fiction, m’kay?

Looking at the modern remake of the seminal 1960’s existential-horror series, The Prisoner.

I grew up watching the re-runs of The Prisoner when I was a teenager, and it fucked with my head. I’m not exaggerating, it utterly messed me up – I would have Kafka-like nightmares of being trapped by normality, go into school and rant about a television programme no-one else had even heard of, never mind watched. A dangerous thing for a teenager to do – be different. Much like the series. And wait a minute, if no-one else had seen it, is it all in my head, like the programme?
I had, like many people, NEVER encountered anything so simultaneously dynamic and intelligent in equal measure. It spanned the evolution of one character, from hapless victim into a powerful figure turning the tables on Authority. The Final Episode was an explosive finale of truly metaphysical proportions.
It has easily become my gold standard of existential horror.

What was it about? Well, it appeared to be about a spy who resigns, is captured and brought to The Village, a surreal environment with hints of European hinterlands, where names are replaced with numbers and our hero is assigned the number 6, and where week after week he is repeatedly subjected to torturous psychological tests to find out why he resigned, while he does everything in his power to escape or survive.

What was it really about? Human society and the pressure to conform, the nature of identity, religion, the nature of growing older and more resilient in your beliefs in a world that seeks to prove you wrong – much of the appeal is it never explains itself, and in the 1960’s, that was unusual.
That it was remade recently with the same intent – not to explain itself, is still very unusual, especially in a day of easy-going blockbusters, and simple television series. That it was not made by HBO, the major television risk-taker in the world is rarer still.

The Original 60’s ‘Prisoner’ series:

Patrick McGoohan, the main actor, was then an incredibly popular face in the Spy series Danger Man, but wanted to jump ship before it declined, and was driven by personal creativity, and a reputed ego, into imagining The Prisoner. As the central creator of the series, conjuring the main idea, and core episodes, he often wrote and directed under pseudonyms, and was always in overall control.

Recent documentaries have old crew members recalling that they were filming early episodes with NO IDEA of what it meant, with NO scripts for later episodes. It caused fights, which led to the other main writer, who preferred the satirical element, to walk away before the end, leaving the existential and sociological elements to become so central and exaggerated that they developed into a new form of horror.

The new 2009 ‘Pris6ner’ series:

The handsome actor James Caviezel (Outlander) is as equally charismatic as Patrick McGoohan was then, and adds to the religious element of the story (having been Jesus in The Passion Of The Christ). His physicality adds to the action-packed moments, and as a love interest he is believable, with each episode presenting a different facet of the relationship – moving from suspicion towards trust, from attraction to love, then from love he is propelled into betrayal.
Love is a new theme, but central to the remake – two love interests, one major, adds enormously to the series, becoming a new form of torture and drama in its own right, rather than just an element added for the sake of modernisation.

Original versus New.

I expected the remake to fall flat. I am so glad I was wrong. Some disagree, so I’ll mention their concerns.

Fans can have a field-day with the various references to the original that crop up in the remake, both visual (black jackets lined with white, the penny-farthing cycle), verbal (Be Seeing You), and thematic, which the new series used without appearing odd, out of place, or distracting from a thoroughly modern story.

While the new series is only 6 episodes in comparison to the original’s 17, I don’t view this as either a bad thing, or indeed cost-cutting. Patrick McGoohan is on record as having said he only wanted seven episodes, but was forced into expanding it to seventeen to be able to sell it to American networks. While I love the original, it shows on a few occasions, where an idea is stretched for a whole episode, rather than used appropriately as part of a more complex single episode.
So, the brevity of the modern series is actually a bonus – it allows the money not to be spread too thin, keeping the show slick and well-honed, while maximising the impact of the central ideas, and changes in shift of approach, keeping you off-balance – even my savviest media friends were perplexed by the series intent, which is as it should be.

On the other side, some feel the modern brevity is badly done – they dislike the editing style, where many cuts elided a little time. They think it was supposed to make things feel disorientating, so it annoys their visual appreciation as it was taken too far. Every time they cut to a new angle it’d jump forwards in the scene by fractions of a second. One critical friend said – It made it feel breathless and somewhat brainless too. That the 180 degree rule was possibly being broken as a stylistic choice to disorientate was also a distasteful thing. Let me counter with, I watch a lot of films and TV, and I neither noticed nor care now that I know, but suspect certain entrenched filmic golden-rules reared their ugly head in that stance.

There are other improvements I believe. The remake begins with Number 6 just waking up in the desert, not knowing how he got there. It adds intrigue after intrigue episode by episode as to how he was brought/came to The Village. In the original, this whole idea is dealt with in a few brief minutes, and is used as the introductory sequence for later episodes. I’m glad to see they expanded a good idea into a great one.

The remake has a larger ensemble cast. I suspect this is partly a shift in audience expectations (‘or maybe because there isn’t an egomaniac writer-director-producer-lead actor’ some feel), as many modern viewers would find it hard to swallow only one constant character week-to-week, and also partly a desire to expand upon certain ideas by growing other characters from within the ideas-framework. Trust me, they are KEY to the new series, not merely tacked on, and chime beautifully with the core concepts of the original, and ultimately create new moments of drama in the crescendo series finale.

Oddly, one of the major strengths of the original – the constant changing of the actor of the nefarious Number 2, who seeks each week by any means to find out why Number 6 quit, thus keeping a fresh, almost desperate battle, with a nebulous opponent (‘Who is Number One?!’), is not used in the new series. When I heard in advance of this, I was hugely sceptical. I suspected that a central, joyous interplay of forces shown through characters was gone – father-son, authority-rebel, guardian-seeker. The original penultimate episode was solely this interplay, constantly shifting due to ‘storyline’ but really to show off two of the best actors of their generation, McGoohan as No.6 and Leo McKern as No.2 – an episode SO intense that McKern had to be taken away because the crew thought he was in danger of having a heart-attack. So, looking at the remake, the new, constant Number 2, may be the great actor Sir Ian McKellen, I thought, but surely that won’t work, or have the same appeal of changing stimuli. And I was wrong – they integrate Number 2 so deeply into the storyline, that he becomes indispensable, adding elements, of doubt, pathos and fear, that never existed in the original – Number Two’s family is it’s own, new, theme, bringing rich emotional landscapes, and a surprise in the final episode, that prove you can alter major elements of a classic, if you do the new thing BETTER. To balance my out-and-out joy, I should mention others felt McKellen didn’t have enough to do. I agree occasionally they pull him out in the same manner the Ring was used in Lord of the Rings – to inspire an emotion, but I feel the ending twist and overall elements of familial drama redeem the role.

Dare I reveal too much? Is there where I post the dreaded SPOILER word? Skip the next two paragraphs if you don’t want to read how it ends.

The Village becomes a place of the Mind, rather than a physical location, adding to the originals idea and expanding it fully into a central idea.
The end is different. In the original Number 6 tries to escape but is perceived to have failed. In the modern version, well, let’s just say it’s doubly dark…I won’t give everything away.

There are ghostly twin tower skyscrapers that are never reached until the end, there is a constant switch back to the moments after he resigned, to hint at how he was captured, which add confusion as well as heavily suggested meaning. These apparent flashbacks to a normal world, possibly not flashbacks at all, may be flashes into a different level of consciousness.

Lastly, a film-note:

Christopher Nolan (Dark Knight) WAS scheduled to do a film of The Prisoner in 2012. The script was by David and Janet Peoples who wrote Twelve Monkeys.

“If the series was wildly popular that might affect us. The screenplay (we’ve got) is such a re-imagination of the series…”
(from: http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/story/nolan-drops-the-prisoner_1113280)

But Nolan stepped out, supposedly due to the third Batman film. However the recent ‘Inception’ is so close in style and content that either it IS The Prisoner re-written (by Nolan himself) to remove the shackles of fans associations, or he’s into a certain vein. A potentially cool but humourless film Liam thinks, and while that’s likely I would forgive much bleakness and lack of balancing levity if it dirtily fingered with my brain, and left it’s stinky linen lying around my frontal lobes for a few months.

[And anyone that doesn’t think The Village could ever exist, that it’s all a step too far into Metaphor – just look at American retirement villages: http://www.thevillages.com/]

What is 3-D?

What is 3-D? Theatre. That is 3-D. Real life is 3-D. When someone actually punches you in the face – that’s 3-D. Anything else is attempting to give the illusion of 3-D, and as cinema has always tried to depict real life and failed miserably, it’s basically cinema, but more in your face.

After minutes of research, Gorepress scientists discovered how 3-D works: two synchronized projectors display two films on the cinema screen, one after another in quick succession. Your 3-D glasses allow only one of these images into each eye and the easily-fooled human brain then combines those two 2-D images into one single, 3-dimensional scene – therefore creating the illusion of depth. Apparently it’s more complicated than that, but that’s the extreme basics.

In recent years the company RealD has emerged as the world’s most widely use tech for 3-D – they’re the company who designed those sleek new glasses you resent paying for. RealD perfected the 3-D technique to ensure that you can experience the 3-D at every angle, providing a better view for all. No longer will you tilt your head and lose the 3-D. It’s vastly improved.

Before RealD, 3-D films had always been niche and never greatly received. This is mostly due to a lack of available funds, as the equipment involved in filming and displaying 3-D cinema is expensive and complicated. But everything has changed in recent years – the big Hollywood players have vomited gold at the new technology, and the cinemas have reluctantly followed.

3-D is here to stay.

Why 3-D?

With a significant increase in film piracy, 3-D is a sly way of ensuring no one can record a 3-D film from a 3-D cinema screen – unless you want a blurred, confusing movie as a result. It also means cinemas can charge more, what with the addition of 3-D glasses – a controversial issue on a number of levels. Building the screens costs the cinema, so inevitably the customers absorb these costs – some cinemas pass it off as a glasses fee, while others are less shameless, forcing you to pay for a “better” experience. Whatever the reason, it’s an additional fee the viewer has to suffer with, which means the film industry is once-again blowing its feet off with bazookas – people had already turned to piracy because they felt the cinema was too expensive, so making it more expensive doesn’t prevent piracy, it promotes it. For now, anyway…

The 3-D future we’ve been promised is a long way off still, so snuffing out piracy is a long way off too. All 3-D films are also shown in 2-D, so the pirates just have to choose their cinemas wisely. Also, no one has a 3-D television. So when a 3-D film does come out on DVD or Blu-Ray then all the benefits of having it in 3-D are eliminated – okay, you get 2 free pairs of 3-D glasses with The Final Destination, but it will look like the 3-D films of old (that no one really liked – see Friday the 13th Part III for details…) and means you can only watch it with two people at once.

3-D in Horror

3-D can be very impressive in certain types of films. In Avatar it’s so damn good it’s hardly noticeable and within the cartoon worlds of Bolt, Up and Monsters Vs Aliens it’s seamless and gloriously fun, because the camera can go wherever it needs to in order to make the 3-D a compelling, excellent experience without compromising the story. 3-D in other less motion-captury, cartoony or James Camerony films, however, still needs to vastly improve. And this significantly includes the horror genre.

3-D in horror has never been a sign of quality. Back in the days of crappy card-board glasses, the eighties provided laughable attempts at 3-D, and the likes of Jaws 3-D, Amityville Horror 3-D and Parasite 3-D proved three-dimensions were just a way of getting bums on seats because the story and characters barely existed. Perhaps the advent of the new 3-D will attract a different calibre of horror film… but considering the recent offerings, don’t count on it.

The only 3-D horror films which used RealD technology in recent years are My Bloody Valentine 3-D (2009) and The Final Destination (2009). The reviews for these suggest exactly how thrilling 3-D made them. It didn’t.

Within the framework of a horror film, it can actually be detrimental to the story and creative vision to put a film in 3-D. The My Bloody Valentine remake was an infuriating cavalcade of “things being thrown at the screen”, from a pick-axe through a windscreen to a pickaxe through a head (about twenty times). It forces the creative team to compromise their vision in order to create a 3-D death or scare, essentially playing up to a gimmick. It certainly reduces any tension or the possibility of a slow, torturous demise – and doesn’t leave anything to the imagination. It’s not allowed to.

Whether a lack of 3-D would have improved the likes of My Bloody Valentine and The Final Destination is unknown, but the forthcoming releases of Piranha, Resident Evil: Afterlife and, absurdly, Saw VII only leaves a sense of concern and bewilderment for horror fans. Okay, so Resident Evil is less of a horror and more of a visually-arresting, dumb-arse action flick, but Saw has always been known for it’s slow, horribly inventive deaths on a very personal level. The implementation of 3-D within this framework means every death will have to involve something popping out of the screen at us – and if not, why even have it in 3-D? A creepy puppet clown on a bicycle in 3-D just isn’t worth paying extra for…

What does 3-D add to a Horror film?

Frankly, it adds a “wow” factor. It’s a selling point. What it doesn’t do is make the audience leap in fear or surprise like the embarrassing adverts for My Bloody Valentine falsely depicted. 3-D is in its infancy and it’s therefore deliberately noticeable – it’s what you’ve paid an extra £1.50 or so for, after all. Sprinkles on ice cream, 1st class seating, a disease-free hooker – you pay more, you expect to receive more. Yet by making it noticeable, at specific points, it makes you instantly realise you’re watching a film, pulling you from the realms of a world created by the director / writer and throwing you instantly back into your own reality.

Perhaps this doesn’t matter for über unrealistic deathfests such as the Resident Evil and Final Destination franchises, but with Saw and a lot of other horror films, the character and story should suck you in, compel you and ultimately keep you gripped throughout. The Shining in 3-D would be horribly uncompelling, for example, and more than a little needless. When 3-D is used, currently it needs to be there solely to entertain as it breaks the narrative, disturbs the story and essentially makes you go “my, that decapitated head flying at me is rather well realised, isn’t it dear?”.

And some of it is very good. No-one has neared the insane technological prowess of Avatar, of course (and I’d love to see a horror movie with a budget in excess of 200 million dollars to allow it to achieve that ridiculous pedestal), so we’re only given glimpses of decent 3-D instead. Oddly, the best 3-D moment in The Final Destination was when an elastoplast floats past the screen while underwater in a swimming pool. It is genuinely impressive. The flying tyre, the flying car engine, the flying pebble and all the other “it’s 3-D! Quick – fling something at the camera!” moments were expected, dull and too quick to be spectacular. Again, the Final Destination franchise is known for its gleefully inventive deaths – but the 3-D seems to have compromised their latest output even more than usual.

The Future of 3-D Horror

Until the technology becomes cheap enough to be standard practice, it’s as necessary to have a Saw film in 3-D as it is to have archived Charlie Chaplin documentaries in 7.1 surround sound Blu-Ray. Perhaps for mayhem-filled idiotic horrors such as Resident Evil and Final Destination it’s acceptable, but it still suffocates creativity, even when dealing with inventive death-dealing.

3-D may eventually save us from the evil movie pirates that are currently raping Hollywood, but until every cinema and every film is in 3-D all it does is make horror films more expensive, more unbelievable and more likely to compromise their creative vision for gimmickry and lobbing a CGI pickaxe at the screen. It may be the future for the horror genre, but currently it is utterly pointless.

Forthcoming Horror films in 3-D (some are in pre-production):

• The Cabin in the Woods
• Condition Dead 3D
• Cowboys from Hell 3D
• Friday the 13th Part 2
• Horrorween
• Piranha 3D
• Priest
• Ratred 3D
• Resident Evil: Afterlife
• Saw VII
• Underworld 4

I can’t say that back when I heard the announcement that Rob Zombie would be helming a remake of John Carpenter‘s classic Halloween that I was thrilled, not because I’m one of those people who hold a film in such high reverence that I consider a remake to automatically be verboten (after all, Carpenter himself has proven with The Thing that it’s perfectly possible to take an old movie that has plenty going for it in and of itself – in this case Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World – and with a good, intelligent script and some classy direction you can create something that’s its own beast and able to stand on its own two cloven hooves), but because both of Zombie’s previous directorial efforts, House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, had left me cold.  So naturally, I wasn’t one of the people jumping up and down with excitement at his next project. 2007 arrived and on its back the promised behemoth, I bit the bullet and got in line at the cinema with everyone else to see Zombie’s take on the iconic Michael Myers…let’s just say I was less than impressed.

Fast forward to 2010 and I’m looking at the Blu-Ray sitting on my friend’s coffee table, accusation vivid in its baleful glare…well okay, so it was just sitting their innocuously, gathering a little dust, but you get my meaning. I’m often willing to give a movie I disliked a second chance, especially when time has passed between viewings, on the possibility that perhaps I missed something the first time around or that I just wasn’t in the mood for it, so my curiosity as to whether this would prove the case here was already setting the wheels in motion. What finally pushed it over the edge was the scrawl on the box which read “Unrated Director’s Cut”. I’d heard tell from various sources at the time that the theatrical version I’d seen had been horribly butchered and that a bootleg workprint of the film that was doing the rounds was vastly superior, and when this “Unrated Director’s Cut” hit the home media market it had restored many of these missing moments. So that was that, I was determined to go in with an open mind and give this movie another go-round.

It confirmed my suspicions: Rob Zombie should not be allowed near a camera for the rest of his natural life. Anyone who finds this irredeemable piece of shit even remotely entertaining has to have checked their standards at the door. Everything about this film is completely inept and puerile, from the script upwards. The whole “redneck/trailer trash/abusive family” backstory that is meant to give us some idea as to what turns the boy Michael into the brutal killer he becomes seems to have been sewn together out of every conceivable stereotypical anecdote going; if “Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel” from The Simpsons had wandered in at this point, he would easily have been the most three dimensional character on screen. This half-arsed notion was bad enough in the theatrical version, it reaches a whole new nadir in the “Unrated” cut with a scene that had been excised (and should have stayed that way) which provides an alternate method of the fully-grown Michael’s escape from the asylum and involves two hillbilly orderlies (whose dialogue and look makes you wonder if they walked off a remake of Deliverance) raping a patient. Oh, how cutting edge, how deviant of you, Rob, throwing a little casual rape in there for no good reason, other than shock value (at which, like the rest of your execrable movie fails miserably). Throw into that mix the laziest, most shallow pop psychology you can find and this is the supposed “depth” that is meant to be the foundation of not just Michael’s makeover but the reason the remake even exists.

The story from this point on, once Michael reaches adulthood and escapes from his imprisonment, pretty much follows and often is a direct lift of Carpenter’s film, the problem being that by packing this into the last half of the movie it has none of the build-up and pace that make Carpenter’s version an exercise in suspense, instead it feels rushed and as it goes from one scene to the next you feel neither shock, tension nor, failing these two, entertainment as any possible primitive glee a fan might derive from a particularly well done bit of violence or gore is absolutely ruined by camerawork that’s so shaky that it could have been filmed during an earthquake. The editing is so MTV-quick that it should come with an epilepsy warning, and naturally there’s that other culprit accompanying them, the overcranked sound effects which make everything THUD and BOOM at every given opportunity. None of this makes it in the least riveting or scary, it’s just plain annoying, and if it’s even possible to make it worse then it manages this feat by way of the grating soundtrack, which is intrusive and just so obvious in the choices of songs that it borders on the childish, it’s the music equivalent of a paint-by-numbers. By far the worst aural offender, though, is the complete misuse of the “Halloween theme” that Carpenter composed for the original film, a tune that’s instantly recognisable to genre fans and is a vital part of what makes Carpenter’s Halloween work in that it’s not merely “creepy background music”, it lives and breathes with the beats and scares of the movie, underscoring the mood of the piece rather than being in synch with on-screen character movement or overtly manipulating an audience’s emotional response to a scene. For a man whose background is in the music industry, Zombie’s lack of understanding as to how to make the theme work on any level is baffling, there are times when it’s clearly just there because someone thought to themselves that it should be because it’s a Halloween movie, without any appreciation for making it fit in with the rest of the picture’s style and as such when it does appear, it’s hamfisted and serves only to remind the viewer of just how effective it was in Carpenter’s flick, a comparison it could desperately do without.

Plot holes and contrivances abound, as reason is sacrificed on the altar of style, like the lamebrain way in which Michael’s iconic mask is re-introduced after he escapes incarceration – so, let me get this straight, the young Michael goes on a killing spree (I’m giving nothing away here, I’d hope) and then before the cops arrive he has the time, and not to mention the foresight, to hide a mask he’s going to conveniently want in the future, by not only pulling up but then replacing the floorboards perfectly so they look undisturbed? This dunderheaded contrivance has zero meaning, substance or internal logic, the sole purpose of this move is making sure there’s a reason why the mask has that aged, grungy look that Zombie had obviously set his heart on for the promo ads and to show just how “hardcore” his vision is meant to be, something which might impress the average twelve-year-old but nobody else. It all just adds to the overall ugliness of this vision – a grungy look and unpleasant characters that nobody cares for (only Brad Dourif as the Sheriff of Haddonfield comes through with anything approaching likeability, largely because it’s a cameo part – if it had been larger I’m quite sure someone would have written in a subplot about an incestuous relationship with his daughter and dropkicking puppies whilst crying “YEE-HAW!”). As for the acting, it’s largely dreadful, Malcolm McDowell hammily sleepwalks through the role and lets his hairpiece do most of the emoting, and Sheri Moon Zombie would never be allowed in front of a camera if it weren’t for nepotism and her husband being amazed by her skanky arse. Scout Taylor-Compton is uniformly irritating in the lead as Laurie Strode, giving a performance that’s one-note and overwrought – yes, we get that you’re scared, but if you keep yelling and whimpering every time so much as a floorboard creaks under your pursuer’s weight then he’s obviously going to find you and you have nobody to blame but yourself when he guts you, you silly bitch. Sheesh!

Every minute of this overlong turkey drags and feels like an age, muddled and careening with the delicacy and grace of a rugby player in a tutu from one boring, tensionless set-piece to the next, with Michael Myers becoming more and more like Jason Voorhees in full supercharged smash-through-walls zombie mode as it goes along. And at just shy of two hours, the anticlimactic ending can’t come soon enough – Christ, in 2001: A Space Odyssey it didn’t take Kubrick two hours to go from the origin of man to him exploring the cosmos and taking the next step of evolution 100,000 years (give or take) later!

Two skulls out of ten, and one of those is just because I appreciate how difficult it can be to get a movie made and into cinemas. Please, Rob, stick to music videos, full length movies are not your forte.

Despite me hating the thankfully underused decade coinage “The Noughties”, I have noticed this period of time is coming to a close as 2010 quickly approaches (next decade: “The Tennies”?), and we’re all knocking out the usual clichés, like “where the hell did this year go?” and “next year is the year I definitely make a horror film”.

In 2000 I was still at University, for some reason studying Drama and Theatre Studies, but during that drink-fuelled memory-buggering time I watched a thousand more films than I did plays. Especially horror films.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing, though, and here at Gorepress we’d like to take the opportunity to reminisce on the best (and worst) horror films of the past ten years that we’ve laughed at, cried at, yelled at and shat our pants at. Perhaps it’ll inspire future viewing choices, or perhaps it’ll just make you realise how awesome our tastes are. Whatever the case, these are the films you all should’ve watched in… “The Noughties” for entertainment, quality and just pure brilliance.

Everyone has that one movie that changed their life, that experience that completely altered the way they viewed the world. For some people it is Citizen Kane, for others it might be Twilight. For me, it was Terror Firmer…

I was 14 when I had my first Tromatic experience, Channel 4 were running Troma flicks late night on a Friday and I just happened to catch Terror Firmer this one Friday while I was dozing off (I would later find out that I missed Cannibal: The Musical the prior week and weep). I remember it so well, I switched to 4 and this movie was already some of the way through. A guy called The Todster was snorting coke with a mysterious lady who rips out a part of his brain and fries it. At that point I had only really known about zombie flicks and mainstream horror fare, so to see gore that extreme, sex that gratuitous, and some of the wittiest satire I had seen since Duck Soup, really struck me right where I needed it. Well that was it, I was hooked! I followed the Troma season on TV until it stopped and then tried to find every Troma video I could*.

If you don’t know about Troma, first take a run at the nearest wall, head first to knock some sense into yourself, read this and then hit the Troma site to buy the DVDs (http://www.troma.com/). Troma was started back in 1974 by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz and focused on sex comedies like The First Turn On. Later they hit the masses with a little movie called The Toxic Avenger. After their success was secured by that smash hit they continued making and distributing films of all genres, even though they are mainly known for their exploitation titles.

The thing about Troma and its movies is that they are ridiculous and fun but they almost always have plenty of subtext. They have something important to say, and if you can watch a blind girl fuck a hideously deformed creature of superhuman size and strength while they whisper it to you, then all the better! When I was a kid it was just to watch the boobs, see the gore, taste the Bromo Seltzer, and hear the squelching. But now Troma works so well for me because of Kaufman’s staunch principles and dedication to independent cinema. He consistently refuses to compromise his artistic vision and keeps afloat the largest independent film company remaining without bowing to the pressure of the Hollywood machine. These ideals and their commitment to finding and showcasing exciting, new talent from around the world should be an inspiration to anyone with a vested interest in film and the industry that surrounds it.

Here is a list of some of my favourite Troma films, with a bit about why I love them so.

And so we have come full circle. There are literally thousands of other Troma releases, which differ in quality but never in message: Keep independent film independent.

Troma have recently re-released a few of their films on blu-ray, so if that is your particular poison then go and buy buy buy (There are plenty of DVDs still available to us technological luddites too).

*I remember the first being The Action Hunters, which starred this Ron Jeremy looking dude who gets embroiled in a scheme and has to take some beautiful girl on the run. I also remember having an Australian VHS of The Last Temptation Of Toxie that I guess used to live in a rental shop. It was in a box even larger than those of UK rental cases and was made of the flimsiest plastic ever forged by man. The video didn’t even work in my PAL player.

Those that know me will find no surprises here, those that don’t will probably find this list a curious mixture of obvious and obscure choices. I’ll no doubt be shunned by most of the zombie puritans and the horror community at large for leaving out any of Romero’s important contributions to the genre but fuck it, as flawed and incorrect as you might think my list is, these are, in no order, My Top 5 Zombie Movies.

The thing that really scared me about Romero’s classic was the ending, sure I’d seen the hero make it through only to have one final scare and then a tacked on does-he-or-doesn’t-he-die ending. This had something different, something really special, and something which has stayed with me all this time. Night Of The Living Dead may not even make it into this list, but it spawned something in me. From that moment on I was hooked and I am pretty sure I will never stop digging those shuffling nasties.

I’ve thought long and hard about this list, and while it might not include anything surprising, it is mine.

So here are my Top 5 Zombie Flicks in no real order:

5th October 2009 – Curzon Cinema – 18:10

The Curzon Soho is an intimate cinema with a lot of charm and a real love of independent and foreign films – the walls ooze with an understated intelligence and adoration of movies that move, surprise and mean something. The bar serves a range of interesting and delicious snacks, from freshly made soup to huge strawberry meringues, while the snacks counter has the usual array of fresh popcorn and syrupy drinks to appease the rigidly traditional cinema-goers.

The Curzon Soho survives in the heart of London – jostling between the mighty giants of the Odeons, Cineworlds, Empire and Vue – because of its regular clientele of film-lovers and its staunch practice of sticking to screening what they believe is quality, not just what a huge advert and 500 TV spots says it should show. It ignores the blockbuster and celebrates the smaller films, something only a few independent cinemas and Picturehouses bravely do today.

Hosting a post-film question and answer session with Korean director Park Chan-Wook was a smart move, packing the cinema with an audience who respect his previous work and genuinely want to hear his opinion. There was only one stupid question asked (more on that later).

Park Chan-Wook is the Korean Writer / Director of such classics as Joint Security Area, I’m a Cyborg. Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance, the latter three affectionately labeled as “The Vengeance Trilogy”. Chan-Wook is most famed for Oldboy, a brutally twisted story of a man kidnapped for fifteen years and released without reason. This unique film is perhaps best known for an extended one-shot fight scene down a corridor, the eating of a live cephalopod and some horrific self-surgery. Yet all of Park Chan-Wook’s work is memorable for the unique characters, fresh direction and moments of extreme violence. Oldboy is set to receive the remake treatment, currently by Steven Spielberg and Will Smith, if you can imagine it. Thirst is destined to head in the same direction, being perhaps the most commercially viable of his films in this age of Bella & Edward, Sookie Stackhouse and Anita Blake et al.

Thirst won the coveted Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival in May this year, and was also nominated for the illustrious Golden Palm. It has received positive reviews wherever it has played and is destined to be a classic, standing proud amongst the other more highly regarded vampire films such as Nosferatu and Let the Right One In.

Park Chan-Wook has refused to jump ship from the Korean film studios and land in the comfortable waters of Hollywood, retaining the services of an interpreter rather than learn the English language, much like horror auteur Dario Argento. There is something honourable about this, and his dedication to his own country’s film industry is greatly respected.

As the clock ticks past 18:15, The Times’ James Christopher introduces Park Chan-Wook. In an inoffensive suit and walking with a casual gait, Park Chan-Wook comes on stage with his translator and bows humbly to the audience before heading off to dinner while we watch his 133 minute vampire epic. Sweetly, Park Chan-Wook suggests that if we do like his film, and don’t leave half-way through, then he would be back to answer our questions after the film. No one leaves. Everyone stays.

The film itself is excellent – a masterfully crafted piece of work that shocks, surprises, amuses and gets the brain-cells firing for a long time after.

Over two hours later and the Curzon staff let the credits roll fully before ushering Park-Chan Wook, his interpreter and James Christopher back on stage.

James Christopher asks a few pertinent, pre-arranged questions, which Park Chan-Wook answers in length, and then his interpreter retells in length, from memory. Impressive as this is, we learn a number of things about our Korean director.

“I don’t like long pauses of seriousness or fear or sorrow, so I like to break it with humour.” Coming from the director of the endlessly bleak Oldboy, this is somewhat surprising. He admits that the origin of all his characters come from tragedy and comedy – and the balance is a tentative one.

Regarding Thirst as a whole, Park Chan-Wook felt the general concept of a priest attempting to retain religion and morality whilst becoming a vampire was humourous in itself. Perhaps it is his long-lasting affiliation with the church that makes him find this more hilarious than tragic.

Park Chan-Wook explains how he was brought up Roman Catholic, and at a young age his local priests said that he could be a great Bishop one day. This was the moment he gave up going to church. For Park Chan-Wook the idea of giving everything up was a horrible concept – women, drinking, an alternative future – but this decision, this tiny revelation, put into motion the lifelong intrigue around what kind of private life a priest must have. When he first encountered Holy Communion it reminded him of cannibalism and vampirism – consuming the blood and body of Christ – and this influenced his thoughts on a vampire clergyman, further fuelling this idea. There is some level of irony in Park Chan-Wook’s reaction to being told he would make a fantastic Bishop – he created a morally demented horror film about a clergyman whose humanity is ripped from him slowly and brutally.

After the pre-scripted replies, James Christopher opens the questions to the floor. With these Q&A sessions, there was so much opportunity to ask idiotic and irrelevant questions, but luckily the Curzon’s audience seem to focus more on the film in hand (apart from one fool… more on that later). Surprisingly, there was also no “how did you convince Min-sik Choi to eat a live octopus in Oldboy?” or any displays of cringing idolatry. All questions were relevant to his overall work or Thirst itself.

I have paraphrased the Q&A session below, and I’m paraphrasing the interpreter’s paraphrasing, yet the essence of Park Chan-Wook’s responses are focused and honest.

The atheist character is much more immoral than the vampiric priest – happy to kill without guilt. Is this a way to say it is wrong to not have faith?

Priest Sang-hyeon did not give himself up to change, and is pitiful because of it, whilst the atheist is free but gives up humanity. “Neither is positive, each has negative aspects”, Park Chan-Wook explains. It was not his intention to promote religion.

Park Chan-Wook mentioned earlier how Priest Sang-hyeon reflected his own personality in many ways – he is pathetic when he struggles with choice, but feels he is more human because of it.

Innocent men being pushed into doing horrific things is a theme amongst your work – why does this come up?

“I like to show normal innocent people who experience a horrific accident,” he tells us – for example, being trapped in a cell for fifteen years, being wrongly imprisoned for child murder, being turned into a vampire. In these cases, he explains, it is after they die in a symbolic way that we watch the character transform in a very interesting way. This is what interests him.

Has popular vampire culture influenced this project?

Park Chan-Wook admits to have never seen True Blood or Let the Right One In whilst making Thirst. His project has been in development for ten years, so he has not been influenced by the recent popularity increase in the vampire genre.

Is anything lost or misinterpreted during the translation process?

It is always difficult, especially with cultural differences, as some character is always lost in translation. Park Chan-Wook explains how bilingual people often approach him and question him, saying “great film, but the translation is terrible”, but if they tried to do it themselves they would understand how difficult it is.

One cultural difference, for example, is that Korean’s cannot call their elders by their first name – it is a mark of disrespect. Park Chan-Wook is addressed in Korea by his vocation as “Director”. So technically James Christopher should’ve been calling him Director Chan-Wook all evening… disrespectful sod.

Park Chan-Wook explains that despite these cultural and language differences, sometimes it is much funnier and more interesting when translated, so English-speaking audiences are missing and gaining things.

What films influenced Thirst?

Park Chan-Wook seemed uncharacteristically cagey about mentioning anything that inspired him, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

Influenced is a “big word”. Possession by Andrzej Zulawski perhaps had some influence, but Thirst is homage to this, not inspired by it. His main actress, Ok-vin Kim, asked for help in acting during certain scenes and Park Chan-Wook made her watch Possession to influence her acting. The only real homage to this is Ok-vin Kim wearing a Blue Dress in Thirst’s climax, which is identical to the one Isabelle Adjani wears in Possession.

The Q&A ends here, and Park Chan-Wook once again bows his appreciation to the clapping crowd. He is a smart director, humble, intellectual, humourous and likeable. As one of the audience, it was a pleasure to see him live.

Personally, I only thought of my own pertinent questions on the journey home, where my mind managed to digest everything it had witnessed. There is a lot of depth in Thirst, a lot more than you initially notice, and a second viewing has now become essential.

Oh, and I almost forgot the idiotic question. Here it is.

My sister asks, do you like Twilight?

Park Chan-Wook sighs wryly (no translation required).

“My daughter loves it,” he replies, diplomatically.

Apart from an older generation (and fans of period dramas) to whom the word may conjure images of powdered tobacco being snorted from ornate tin boxes, for the rest of us, especially the cine-literate, the word is associated with death, in particular the (alleged) real on-screen murder of another human being for the purpose of titillating the audience for whom the material was filmed, with profit as a possible motive. The debate over “snuff” continues unabated – the main topic usually being to do with its existence (the “there’s no actual proof” versus “if human beings are capable, it must exist somewhere” argument), but even its definition will often be contested (for instance there are some who would like to include in that definition the selling of material that includes actual footage of humans being killed accidentally or political executions, which would make, for example, the Faces of Death series “snuff”).

It’s almost an urban legend, the cinematic equivalent of Bigfoot, belief is fuelled more by faith and hypothesis than any emergent hard evidence. Its origins are allegedly born in the 60′s, courtesy of a rumour that Charles Manson and his “family” filmed themselves murdering victims and buried this footage (never found), which became the subject of high-profile tabloid rumours, leading naturally to it becoming fodder for exploitation moguls like Allan Shackleton to cash-in on, with the likes of Snuff (1976). Snuff apparently started life as a piss-poor slasher that would have been almost un-saleable, but with the buzzwords being bandied about by the media, Shackleton saw the potential in re-issuing it with the altered title, removed the end credits and added the now infamous tagline: “Made in South America – where life is cheap!”. It was a shrewd move financially, as the concept is one that both tantalises with the possibility of salacious, taboo content and also courts natural controversy, which is great free press – just look at how well Snuff did out of the “Video Nasties” panic in the UK; it had all but been forgotten, but since the short-sighted people involved with that little fiasco declared it banned, they instead only managed to give it publicity and a resurrection, pretty much like every movie on that list which for the hardcore horrorhounds of the day was like a shopping list of “must-sees”.

Since then there has been the occasional decent or half-decent attempt to make a film with snuff as a subject, like Paul Schrader’s Hardcore (1979) which touches on it briefly or Mute Witness (1994), which despite a few silly contrivances manages to be a neat little thriller. But more often than not it’s the idea behind low budget sleazefests which simply use it as a quick gimmick for exploitation purposes, like Fatal Frames (1996) or Snuff 102 (2007). This approach has even been perpetuated (alongside the most spurious aspects of the snuff myth) by big budget garbage like Joel Schumacher’s shameful 8MM (1999) which clunks terribly and betrays jaw-dropping lack of complexity or depth, deliberately churning out every possible stereotype and exploitation trick it can so that it plays to a wider audience out for a little titillation and to tut afterwards, including the same uninformed, conservative audience who would likely have supported the “Video Nasties” censorship based on this kind of trite misinformation.

This is why, for horror fans, “snuff” is a perpetually hot topic for a very good reason: at the heart of it are the same arguments that are generally levelled at the horror genre by those on the outside, those who see it as a corrupting influence, but also by fans themselves who are willing to probe their own feelings as horror continues to evolve. It’s about the relationship between horrific images and the viewer, of sex and violence, of the perverse desire innate in all of us to break boundaries and witness the taboo. Many come to horror and seek to test their limits, to push outwards and perhaps beyond previously drawn boundaries, and that goes both for fans and filmmakers alike. Is there a line, should there be one? When does testing limits of acceptance go from rebellion and experimentation to prurience? They’re questions which have been asked of horror probably since the beginning, and the idea of “snuff”, of someone going from watching faked violence to real may have seemed remote at one time but now with the possibilities offered by the internet, and with even mainstream horror films like Captivity (2007) courting this idea, baiting the critics with the new wave of (erroneously named) “torture porn” flicks or perhaps even closer to the bone of this issue movies like the execrable August Underground series, which are basically faux-snuff, make the issue all the more relevant.

All of which, by way of being a woefully brief and incomplete history of “snuff” and yet a very long-winded preamble to a review, is necessary, because it must be understood outright how complex and thorny an issue this is and how easy any film dealing with it can immediately fall at the first hurdle. What makes Alejandro Amenábar’s Tesis (Thesis) all the more impressive is that it not only navigates these pitfalls with ease but for a low-budget picture it doesn’t resort to mining the cheaper tricks of its competitors (though nor does it become preachy or pretend to have all the answers), whilst remaining throughout a taught and intelligent thriller. The plot revolves around Ángela (Ana Torrent), a film student who is writing her thesis on violence in movies. She enlists the help of fellow student Chema (Fele Martínez) who, being a collector of horror, exploitation and porn films is the class black sheep. The two make an unlikely pairing – Ángela comes from a well-to-do middle class family and has a squeamish aversion to violence and viscera, but is also secretly drawn to it through morbid curiosity. Chema, by contrast, is a loner at school and at home and has an appetite for pushing the boundaries and watching with relish the most bloody and horrific images he can obtain, something he is proud of. The duo’s lives and perceptions are shaken to their foundations, however, when Ángela, through the course of her investigation, accidentally stumbles upon a VHS cassette which shows a young woman who is bound and being brutally tortured and mutilated by an unknown tormentor, until she is finally murdered and her body dismembered, all for the benefit of the electric eye of the rolling camera, and the voyeur who will ultimately buy the tape. The worst is yet to come, though, as Chema realises that he knew the girl in question, she was one of their fellow students who disappeared some time ago, the ex-girlfriend of the popular, handsome Bosco (Eduardo Noriega, who genre fans may recognise from his menacing turn as Jacinto in Guillermo del Toro’s ghost story The Devil’s Backbone). It means that the tape was filmed somewhere locally, possibly by someone they know, and distributed by someone within their college…and that person may know them and want the tape back.

Where it rises above its brethren is in the mature, intelligent treatment of the subject matter and avoids the lurid, easy routes that it could easily have taken, with a definite less-is-more sensibility in some cases that make it more effective, never more capably demonstrated than in one scene where Ángela is torn between her desire to see what’s on the tape and her fear of it, and as a test turns off her TV screen and plays just the sound, and so the viewer too only hears what’s going on – a blank screen, the static hiss of dead air suddenly filled with a variety of very realistic and bloodcurdling screams of pain that leave everything to our imagination, which also cleverly puts the audience in Ángela’s shoes. This is also the kind of contradictory, complex duality that’s at work in all of the characters and becomes more apparent as the film wears on, shades of grey where at first glance they may appear black and white (and of course representing the murky debates that surround the themes of the movie). Take the meeting of Ángela and Chema, for example, where Amenábar cleverly juxtaposes a point-of-view shot from each of the characters studying the other, each is listening to music on their Walkmans (Walkmen? Well, probably moot since they’d be iPods these days), both in total contrast to the other, with Chema looking every inch the prototypical horror fanboy outsider and listening to heavy metal whilst Ángela is pert and middle-class, pretty but “ordinary” and she’s listening to something classical. Even the way their notes are arranged is meant to show the difference. But as the film continues the stereotypes are broken down – Ángela is morbidly drawn to the violence that society says are taboo, that outwardly she abhors but cannot help but be curious about and even find perversely erotic; Chema, who openly embraces this from the outset, and seems to enjoy his role as the outsider secretly wants to be accepted, it can be seen in his attraction to Ángela but more poignantly in how we find that he secretly follows her and films her, observes the way she is at home, not necessarily in a “Peeping Tom” way but because it’s the type of life to which he feels excluded and thinks he can maybe find the answer through the method of intake he finds information most readily digestible – through the camera lens and the screen.

Amenábar even uses the film school set-up to address the state of Spanish cinema at the time through the two different professors – the “old school” Figueroa and the younger Castro who fiercely argues the more commercial and competitive side of cinema, believing it should be run as a business and not as art if it’s to survive (and whether deliberate or not, he aptly looks a lot like James Cameron). This isn’t gratuitous or unnecessary, as it’s both integral to the plot thematically but it’s also related to the film we’re watching and how Amenábar straddles the line between commercial and independent, and yet it doesn’t preach one way or the other and presents them evenly with room for interpretation and thought, like most of the issues Tesis raises and ultimately is to its credit.

Just in terms of the film itself, Amenábar’s movie is a success, as it’s a great thriller, with a plot that runs like a Swiss pocket watch in the way it deals out its set pieces and revelatory twists and turns, the pacing is pretty much perfect and works all in the favour of continually building suspense that will have the viewer on tenterhooks. It’s helped too by the fact that the actors’ performances are also uniformly superb and really sell their characters, with very little being said about them through exposition they still appear largely three-dimensional and believable, which goes a long way to making you care for their fates and therefore making any scene where they may be in peril all the more tense for the emotional investment. Even at such a young age (he was in his early twenties), Amenábar’s direction is confident and assured, striking a delicate but satisfying balance between a Hollywood-style big budget picture and its independent roots, which allow it to take chances and not dumb anything down. The one time the balance is lost is in the closing moments of the epilogue which, unlike the rest of the film, feels a little heavy-handed, like its making sure those slow on the uptake will have got the message. In the end though, that is more than forgiveable and somewhat nitpicking.

All-in-all Tesis is an excellent, must-see film for any fan of the genre, it remains leagues ahead of any other film that has trodden similar waters, working perfectly well as a great example of a suspense movie that will leave you breathless but with plenty of food for thought afterwards, should you fancy a nibble.

The big Zombie Walk was today, and there were plenty of folks stumbling about in full regalia. Not the numbers I was expecting, but the people who were there had really made the effort. Myleene Klass was covering it for CNN, and she looked rather swish in her leopard print coat, which she was desperately trying to avoid getting stained with fake blood. The shuffling undead outside were soon joined by the partially dressed Zombie Women Of Satan, who were there to promote the first movie of the day.

Zombie Women Of Satan was a no-budget comedy gore effort that misfired on all points. The comedy was pretty low brow, I’m talking stuff that would even put Lloyd Kaufman’s nose out of joint. Midgets doing number twos in the woods isn’t funny, and yet the scene goes on for ages, its just not cricket.
The plot followed a troupe of burlesque performers who get muddled up in a cult for no good reason, while members of said cult are experimented on and eventually turned into zombie types.

With this sort of low brow humour you will always be walking a fine line. The makers of this must have been wearing massive clown shoes because they stomp all over both sides of the line. Some parts got big laughs from me, mainly the interactions between Pervo The Clown and Johnny Dee Hellfire. The dialogue seemed improvised (mostly in a bad way) and the direction was non-existent, although the gore effects were damn impressive for such a miniscule budget.

During the Q&A that followed, someone involved mentioned that Zombie Women Of Satan was cooked up and shot over a summer. I guess if you rush these things, you will end up with an end product that is pretty half baked. Also, I am a red blooded virile male of just 24 years, and I was totally turned off by the bloodied up tarts parading around. I just wanted them to put on some clothes. Seriously.

I nipped off for a swift coffee in the ten minutes before House Of The Devil, and got back just in time to see Ti West introduce it. I totally dug The Roost, I thought it was nicely shot and brimming with ideas despite not reaching its full potential, so I was keen to see what West had in store for us with this.

From the opening sequence it was clear that this was a lovingly crafted postcard to a different era, everything about it was authentically 80s right down to the yellow titles. It was stunning, I could seriously believe this was some long lost classic horror flick. It blew my mind. The painstaking detail that must have gone into making it was just unfathomable. It really did look, feel and play like a real classic.

Luckily, House Of The Devil didn’t just look awesome. West created a compelling story about suburban Satanism which harks back to the almost long lost babysitter-in-peril flick whilst also tipping it onto its head. Suspense was handed out in abundance, along with gore and excellent performances. The movie builds and builds up to this incredible, relentless climax which satisfied every bit of bloodlust in my body.
When it was over I felt like I had been put through the ringer, the unflinching tension coupled with blood soaked money shots totally took it out of me. This definitely takes the title of ‘Jamie’s Movie Of The Fest‘, I’d go as far as to say that this movie was worth the price of a weekend ticket alone.

Ti West came back post movie to answer a few questions, as well as give us the skinny on what went down with his sequel to Cabin Fever. The story went like this: West made this gore-heavy screwball comedy which the studio didn’t like, who then re-edited it. Ti took offense to that and went off to make House Of The Devil. While the studio were re-editing the flick, they offered Ti the chance to come back to the project but without any actual input. He politely declined, and even went so far as to try and get his name taken off the movie. It must really suck.
I caught up with him afterwards to ask if there could ever possibly be a Superman II style release of the movie as it should have been, and got a flat out no. Gutted.

I hadn’t seen Tormented, but now I don’t need to (not that I was in any rush). We were shown a sneak peak at one of the extras for the DVD, a short documentary about how they achieved the death scenes. Every death scene. In detail. I’m sure it could have been interesting, had I seen the flick in question. This was followed by a bit of a chat with some of the people involved in Tormented, they talked more about making the effects work and it was all very interesting.

Dorian Gray is not a story I have ever been that interested in, so seeing the trailer for the new sexy version didn’t even begin to pickle my gherkin.

I am issuing a SWEARING ALERT. I really hated Case 39 and cannot express this without the use of proper expletives, so please bear with me while I spit vitriol about Renee Fucking Zelweger and this entire piece of shit movie.

Killer kids is a pretty nice little sub-genre, you can do a lot with it if you aren’t the dude who wrote the fucking Pulse remake. Take one bubble headed actress and send her umming and ahhing through some trite scenes of mild peril that involve a cherubic little girl with a darkly boring secret. Name the kid Lilith just to hammer it home.

I was psyched about the hornet scene with Bradley Cooper after hearing about it but what a let down that was. There were two good things about this movie, the first was that they had the balls to stick a kid in an oven, the second was Lovejoy. What a magnificent actor Ian McShane is, always a joy to watch, even in derivative shit like this. The whole thing felt like a remake of an Asian horror, probably due to the imported style and lack of any real substance. What an absolute stinking pile of goat shit.

Before Heartless premiered we were treated to Across The Universe star, Jim Sturgess performing a few of the tracks from the soundtrack along with a band of blank-faced automatons. This was nice, he has a good voice and everything. It was all a bit loud though (this coming from the dude who goes to way too many punk shows). The songs gave away poop tonnes about the plot too, which I will address later.

The movie began, and almost immediately I was engrossed. The direction wasn’t the best we had seen all weekend but the story was totally compelling enough to forgive the issues with the Primeval grade monster effects, a few lacklustre performances from peripheral characters, and the drab lack of cinematic feel. Weaving between Marlowe’s Faust, Mike Leigh and even H.P. Lovecraft, Philip Ridley has crafted a cautionary tale about greed, vanity, inner city life, and death. Heartless poses interesting questions which leave you pondering way after the credits have rolled. Sure, it heads down Contrived Avenue when you hit the ending but if you didn’t see that coming then you deserve a crappy ending. Sturgess is great, he really anchors the movie as Jamie. His broody charm finds a home in this character that makes a deal with a demonic figure to remove the heart shaped birthmark from his face. The price is that of mischief, he must create a certain amount of mayhem in order to redress the balance between good and evil. All the while, a gang of lizard monsters are roaming through London with Molotov cocktails.

The music, which was all written by Ridley, does its best to rip you out of the experience while also giving it a sort of movie musical feel. We don’t need to be told, via lyrics, what is happening in the scene. The audience isn’t stupid, but sometimes it seems as if Ridley believes that we are. Couple the soundtrack with the montage before the conclusion and you are left wondering if he really believes that his film was so complicated that every detail needed spelling out in CAPITAL LETTERS.
Heartless was exciting, littered with good performances and full of interesting points, its downfall is that in the end it tries too hard to wrap things up in a satisfying way that just ends up feeling forced.

In the Q&A, Ridley dropped a proper clanger too. Claiming that Heartless is the beginning of “a new genre of horror” is not going to win you any fans. I don’t care if you made The Reflecting Skin, you don’t make a movie that fuses a bunch of well established genres (albeit, adeptly) and claim it to be a new genre. It is not the done thing.

There was a big gap in between Heartless and the next flick, so I ventured all the way to Burger King and dined on a massive burger meal. I felt so bloated afterwards, it was awesome.

On taking seat B29 for the last time this year, I felt a tinge of sadness. No more would I have to constantly shift around trying to squeeze the one remaining ounce of comfort from that bastard chair. It was very moving.
I wiped a tear as the logo for the Douche Brothers (Adam Green and Joe Lynch) hit the screen. This last short echoed last years last short (try saying that after a few hours in the Phoenix), and was the funniest yet. After it was done, the fellas themselves took to the stage to announce that they have there own TV show coming up soon! This is awesome news. I dug Green’s first feature Coffee And Donuts, which is what I assume it is based around judging by the title: Coffee And Donuts.

Green and Lynch gave it up for (FrightFest organisers) Ian, Alan, Paul and Greg. The audience went wild.

The Descent: Part 2 was introduced by the director, John Harris, and a big chunk of the cast. A heavily pregnant Shauna MacDonald said that we should go easy, that Harris is no Neil Marshall, and that maybe he is even better. We’ll be the judge of that.

Really, The Descent: Part 2 is standard sequel fodder. Any excuse to retread the first movie’s steps while we up the ante. But it does it with a certain level of style. All the claustrophobic tension that made its predecessor so memorable is gone, but the gore is present and accounted for. The characters are not the most likable of bunches, so I spent most of the movie waiting for them to die in gruesome ways. Of which there were a few real treats.

One thing I do take umbrage with is that, in sequels, if you do not explicitly see a character die in the previous flick then chances are they will make a return. If you have looked at the cast list then you know what I’m talking about.

So the gore was great, and there were some really inventive deaths. And to top it off we finally get to see some Crawlers get what’s coming to them. It is a fun movie, which stands up against the original even though its existence is just a little bit questionable. And that is all I have to say about it. Oh no, there is one more thing. What the fuck was going on with that twist ending? I mean, seriously, come on!

Cast and director came back to answer a few questions. I enjoyed Gavin O’Herlihy discussing how hard going it was being cramped up for so long and what it was like to have a totally new death scene.

The FrightFest boys appeared to wish us all well and then it was off to the Phoenix. Luckily, they had run out of Jagermeister so I took it easy. My buddy Frank and I pitched our idea to a few directors who looked adequately perturbed, I discussed the merits of Danzig with Joe Bishara, and had a nice chat with a heavily inebriated David Hess.

All good fun.

Sleep now please.

I had already seen Dead Snow, so I did a bit of a saunter round in order to get a proper breakfast in me and strolled into the cinema a little bit late. Dead Snow was great on the big screen, still just as funny and fresh as the first time. One of the best tongue-in-cheek, reference-soaked flicks straight from the school of mid-90s zombie renaissance. Its fast and frenetic and does its job perfectly. It’s unashamedly unoriginal in both its premise and it approach; just Nazi zombies running around killing teens. Great stuff.

Director, Tommy Wirkola hit the stage after for some questions. He talked a bit about the new trend of fast zombies, and why he decided his undead hordes should run (it was simply because they were Nazis). There was talk of a sequel, which would obviously be rad.

A quick break and an even quicker coffee later, and it is time for The Human Centipede. This was the movie I was most looking forward to all weekend. Pitched as a 100% medically accurate movie, The Human Centipede is a low budget, mildly violent trip in weird body horror the likes of which you have probably never seen before. There was a weird blocky Youtube type thing going on, which bugged me a bunch but didn’t detract from the events on screen too much. The story follows three abductees who become involved with a deranged surgeon who spent too long separating conjoined twins; it’s a dark and twisted yarn that confounds at every turn. This is destined to be massive on DVD.

Dutch director, Tom Six, was joined by actors Akihiro Kitamura and Ashley Williams where they discussed the possibility of a sequel which would also be a slasher movie and would involve fifteen people in the centipede chain. Isn’t that an exciting prospect? Yes, it is.

Coffin Rock was introduced by star, Sam Parsonson who was in character which was odd. Before seeing the movie I just thought he was kind of a jerk, turns out he is just a good actor. Coffin Rock wasn’t a bad movie at all; it was well made and competently acted by all. Really though, it was just your standard killer obsession movie with nothing new to bring to the table. Basic plot is; dude obsesses over married chick, married chick and husband can’t conceive, chick sleeps with dude and gets pregnant, drama ensues. It was enjoyable enough but didn’t stand out at all.
Parsonson answered a few questions from Alan Jones, and I went off to get a massive vat of Coca Cola.

Last year, my favourite movie was Autopsy. It was amazing fun and gory as heck to boot. From the folks behind Autopsy; Adam Gierasch and Jace Anderson, comes Night Of The Demons. A great big and brash, boobs-out, gore comedy with a soundtrack that kicks harder than a mule with a pink Mohawk. The movie is super silly with a few great nods to the original and a few scenes of awesome gory shock. It had a tendency to get a bit silly at times, but made up for it in spades, with a lot of fun. Demons is a total party movie, aimed squarely at the male audience members. There was a pointless, but fun, cameo from Linnea Quigley where she essentially showed her ass for the camera. Ed Furlong is looking a bit rough these days, and he is cast wonderfully as a drug dealer. Shannon Elizabeth plays the only character imported from the original, Angela, and I didn’t buy her as a goth. She just looked too happy, I guess. The rest of the cast are just there to make up the numbers for either the big boobs team, or the comic relief team. There is no middle ground. I really like Adam Gierasch as director, I think he is a dab hand at making funny, gory flicks and I can’t wait to see what he has next.

In the Q&A section, when asked about what it was like to remake a classic, he answered “Well, last year I was here with Autopsy and most of you liked it. A few of you didn’t, and a criticism I got a lot was that it wasn’t very original. So I took that criticism to heart. And made a remake. Fuck you”. Gierasch was joined on stage by his new wife, Jace Anderson, actors Bobbie Sue Luther and John Beach, and Joe Bishara, who co-ordinated the soundtrack. They told a nice story about how they wanted to put some Misfits on the soundtrack but got told to fuck off, essentially.

After a bit of a break and a huge pee (those large cokes are actually massive, woah!), I took my seat for the new adaptation from Clive Barker’s Books Of Blood series but instead was greeted with the Douche Bros logo, meaning it could only be the Adam Green and Joe Lynch short. Today’s was especially funny, as they used my favourite scene from American Werewolf. I really hope these shorts end up online like last years did.

Hatchet director, Adam Green then went on to introduce a bit of a scene from his new movie, Frozen. He made us repeat an oath that we wouldn’t film it or the studio would face-rape us or something. The footage looked great. It was really grim looking with some decent gore. I really look forward to this. Adam Green is a top guy and Hatchet was a great homage type movie, so I have pretty high hopes for this sucker. After the footage had played out, he also gave away one of the only fifteen Frozen crew t-shirts that had been made. I didn’t win it, but it looked like it would be too small anyway.

I can’t really decide how I feel about Clive Barker movies. Sure Hellraiser is great, Candyman is sweet and Nightbreed owns a very special chunk of my heart but the bulk of the output in his name is ropey to say the least. At one of the smaller events last year, FrightFest showed Book Of Blood, which I thought was essentially nonsense. Dread, however, was an interesting and exciting trip into fear. I don’t think I would be so bold as to call it a horror movie, but as a psychological thriller it shines. It’s the story of Stephen Grace, a film student who meets Quaid. Quaid is a painter and expert manipulator who convinces Stephen to direct his thesis on fear. What follows is an interesting trip into the fears of others, as well as journey into the necessity for control.

I have never read a Clive Barker novel or short story, but I find it difficult that this story came from the creator of the Cenobites, and all that subtle-as-a-brick demonic horror. The movie is real slick and paced perfectly, and the ending is a doozy! I really dug it, way more than I had expected to.

Anthony DiBlasi brought three of his cast up for the Q&A, including Shaun Evans (Quaid), Laura Donnelly (Abby) and a peripheral character whose name escapes me! I was surprised to learn that most of the cast was English, and especially that the actor who wowed me as Quaid was in fact a scouser! Excellent accents all round.

After Dread, I went home conscious of the fact that I would be missing John Landis introduce a brand new Making Of Thriller documentary, as well as the last movie of the night, Black. I was pretty sad to have to miss both of these, but FrightFest Mondays are the biggest of the lot and I needed to have some real sleep if I was to be drinking and schmoozing in the Phoenix the next day. By all accounts, I am pretty glad I jetted off early as word on the street was that Black didn’t finish until sometime approaching 3 am. Phew!