Zombie Flesh Eaters

Year of Release:  1979
Director:  Lucio Fulci
Screenplay:  Elisa Biganti and Dardano Sacchetti
Starring:  Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch, Richard Johnson, Al Cliver, Auretta Gay, Stefania D'Amario, Olga Karlatos
Running Time:  88 minutes
Genre:  Horror

An abandoned sailboat drifts into New York Harbor.  When two harbor patrol officers board the boat they are promptly attacked by a zombie.  While the police interrogate Anne Bowles (Farrow), the daughter of the ship's owner, who hasn't seen her father in months, newspaper reporter Peter West (McCulloch) investigates the story.  Anne and Peter join forces, and trace the boat to a remote Caribbean island called Matul.  They hitch a ride with Brian Hull (Cliver) and Susan Barrett (Gay) who are on a vacation, sailing around the Caribbean. Needless to say, when they do reach Matul, they very soon wish that they had stayed home.

This Italian film exists under a number of different titles and in a number of different versions.  It was originally released in Italy as Zombi 2 in a blatant attempt to cash in on the huge success in Italy of George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1979), known as Zombi in Italy.  While this film has no connection to Dawn of the Dead in either plot or characters, it's not too much of a leap to see it being set in Romero's world.  The film has it's clunky moments, but mostly it is pretty good.  It's extremely violent and very gruesome, and contains a couple of notorious scenes (one involving a splinter of wood and someone's eye, which is genuinely hard to watch).  There is also some sleazy sexploitation, although not quite as much as you might expect.  The zombie makeup is suitably disgusting, and the numerous gore scenes and violence are well staged.  The performances are good, with Tisa Farrow (sister of Mia Farrow) making an engaging heroine, and Ian McCulloch an effective and likable hero.  Most notable in the cast though is Richard Johnson as the sweatily sinister doctor on the island.  The pacing flags during the middle, but it's pretty well made and is probably the best of the Italian zombie movies which followed. 

Tisa Farrow and Ian McCulloch set sail for the Island of the Zombie Flesh Eaters           

Wake Wood

Year: 2009
Director: David Keating
Screenplay: David Keating and Brendan McCarthy, from a story by Brendan McCarthy
Starring: Aidan Gillen, Eva Birthistle, Timothy Spall, Ella Connolly, Peggy O'Shea
Running Time: 90 minutes
Genre: Horror, supernatural

This movie has the distinction of being the first home-grown feature film from legendary horror studio Hammer in thirty years since they, as in most of their best known films, rose from the grave.
Set in Ireland, the story revolves around grieving couple, Patrick (Gillen) and Louise (Birthistle), who move to the small town of Wakewood to get over the tragic death of their young daughter Alice (Connolly), who was killed by a dog. While Patrick works as the local vet and Louise gets a job in the village pharmacy, they learn about a pagan ritual performed in the village that could bring Alice back from the dead. However, if they agree to the ritual none of them will ever be able to leave the village, and Alice will only be resurrected for three days. You don't need me to tell you that it all goes badly and gruesomely wrong.

This is often a genuinely disturbing and eerie horror movie. The basic theme is disturbing enough, but the film also creates a powerful sense of disquiet through the sombre and sedate pace. It also features many evocative and beautifully shot images of the Irish countryside which really put the movie into the sub-genre that Mark Gatiss referred to as "folk horror", in which the horror arises from the British (or, in this case, Irish) countryside and the old traditions of the inhabitants. The movie deals with some very heavy themes of love, loss and death.

However the film doesn't neglect the gore fans and pretty much ladels on the blood and guts, particularly in the final half where it moves from a dark exploration of love and grief into full-blown supernatural gross-out horror. It also suffers from the irritating but seemingly inevitable horror movie habit of referencing other movies (in particular Pet Sematary (1989), The Wicker Man (1973) and Don't Look Now (1973)).

The film features some great performances especially from Aidan Gillen (who is probably best known as sleazy politician Carcetti in The Wire (2002-2008)) and Eva Birthistle as the tormented couple. They get good support from the always reliable Timothy Spall as the creepy head of the village.

While some might be put off by the unrelentingly bleak tone and gore, this is a powerful and atmospheric horror movie which, while it doesn't really deliver any big scares, is creepy and atmospheric enough and lingers in the mind after the credits have rolled.

Although, to be honest, how many variations on the "creepy small town with a dark secret" theme can horror movie makers and writers come up with?



Eva Birthistle, Ella Connolly, Aidan Gillen in Wake Wood

The Beyond

Year: 1981
Director: Lucio Fulci
Screenplay: Giorgio Mariuzzo, Lucio Fulci and Dardano Sacchetti, from a story by Dardano Sacchetti
Starring: Catriona McColl, David Warbeck, Cinzia Monreale, Antoine Saint-John, Veronica Lazar
Running Time: 89 minutes
Genre: Horror, supernatural, zombie

Summary: Louisiana 1927: A lynch mob break into the Seven Doors Hotel and brutally murder a painter, Schweik (Saint-John), who is living there.
In 1981, New Yorker Liza Merril (McColl) inherits the run-down hotel from her uncle. The renovations are plagued by a series of increasingly severe and bizarre "accidents". A blind psychic girl, Emily (Monreale), informs Liza that the hotel was built above one of the seven gateways to Hell. Along with local doctor John McCabe (Warbeck), Liza finds herself pitted against nightmarish supernatural forces as the dead begin to rise and attack the living.

Opinions: This gruesome Italian horror film is often cited as the masterpiece of it's director Lucio Fulci who made his name with films such as Zombie (1979) and City of the Living Dead (1980). Certainly the film doesn't stint on gore and is full of blood and flesh tearing special effects.
The film doesn't really make a lot of sense, especially towards the end, but that isn't really important as the film works in a kind of dreamlike sense and is purely nightmarish. Aside from the zombies and flesh eating tarantulas, the film is full of dream like images, some of which are very powerful.
The special effects are effective and should provide plenty of moments to startle even jaded gore hounds. The dialogue is very obviously dubbed but that was common practice in Italian films and in any way it helps to make the film even more bizarrely surreal.
The symbol which appears prominently at various points of the film was taken from a tattoo which Fulci's fourteen year old daughter got.
Horror films and connoiseurs of cult cinema won't want to miss this one.
Incidentally, in some prints of the film which are currently available, the opening sequence is in black-and-white, when it was originally intended to be in sepia.



Catriona McColl and David Warbeck in The Beyond

Dread

Year: 2009
Director: Anthony DiBlasi
Screenplay: Anthony DiBlasi, based on the short story "Dread" by Clive Barker
Starring: Jackson Rathbone, Shaun Evans, Hanne Steene, Laura Donnelly, Jonathan Readwin
Running Time: 108 minutes
Genre: Horror, psychological

Summary: Present day America: Film student Stephen Grace (Rathbone) befriends mysterious psychology student Quaid (Evans). Stephen agrees to help Quaid with his research project into the nature of fear and introduces Quaid to his classmate and editor Cheryl Fromm (Steene). The three interview volunteers about their earliest experiences of fear and record the interviews on camera. Quaid becomes angry about their lack of progress and also about the fact that his two colleagues just see it as another college project. Disturbed by his increasingly irrational and violent behaviour, Cheryl and Stephen decide to quit. However, Quaid has just started his experiments and intends to take them "to the next level". Soon Cheryl and Stephen find themselves plunged into their own very personal nightmares.

Opinion: This movie is based on a short story by Clive Barker, which was originally published in volume two of his short story collection Books of Blood (1984). It's kind of unusual for a Clive Barker story in that there are no supernatural or other fantasy elements. As a short story, the tale was tense, tight and gripping. However here, necessarily expanded in order to fit the running time, some of the tension is lost. Mostly it works pretty well though.
The film benefits from a strong atmosphere and does well with it's low budget. The film is shot with high contrast between light and shadow and at times the amount of shadows on screen can be irritating, and there are moments when it is difficult to distinguish what is going on.
While the horror in the film is predominantly psychological, there is a high level of violence and plenty of gore. There are also plentiful scenes of people being graphically tormented in grimy rooms in the manner popularised by the likes of Saw (2004) and Hostel (2006).
The film is relentlessly downbeat and the all-pervading gloom (in every sense) may prove too strong for some viewers.
The performances are good from a largely unknown cast, and, despite some occasional lapses in pacing in the middle part of the film, the whole thing moves pretty well.
The whole film is largely well-made, and has plenty of atmosphere and tension, and enough surprises to keep fans of the genre entertained.



Shaun Evans researches Dread

Slither

Year:  2006
Director:  James Gunn
Screenplay:  James Gunn
Starring:  Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker, Gregg Henry, Tania Saulnier and Jenna Fischer
Running Time:  95 minutes
Genre:  Horror, comedy, science-fiction




Summary:  A meteorite crashes near the quiet, small town of Wheelsy, South Carolina, and splits open to reveal a small, pale alien creature.  The creature is discovered by local bigwig Grant Grant (Rooker), and it shoots a small dart from it's back which burrows into Grant''s chest.  Grant develops an insatiable hunger for meat, and his young wife, Starla (Banks), begins to notice bizarre physical changes.  The town's sheriff, Bill Pardy (Fillion), investigates as pets, livestock and eventually people start to go missing.  Pardy discovers that Grant has transformed into a grotesque, multi-limbed monster and has been breeding countless slug-like aline parasites, which break out and start to infect the town's population. 

Opinions:  This movie is a blend of comedy and horror and mostly it works very well.  It looks back to earlier horror films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Night of the Living Dead (1968) and in particular the early David Cronenberg films such as Shivers (1975) which has it's notorious parasite in the bathtub scene referenced here, and Rabid (1977).  The plentiful gruesome special-effects range from being pretty impressive to fairly average CGI monsters.  The film benefits enormously from having genuinely likeable and engaging characters.  The cast are all good, with Nathan Fillion (who is probably best known for starring in the TV series Firefly (2002) and it's spin-off film Serenity (2005)) being a particular standout, showing himself as a talented comic actor as well as making a convincing action hero.  Of course, it's in the mix of genres where so many horror-comedy films fall down but this one successfully sidesteps the trap, managing to be genuinely funny as well as generating real tension and shocks.  The movie is well written and writer-director James Gunn keeps everything moving fast.  Surprisingly, the film was a box-office flop when it was released, which is a real shame because it is a lot of fun.  I can imagine it might be because the film was too gruesome for a lot of comedy fans and too light-hearted for some of the hard-core horror fans.  However I can imagine it becoming a something of a cult hit on DVD, which would be only right for a movie such as this which wears it's "B" movie credentials proudly.
         

Pet Sematary II

Year: 1992
Director: Mary Lambert
Screenplay: Richard Outten
Starring: Anthony Edwards, Edward Furlong, Clancy Brown, Jared Rushton, Darlanne Fluegel, Jason McGuire and Lisa Waltz
Running Time: 100 minutes
Genre: Horror, supernatural



Summary: Following the accidental death of his actress mother (Fluegel), teenager Jeff Matthews (Furlong) moves with his vetenarian father, Chase (Edwards), from Los Angeles to the small town of Ludlow in Maine. Bullied at school, Jeff strikes up a friendship with overweight Drew (McGuire), who is constantly bullied by his cruel stepfather Gus (Brown), who also happens to be the town's sheriff. Jeff discovers the town's pet cemetery, or "Pet Sematary" as the homemade board above the entrance reads, where generations of the town's children have buried their pets. When Gus shoots and kills Drew's beloved dog Zowie, Drew and Jeff bury him in another burial ground, just past the pet cemetery, an ancient Native American burial ground which has the power to resurrect the dead. However the dead that are buried in the ancient ground always come back horribly changed.

Opinions: This film is a sequel to the 1989 film Pet Sematary, also directed by Mary Lambert, which was based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Stephen King. King had nothing to do with this film. The events of the first film are briefly discussed in this one, having apparently become something of a local ghost story, and it is in a way understandable why the film-makers would not want to remind people too much of the earlier, and far superior, film. The movie jettisons the first film's creepy atmosphere in favour of over-the-top gory shocks. One of the things that was so effective about the first film was the way it touched upon very raw nerves, this one does to some extent but it doesn't have nearly the same impact and seems to go mostly tongue in cheek approach, even when dealing with quite serious elements. The cast is full of recognisable faces, which means that when the film lags you can play a fun game of "Wasn't He the Guy In...?", Edward Furlong (who found fame the previous year with Terminator 2: Judgement Day) does pretty well in the lead even though the character, despite any naural sympathy for his initial predicament, remains pretty unlikeable throughout. Anthony Edwards (who came to prominence in the TV series E.R. (1994-2008)) is underused as the concerned father, while Clancy Brown (who is probably most recognisable as the bullying head guard in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and as the drill sergeant in Starship Troopers (1997)) practically chews up the scenary, serving up thick slices of ham as the bullying stepfather. The film has some pretty effective special effects and plenty of good gore, but by the time the blood filled finale comes the film has just gone so over the top it just ends up being funny. It is also fair to say that the film is not in the least scary.
Fans of the original will probably be disappointed but those who enjoy gory horror sequels might have some fun with it. For anyone else though, life is too short. Check out the original instead.