Offspring

Year:  2009
Director:  Andrew van den Houten
Screenplay:  Jack Ketchum, based on the novel Offspring by Jack Ketchum
Starring:  Pollyanna McIntosh, Art Hindle, Amy Hargreaves, Ahna Tessler, Jessica Butler, Andrew Elvis Miller, Eric Kastel, Tommy Nelson
Running Time:  79 minutes
Genre:  Horror

Dead River is a picturesque coastal town in Maine, but is periodically plagued by attacks from a  family of feral cannibals, who attack anyone unfortunate enough to cross their paths, and also sometimes attack homes, where they savagely murder the adults and abduct children.  Their latest targets are young couple David (Miller) and Amy Halbard (Hargreaves) who live in a remote house with their baby.  Sheltering with the Halbards is Amy's friend Claire (Tessler) and her eight year old son, Luke (Nelson), who are escaping Claire's abusive husband Stephen (Kastel). 

This film is based on a 1990 novel by the late American horror author Dallas Mayr, who published under the pen-name Jack Ketchum, which itself was a sequel to his 1982 novel Off Season, which has yet to be made into a film, and there are several references in the movie to a previous adventure involving the cannibal clan.  This is a very low budget film, and it is technically quite rough, and it looks as if it was made much earlier than 2009.  Some of the performances are variable as well.  The film bears quite strong similarities to movies such as The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and Wrong Turn (2003), but it works in it's own right.  The characters are fairly well drawn, particularly the cannibals themselves, who are more than just monsters.  They have personalities, and are acting according to their own survival instincts.  This is a disturbing film, it's very violent and gruesome, and it is very bleak, a recurring theme in Ketchum's work is that the seemingly "normal" people are as potentially monstrous as the more obviously "monstrous" characters, and the ending hints at more horrors to come.
Pollyanna McIntosh, who plays the matriarch of the cannibal clan, returned to the role in the 2011 sequel The Woman, directed by Lucky McKee, and Darlin' (2019), which McIntosh also wrote and directed.    

Jessica Butler as one of the cannibals in Offspring

The Inbetweeners 2

Year:  2014
Directors:  Damon Beesley and Iain Morris
Screenplay:  Damon Beesley and Iain Morris, based on the TV series The Inbetweeners created by Damon Beesley and Iain Morris
Starring:  Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison, Joe Thomas, Elizabeth Berrington, Tamla Kari
Running Time:  96 minutes
Genre:  Comedy

Nerdy university student Will (Bird), unhappily partnered university student Simon (Thomas) and dim-witted bank employee Neil (Harrison) decide to take a holiday to Australia to meet their friend Jay (Buckley), who boasts that he is a millionaire superstar DJ in Sidney.  When they get there though, they quickly realise that Jay has vastly overstated the reality:  He is a toilet attendant in a Sidney nightclub and lives in a tent in his uncle's backyard.  However, when Will chances upon Katie (Berrington), who he knows from his private school days, the lads join her and her backpacking friends.  Of course, everything soon ends in a series humiliating disasters.

This second big-screen outing from the successful British TV sitcom, The Inbetweeners (2008 - 2010), takes the basic structure of the successful first film, and expands it.  The Inbetweeners Movie (2011) took the main characters from suburban England to Malia, and subjected them to the usual gross-out hilarity.  In this film, written and directed by series creators Iain Morris and Damon Beesley, making their directorial debuts, the locations are more far-flung and exotic, and the gross-out gags are grosser than ever.  It is very, very funny in places, though it is not as successful as the first film or the television series, which at it's best was a masterclass in cringe comedy, partly because this film feels almost cartoonish compared to the TV series, which, while obviously exaggerated, always felt like it had a sense of reality.  This is very much a male oriented film.  The main female characters seem to be there to either be lusted after by the guys, or to be venomous harridans.  It is also unlikely to do much for Anglo-Australian relations.  It does have some heart to it, although it seems to lack the genuine sympathy for the characters that the TV series has at it's best.  It's unlikely to win many new fans, but for those already fond of the antics of Jay, Will, Neil and Simon, there is plenty to enjoy, because it really is very funny, and there is a real chemistry between the four leads. 

Simon (Joe Thomas), Will (Simon Bird), Jay (James Buckley) and Neil (Blake Harrison) go walkabout in The Inbetweeners 2   

The Crazies

Year:  1973
Director:  George A. Romero
Screenplay:  George A. Romero, original script by Paul McCollough
Starring:  Lane Carroll, Will MacMillan, Harold Wayne Jones, Lloyd Hollar, Lynn Lowry, Richard Liberty
Running Time:  103 minutes
Genre:  Science fiction, horror

When a virus, created by the U. S. Military as a biological weapon, is accidentally released into the water supply of a small Pennsylvania town the residents begin to fall victim to a disease which creates a kind of homicidal mania in it's victims.  The Army quickly move in and violently impose martial law to contain the virus and prevent any adverse publicity.  As the military and civic authorities try and decide how to deal with the situation, and scientists frantically race to find a cure, a said group of survivors desperately try and escape from the virus, the infected, and the Army.

Director George A. Romero is probably best know for the groundbreaking horror film Night of the Living Dead (1968), and it's sequels, and while this is not part of the Living Dead series, it definitely shares the same DNA, and feels almost like a dry run for the more lavish Dawn of the Dead (1979).  The film is very ambitious, but obviously hampered by a low budget.  Technically it is very rough, with harsh colours, choppy editing and acting from a largely unknown cast that could be politely described as uneven.  However some of the action scenes are very well made, and at times this is a very exciting film.  It is also intensely bleak, and gritty, with some really shocking scenes, including a very disturbing sequence involving a sexual assault.  As was frequently the case with Romero, there is a strong subtext of social commentary, this is a product of the early 70s and the Vietnam War, and it has a very strong anti-military and anti-authoritarian message.  The Army, disturbingly faceless in the allover white bio-hazard suits and gas masks, casually gun down civilians in the streets, or burn them with flamethrowers and loot the bodies, and the efforts to find a cure, or even settle on a strategy are constantly hampered by bureaucratic incompetence, and the Government officials chomp down on sandwiches and take-out while they casually debate dropping  a nuclear bomb on the town,  while the increasingly small group of increasingly paranoid survivors begin to turn on each other.  It's not a great film, but it is a good one, although it may be too bleak for some.  A remake was released in 2010.

The military hunt for The Crazies     

War Requiem

Year of Release:  1989
Director:  Derek Jarman
Screenplay:  Derek Jarman, based on the musical piece War Requiem by Benjamin Britten
Starring:  Laurence Olivier, Nathaniel Parker, Tilda Swinton, Sean Bean, Nigel Terry, Patricia Hayes, Owen Teale, Jodie Graber, Spencer Leigh
Running Time:  92 minutes
Genre:  Experimental, war

Tended by a nurse (Swinton), an elderly soldier (Olivier) is lost in dreams and memories.  This is an entirely dialogue-free film, the only speech we hear is Olivier reciting the poem "Strange Meeting" by Wilfred Owen in voice-over in the film's prologue.  The film features dramatised segments with Nathaniel Parker as Wilfred Owen, visions of home and family in grainy Super 8, and vintage newsreel footage of mostly World War I, and other more recent conflicts including World War II, Vietnam and Afghanistan, and I would warn you that the film does feature some graphic and disturbing documentary footage of wartime violence.  All we hear is a 1963 performance of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, which inspired the film.  While this is a difficult film, and full of distinctive esoteric images, particularly strong on religious and homoerotic imagery, this does have a strong theme about war, and works almost as a silent film.  It is also surprisingly emotional, and you don't have to share Jarman's unique vision to appreciate it.  This was Laurence Olivier's final acting role.

Sean Bean in War Requiem

The Honeymoon Killers

Year of Release:  1970
Director:  Leonard Kastle
Screenplay:  Leonard Kastle
Starring:  Shirley Stoler, Tony Lo Bianco, Marilyn Chris, Doris Roberts
Running Time:  108 minutes
Genre:  Crime

Raymond Fernandez (Lo Bianco) is a con man who meets women through lonely hearts adverts and fleeces them out of their money before running off.  His latest victim is sullen, nursing administrator Martha Beck (Stoler), who tracks him down and the two genuinely fall in love, and she joins him in his scams, posing as his married sister.  However, Martha's jealousy of Raymond's victims soon leads to murderous consequences.

This is based on the true story of Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, the "Lonely Hearts Killers" of the 1940s, and while the basic plot ad the lurid title might promise lurid thrills, this is a bleak, downbeat and gritty film, shot in grainy black-and-white on a very low budget, with an incongruous soundtrack taken from the works of Gustav Mahler.  It has an almost documentary like realism, and feels like a precursor to films such as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) as well as numerous true-crime docudramas.  The central couple are never entirely monstrous, as horrible as their crimes are, there is a thread of humanity to them, and their love is believable.  However their victims are presented sympathetically, their vulnerability and loneliness, as well as the horror of their deaths makes the relatively restrained violence much more harrowing than many more graphic films.  The film is very well cast with great performances, especially from Shirley Stoler as the dead-eyed Martha Beck.  There is also a strong vein of very dark humour running throughout.
The film was originally set to be directed by Martin Scorsese, who was fired early into production, although some sequences that he directed remain in the film.  Apparently, he was fired because he was moving too slowly.
This film has attracted a cult following since it's release and, in 1980, legendary French director François Truffaut named it as one of his "favourite American films".

Shirley Stoler and Tony Lo Bianco are The Honeymoon Killers       

The Last of England

Year of Release:  1987
Director:  Derek Jarman
Screenplay:  Derek Jarman
Starring:  Tilda Swinton, Nigel Terry, Spencer Leigh, Jonathan Philips, 'Spring' Mark Adley
Running Time:  87 minutes
Genre:  Experimental

This plotless, experimental film is a kind of collage of sound and images exploring Jarman's feelings about the decay of Britain during the 1980s, which he believed was increasingly homophobic and repressive.  The film mixes Jarman's old home movies, new footage shot in shaky hand held, and more documentary style footage.  The sound track mixes classical music, punk, folk and features performers such as Simon Turner, Marianne Faithful and Diamanda Galás.  This is a difficult film to really enjoy.  It's inaccessible, and strangely dated.  This is a "state of the nation" film, and it is about the 1980s for a 1980s audience, and really if you are unfamiliar with the political and social scene in '80s Britain then it will be even less accessible.  Jarman creates some starling and provocative imagery and some sequences are really dynamic, however a lot of the film is baffling.  There are repeated grainy images of urban wastelands, and derelict housing and industrial estates, Tilda Swinton tears a wedding dress she is wearing on a beach with fires burning, two soldiers make love on a Union Jack, civilians are gunned down by masked gunmen, there is a bizarre sequence that plays like a rock video, and Nigel terry sonorous voice over reads from T. S. Elliot's "The Hollow Men" and Allen Ginsberg's "Howl".   It is certainly a work of art, which I don't think was ever intended to be "enjoyable".  I found it infuriating, provocative, occasionally brilliant and often dull.

 Tilda Swinton in The Last of England

Repulsion

Year of Release:  1965
Director:  Roman Polanski
Screenplay:  Roman Polanski, Gérard Brach and David Stone, story by Roman Polanski and Gérard Brach
Starring:  Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser, Patrick Wymark, Yvonne Furneaux
Running Time:  105 minutes
Genre:  Horror, psychological thriller

Carol Ledoux (Deneuve) is a young Belgian woman living in London with her sister, Helen (Furenaux).  Carol is extremely withdrawn and detached, and has difficulty dealing with the people around her, however she does hold down a job as a beautician, and due to her looks, she has no shortage of male attention.  However, Carol finds men and their attentions repulsive.  One man in particular, Colin (Fraser), seems to have a growing obsession with Carol, although she does her best to ignore him and avoid him.  To make matters worse, Helen has a boyfriend, Michael (Hendry), who Carol deeply dislikes.  When Helen and Michael go on holiday to Italy, Carol is left alone in the flat, with the isolation causing an increasing strain on her already fragile sanity, as her reality lowly descends into a hallucinatory nightmare.

This was Roman Polanski's second feature film, following the acclaimed Knife in the Water (1962), and his first film in the English language, which he didn't speak at all well at the time.  This is a strange, disturbing film, detailing a woman's descent into madness.  The film starts off in relatively realistic territory, detailing Carol's day to day life at work and at home and the persistent harassment that she experiences on the street.  There really are no sympathetic male characters in the film, they are either boorish, stupid, unfaithful, bullying and mostly would-be abusers (which is kind of ironic considering that Polanski himself was convicted of sexual abuse thirteen years later).  Later on the film takes on a more surreal, expressionistic tone, with memorably nightmarish imagery, such as cracks appearing in the wall, hands reaching out from the wall to grab Carol, the flat seeming to grow and shrink, and dark figures glimpsed in mirrors.  There is also the rabbit that Helen is going to cook early in the film before abandoning it, and Carol leaves the plate of meat out to get increasingly rank.  Catherine Deneuve gives a memorable performance as the tormented Carol.  The film is very well made, and stylishly directed.  If it wasn't for Roman Polanski's crimes, this could be seen as quite a progressive film and, ironically,  in the age of "Me Too" and lockdown it is surprisingly relevant to today.  It certainly is a must-see.

  Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion