WAKE IN FRIGHT - Much talked about, presumed missing in action, this flick has returned over the last couple of years and now settles down on Blu-ray / DVD. It's great, a sinister, dark drama about the undoing of an uptight, narcissistic teacher whose stopover in an outback town finds him tangling with a frazzled Donald Pleasance, here a kind of demented prince-in-exile surrounded by an entourage of macho throwbacks. It's the kind of film which seems heavy with a meaning which never quite crystallises, but the homoerotic undercurrents and feeling of existential crisis are pretty obvious. Everyone goes on about the kangaroo cull scene and, yes, it is upsetting. Dank, sweaty and morbid and looms like a stormcloud. Donald Pleasance is brilliant, in this and everything else. See it!
DEAD END - Wow, very impressed. Hadn't seen or heard of before I trundled across a copy whilst blowing the cobwebs from a stack of unwatched from previous decade. Christ, I should get out more. Anyway, this probable sleeper is very good and features Ray Wise (a haunted man who always looks like he has the soul of a desiccated fish no matter what he's in) as a guy trying to keep it together when he takes his family down the wrong road during a festive vacation. Strange things happen, one by one - the film is a kind of road trip populated by sinister encounters and somehow manages to be simultaneously dark, breezy and dream-like. I could see where it was all heading, ending-wise - but that doesn't matter. I'm glad I watched it, and you will be too.
GRAVE VENGEANCE - By Jeff Leroy. A camping trip goes horribly wrong and ends in rape and retribution. This shot-on-video quickie from the early noughties is mildly diverting, but it's no 'Ms 45' or 'I Spit On Your Grave'. Leroy is capable of churning out tasty trash like 'Hell's Highway' - for me he hit top form with sleazy oddity 'Werewolf in a Woman's Prison' - but here he's sort of in second gear. There's some splattery violence, but equally there's quite a lot of wandering around in a forest. Still, I liked it, a bit.
SYNGENOR - One to bring back memories of nineties VHS in full bloom. Memories are always conveniently a little out of reach and often obscure the shitty reality they're derived from. Hence 'Syngenor', which hitherto floated amidst the flotsam of my mind as a frothy image-scum of coolish monsters and lasers is here revealed for the most part as a bunch of people chatting and walking up and down corridors in the headquarters of a sinister corporation. Maybe that was enough back in the day. Actually I'm being a bit hard on 'Syngenor', which is a proficient B-movie rip off, has the kind of synthetic late eighties / early nineties feel I often click with, does its job OK and even manages to reach beyond its limited grasp with some pleasing eccentricities (David Gale channeling Frank Booth, sort of?) Just could've done with more monsters, lasers and people being horribly mutilated with a load of tits in the background. I hope I'm still thinking like this when I'm forty.
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