SIGHTSEERS - Ben Wheatley's latest excursion into the darkness lurking beneath grey UK suburbia. It's kind of a Yorkshire road movie, with Steve Oram and Alice Lowe as an awkward couple whose caravan tour turns into a murder spree. The emphasis here is more wryly comedic than his previous efforts, although there are sequences where the atmosphere darkens considerably and, beyond the knitted crotchless bikini gags, the desolate landscape looms like a crow at the gallows. In fact, despite the black comedy (effective though it may be), 'Sightseers' is at its best when it comes close to capturing a sort of 'seventies UK rural arcana vibe', if that makes any sense at all. I don't think it's quite up there with 'Down Terrace' or 'Kill List' although I might change my mind on a second viewing, and, in any case, it's definitely a must-see.
MADMAN - Weird how I've never seen this until now. It's a really basic classic early eighties slasher, in set-up but not in execution. There are the usual idiot kids in the woods along with a maniac with a back-story, but, despite 'Madman's generic starting point, there's something captivatingly wonky about it all. The blue lighting and the film's choppy rhythms create an irrational dream-like atmosphere, the inane dialogue verges on the cryptic, and some of the performances at points are bewilderingly stylised. I guess some of this is deliberate and some isn't, but the net effect is beguiling. It's a lot more eccentric than, say, 'The Burning' or many of the slashers released in its era, which all tended towards linearity despite the cheap thrills they promised. If you can get past its woeful acting (Gaylen Ross, what happened?) and obligatory but dull stretches of stumbling around in the dark, 'Madman' offers some neat off-kilter bizarreness wrapped up in that quintessential early eighties atmosphere.
DEMON WITCH CHILD - An 'Exorcist' rip-off from De Ossorio. In the past, whenever I heard mention of it, it always seemed to get totally slated, and especially dissed in comparison with the 'The Blind Dead', so I wasn't overly enthusiatic when I put it on the other day. I have to say that I was really into it. I don't think it's as 'good' in terms of filmmaking as, say, 'The Lorely's Grasp', but it's certainly up there in terms of weirdness. It has the disconcerting, trippy, slightly magical aura of De Ossorio at his best, and makes up for its clunky B-movie dynamics by providing an endless stream of strangeness, some of which is overt, some of which isn't (and possibly exists only in my head, but hey I'm calling it as I see it).
 |