A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER - A true jaw-dropper. 'Rehabilitated' former teen slasher returns from psyche-ward only to find her murder-instincts all too intact... or maybe something else entirely is happening, as suggested by the incessant flow of cinematic non-sequiturs, bizarre edits, oneirc eruptions and truly brazen nonsense. This is a film wholly out of tune with itself. It was made by Doris Wishman, one of the few distaff movers and shakers in the early roughie / porn arena (other side of the camera). It's well documented that half of the film was destroyed during processing and hit the screen as a reanimated patchwork of sad remains, out-takes and possibly unused fragments of other movies. As a result it plays almost like 'bad' experimental cinema, a post-Fluxus home movie drunk on its own mad dream of slasher video rental success. There are loads of inexplicable shots of feet - I'm not familliar with Wishman's ouvre, but I think maye the foot-thing was a recurring image throughout many of her films? I like to think that's true anyway. Never tired of watching this over the years, it remains an authentically disorientating landmark in para-cinema.
THE DEAD - The Ford brother's zombie safari. Quite liked it, nice to see a serious, 'straight-on' approach to the material, slightly languid road movie / 'quest' feel with a twilit atmos and an appropriate quota of splatter. I found the central device, which is basically a more existentially driven take on the 'buddy' theme, by turns heavy handed and touching, but I always like moments in films like these when the horror drops away and suddenly it's just two guys trying to get across a desert / get a car to work whilst doing a bit of fire-side emoting. Was a bit 'Hmmm...' about the ending. Visually does justice to its location, I would think. Good but not mind blowing.
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