So, another Frightfest is over, all too soon. This was my first Glasgow event, and although it did seem very truncated compared to the London event (2 days instead of 5), I had a great time. there were plenty of friendly people, freebie (mostly leftovers from the London event last year, though I managed to get free DVDs of Death NoteDeath Note[/cbc] and Fragile), and some decent movies. I even had time to check out The Wolfman, which I’ll review after the jump along with all the Frightfest movies.
There were also some nice guest Q&As and special previews. Sadly, previously announced guests Christa Campbell, Vincenzo Natali and Adam Green couldn’t make it (the latter ironically prevented from promoting Frozen by snow & ice). However, some other guests made it. As well as the directors of Amer & 2001 Maniacs, there were a few previews from Frightfest regulars. Chris Smith showed a scene from his upcoming Black Death, which looked OK but not particularly spectacular. Neil Marshall showed the opening of his Roman actioner Centurion, while Jake West premiered the deleted footage from Doghouse. Both of these were pretty good, hope that there’s a director’s cut of Doghouse in the near future and Marshall may have a hit on his hands…
The atmosphere, as ever, was incredible and mostly enjoyable. There was a strange moment during Stag Night, where fight broke out (apparently due to an armrest dispute!), but other than that it was no different to the London event apart from the size of the cinema itself.
THE WOLFMAN
This Benicio Del Toro vehicle was a long time coming to the screen. There were many reshoots – never a good sign (Marshall noted that the reshoots for this movie took longer than the entire shoot for Centurion) – as well as last minute changed of director and even the composer. That the finished product is not only coherent but fairly entertaining is almost a miracle, though the movie does fall well short of its potential.
Del Toro takes up the role of Laurence Talbot, the doomed hero originally played by Lon Chaney Jr. Estranged from his father and brother, he had grown up in America following the violent death of their mother. He arrives at the family estate just too late to help his brother, who was apparently killed by a wild beast. He vows to help investigate the death, but is attacked by a werewolf while looking into a gypsy camp. Now cursed, he ends up on the run from the police and has to confront a stange family history while facing the fact that death may be the only way out.
The story itself is jaded and cliched, but the performances do help carry the movie through. Anthony Hopkins hams it up something rotten, but Hugo Weaving is excellent as Aberline, the detective who had investigated the Ripper murders a few years before and wants to solve this case to regain his reputation. Del Toro is fine as the doomed hero, and the direction is rather solid considering the production troubles. Sadly, the weak point is the effects. Gore is taken to ridiculous extremes, and the atmospheric visuals seen on the trailer only occasionally surface. The transformation sequences are well done, if inevitably CGI heavy, but the classic wolfman makeup style does look silly and dated, even coming from the hands of Rick Baker.
Overall, not a complete waste of time, but a disappointment when you consider the potential this project should have had.
Rating: 
FROZEN
The first movie of the festival is a strange one to review, since there are many elements that seem directed solely at Frightfest regulars. There are many mentions of things that are personal to director Adam Green, but well known to Frightfesters, such as Paul Solet and Green’s love of E.T. One character is even named after Green’s regular Frightfest sidekick Joe Lynch!
The story is quite simple. Three college students are enjoying a skiing trip, but try to save money by bribing the ski lift attendant to let them up at a much lower price than they’d spend on a ticket. This backfires when due to a series of unfortunate incidents, the lift is shut down while they are suspended 50 feet in the air. This particular resort shuts down during the week, so the trio have to find a way to escape before they freeze to death – a task made much harder by the wolves that take a liking to the smell of human blood.
Frozen is a real achievement, and I enjoyed it much more than Green’s début Hatchet. There’s a real sense of tension throughout, no mean feat considering that most of the movie follows three people in a seat. I had been a little concerned by the trailer we saw at the August Frightfest, as this showed a character jumping to the ground (with predictably disastrous consequences) rather than trying to climb across the cable, which I thought rather dumb. Fortunately, this decision is vindicated in the movie itself, and not the tension killer I had feared. The best way to describe this movie is as a more polished version of Open Water, with wolves, snow and ice instead of water and sharks. It’s a very tense movie, and a great achievement considering the necessarily low body count and gore factor.
Rating:
2001 MANIACS: FIELD OF SCREAMS
While the first 2001 Maniacs was no masterpiece, it was a fun retelling of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 1964 film about a town of ghostly rednecks avenging their death at the hands of Yankee soldiers in the American Civil War. Word had it that while this movie had a much lower budget, it was closer to director Tim Sullivan’s original vision. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to have been a good choice, although both movies are still better than any movie Lewis ever directed.
The town of Pleasant Valley is in turmoil after the local police chief decides to stop helping them gather their victims. They are forced on the road, just in time to catch a group of film-makers who decide that the travelling rednecks would make a great backdrop to their movie. Of course, they’re going to end up as more fodder for the maniacs, but not until they’ve had some fun first…
The biggest problems with this sequel are the budget and the anachronistic approach to the story. First off is the silly road trip plotline, which generally makes no sense although it enables director Tim Sullivan from having to pretend that his handful of cast members represent the entire town population of 2001. However, from the moment this thread is introduced, it destroys the conceit of the original story. In the first movie, Pleasant Valley was a town that only appeared once per year on the anniversary of its destruction by Northern troops in order to trap and kill Northern travellers and avenge their deaths. In this sequel, the townsfolk are apparently around permanently. Not only that, but they seem to have gained a lot of knowledge of the modern world from driving cars to doing a Flashdance parody in one sequence. It’s a strange change of direction, and doesn’t really work.
The good news is that apart from Robert Englund (replaced here by Bill Moseley and joined by his Repo: The Genetic Opera co-star Ogre as a new character), all the main original cast members have returned. The film also doesn’t skimp on the gore, though the kills are nowhere near as imaginative. On the victim side, the cast are essentially dumb meat with a Paris Hilton-like bimbo as one of the primary stars. The humour is also much broader this time, with a lot of gay and race jokes that entire characters hang around for the sole purpose of providing. It’s not as offensive as it wants to be, but some jokes are fairly amusing.
Overall, it’s not a terrible sequel but it’s a long way down from the original.
Rating:
STAG NIGHT
A group of New York guys out on a stag night get kicked out a strip club and decide to head across the city by subway. One of them gets a little too pushy when trying to pick up a girl, and gets maced for his troubles. Unfortunately, one of them decides to get off the train while it’s stopped at a red light, and the train leaves while the group are arguing outside. They soon realise that they are stuck at a long-abandoned station and the only way out is along the tracks where a group of cannibal killers are roaming.
During the Q&A, director Peter A. Dowling seemed annoyed at comparisons to Chris Smith’s debut Creep, as well as Death Line (a.ka. Raw Meat). However, the comparison is really unavoidable. There’s only so much that can be done with the idea of killers on a subway, and sadly it’s all been done better before. Dowling attempts to hide his low budget by using a lot of unnecessary shaky cam movements, which while not confusing was rather annoying. Maybe this will look better on the small screen, but here’s a hint for directors: there’s 100 years of great low budget movies that didn’t have to depend on this tactic. Characterisation is also rather slim, apart from the groom’s pining for his fiancée which gets cloying and overly sentimental.
It’s not all bad, though. Despite being hugely unoriginal, the story is fine. There’s a few tense sequences and a couple of moments of gore (one of which, involving a head crushing, got big applause from the audience). It’s not a bad time-waster, but it’s ultimately hampered by echoes of everything from Creep to Wrong Turn
Rating:
A LIZARD IN A WOMAN’S SKIN
Carol Hammond is the daughter of a prominent British politician, who is having recurring nightmares about sex and death. She often dreams about lesbian sexual encounters with a noisy neighbour, who hosts wild parties in her flat. One night, she dreams of that neighbour being murdered and is shocked when she finds that the murder has indeed taken place in exactly the same method she dreamed. Did she commit the murder, or is she being set up?
A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin is a well regarded giallo from Lucio Fulci, who would go on to later infamy as a director of gore movies. Here, he depends a little less on gore and more on story but the result is a fine, if not spectacular, early entry into the genre. The version screened for us was essentially a workprint of an upcoming new release that combines all of the footage that has ever been assembled into one print. This mean that some scenes were a little rough-looking, and some jumped into subtitled Italian instead of the English dub present on most of the movie, but it didn’t really detract from the movie. I wasn’t distracted too much, especially since I’d never seen this particular movie before.
Sadly, this is one movie that hasn’t dated particularly well. Some of the plot lines are rather silly (especially the one involving a hippie couple), and the movie ends in a slightly annoying way that invalidates much of what went before, or at least made it rather pointless. Fulci has a decent visual style, but there are very few particularly striking images, to my mind at least.
Overall, not a bad movie but far from the classic it’s touted as in some circles, although I admit that my giallo knowledge is not flawless. Maybe I’ll enjoy this more on a second viewing, but I’m not in too much of a rush to do so.
Rating:
AMER
The French have recently been giving us their own unique takes on most major horror themes, from zombies (The Horde) and “torture porn” (Martyrs) to home invasion Ils) and hillbilly cannibal killers (Frontieres). So, it’s hardly surprising that they now give us their take on the giallo, although calling this a giallo is a little misleading.
The story follows Ana at three major points during her life – as a child, a teenager and a young woman. At each stage, she encounters strange ghostly creatures and a killer wearing black gloves.
…and that’s it really, plotwise. There’s very little dialogue and no driving narrative, so I was initially rather disappointed at this movie’s categorisation as a giallo. There’s little real mystery driving the film as a whole, and there’s no driving force between the sections of the movie. However, the movie is really just an excuse to pay homage to the visual and audio style of the 70s genre, which it does with style and flair.
There are many homages to note for fans of the genre, from the Tarantino-like use of music from old movies to specific shots and sequences borrowed from earlier movies. For example, when things start to get strange during the first sequence, there are many shots that seem to be aping the visual style of Suspiria. There are also a lot of close-ups of parts of Ana’s body, and a strong feeling of repressed sexuality throughout.
This is one movie I will need to revisit again soon. I was fairly disappointed through the first third of the movie because I couldn’t see what the story was that was being told. Once the second sequence began and I knew that this was not going to be a straight narrative, I soon settled into it, so I’d love to watch it again with prior knowledge of its structure. Apart from that, this might have been the movie of the festival, but for now it’s just above average and a great showcase for a potential new talent.
Rating:
[REC] 2
Taking place immediately after the end of the first movie, a SWAT team is sent into the infected building to take care of remaining survivors and extract a blood sample that may help create an antidote. Unfortunately, the head of the mission is not giving them the whole story, and new victims are becoming possessed by the disease/demon that has caused the outbreak.
I absolutely loved the first [REC], being as it was an almost flawless “found footage” movie that deftly side-stepped most of the common problems associated with the genre. The camera operator had a real reason for keeping the camera on for the length of the movie – he was working with a bottom rung reporter, both of them were bored and this outbreak represented a unique career opportunity. The script allowed a great deal of momentum, and the enclosed space and sealed location provided reasons why they could not simply outrun or hide from the antagonists.
So, when [REC] 2 was announced, I was slightly concerned that this could not be repeated. Would this be another outbreak somewhere else, stretching credibility? Why would a person be keeping the camera on this time? Luckily, directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza were well ahead of me. Their central conceit this time revolves around cameras attached to the SWAT teams’ helmets, so they are recording all the time without impairing their job. They can even access each others’ cameras, achieved for the audience via picture-in-picture. It’s a great conceit and works very well. They also have a very good reason to stay in the building, even after members of the team start dying off – the potential for a cure outweighs any
Interestingly, the movie also makes a direct remake as a follow-up to Quarantine (the remake of the original [REC]) completely impossible. Whereas the original [REC] hinted at a supernatural cause for the outbreak and the direct involvement of the Vatican, Quarantine jettisoned all of this in favour of a more standard mutant flu virus explanation. However, many of the later plot twists, and the clever twist ending, revolve completely around demonic possession, thus making it very difficult to adapt to the Quarantine universe. I don’t know if this was deliberate or not, but I did find this amusing!
[REC] 2 does fall short of the original, however, for a few reasons. The demonic aspect takes the story into a more unrealistic realm, and the film suffers slightly for it. There’s also a long sequence involving a group of kids who have managed to sneak into the building, and they happen to be filming with a camcorder. The section where we follow them around is a little disappointing and feels like padding, although there are a few amusing moments in there. That’s not a terrible sequence, but it does feel somewhat unnecessary.
Apart from that, this was the most enjoyable movie of the festival along with Frozen, and I’m glad I got to saw it on the big screen. I’ve already pre-ordered my DVD!
Rating:
SPLICE
A pair of genetic researchers have managed to create a new organism by splicing together DNA from numerous other plants and creatures. The result is a creature capable of producing substances that can revolutionise farming. However, they have a much broader ambition. If they splice in human DNA, the result could be breakthroughs in the treatment of all major diseases. After their request to do this officially is denied, they decide to do it anyway. Initially the project seems to be a failure, but after success they can’t bring themselves to kill the resulting creature as originally planned.
Vincenzo Natali is a very interesting director who makes sci-fi movies on low budgets with unique twists on the genre (Cube, Cypher, Nothing). While the basic concept of Splice is a little more obvious than his other work, his work here surpasses any film he’s done before on both a technical and visual way. The main characters are played admirably by Adrien Brody (here making amends for his atrocious turns in Giallo last year) and Sarah Polley. Essentially a three-hander between them and their creation, their performances truly carry the film.
However, the real star of the show is Dren, the creature they have created. Initially a fully CGI creature, and later an actress with CGI features and limbs, Dren is a totally convincing creation and one of the few instances of a CGI character being engaging. You really feel for her as she struggles to find her place in life and to understand what is happening to her.
Unfortunately, it starts to fall apart a little by the end of the movie, ending with a fairly predictable fight to the death and a “twist” ending that I saw coming a mile away. Even so, it’s a very enjoyable for most of its length and a fairly unique movie that makes a change from the dumber scripts that get forced on to our screens under the sci-fi banner.
Rating:
HARPOON: REYKJAVIK WHALE WATCHING MASSACRE
…and a nice, cheesy movie to finish the festival! The story is quite simple – a group of tourists go on a whale watching trip off the coast of Iceland. Out at sea, the captain befalls a fatal accident and the skipper takes the lifeboat to save his own skin. They contact a nearby vessel to help, but they’re soon taken hostage by a family of inbred killers who blame the tourist industry for taking away their whale hunting livelihood.
As you can tell from the title, this isn’t a movie to be taken seriously. Director Julius Kemp is obviously a fan of horror movies, and pulls out a lot of decent twists on well-worn cliches in this, Iceland’s apparent first exploitation movie. The gore is decent, if a little CGI-heavy and the plot twists are often amusing. However, where the film scores is in the characters and dialogue. The dialogue switches between English and Icelandic (Gunnar Hansen does his best Icelandic in his brief cameo), and both languages get a few decent jokes. The characters – including a drunk Frenchman, a Japanese group and a couple of Americans and Germans – are also fairly unusual, although the drunkard is a little overplayed.
Overall, a decent enough movie that’s unlikely to make too many waves, but is decently entertaining.
Rating:
Well, that’s it for now. More reviews of 80s movies coming soon, and I’ll post with details of the Frightfest London event when they’re announced. I already have my hotel room booked!
Keep it up!