THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN – The new one. I was slightly intrigued to find that the original had been remade, it being something of a mere footnote in genre history (I'm not a fan). This revamp gives it the meta- treatment to a weirdly wholehearted degree – it features drive-in snippets of its predecessor, is set in the same town and uses the folkloric embellishment of the film's 'true-crime' inspiration as its own springboard. Basically, a second series of killings happens in latter day Texarkana, and one of the town's new generation finds she's being stalked by a hooded murderer – looks like she's got herself a mystery to solve etc etc. The plot might be plain to the point of being down-home, but the conveying is a bit odd, with slightly abstruse camera angles being tossed out into passages of gaudy lighting during frequent bursts of semi-stylisation. There's a handful of freaky scenes, too. I mean, death by modified trombone - well, if it hadn't already happened in the first one, someone'd have some explaining to do. The ending flopped a bit, but that's the only real bad I can think of to say about this interesting flick, which pitches itself somewhere between dreamy meander and slightly brutal slasher / mystery.
CONTRACTED – A woman takes a break from her other half and shags a mystery guy at some party. Disappointingly for her, she develops a severe skin condition and begins to worry that her period is maybe just a bit too full-on. Various irritants in her life come round, hang out, hold pointless conversations then go before mystery guy turns out to be wanted for something really bad (possibly necrophilia in a government lab) and it all goes Horror in the last twenty minutes. 'Contracted', the newish one from the guy who brought us 'Maddison County', has shades of 'Thanatomorphose' about it, but is probably closer in concept to Andrew Parkinson's sleeper classic 'I, Zombie'. In truth, it's less grim than the former film and way less bleakly inspiring than the latter. Like Maddison County, its strength lies in build up and incidentals – by which I mean aspects at a tangent to the horror / fantasy, in this case a world of crap friends, bad relationships, wandering around, rubbish jobs etc etc. 'Contracted' has its feet too firmly planted in 'essentially inspired by Cronenberg's 'The Fly'' territory to really dally with the kind of 'post-Horror' approach I've seen creeping in over the last few years or so, but there is enough of that going on here to make the final reel seem a bit clumsy and artlessly done in contrast to what comes before it. Again, that's similar to how 'Maddison County' panned out as a film, and I guess 'Contracted' will possibly disappoint some fans in the same fashion – I suppose I mean people who would want the more 'in yer face' elements of the last few minutes to predominate. On the whole, it's a strong film in many ways – well acted, well paced, interesting and not so obvious in execution if not in concept – although I'm kind of waiting for a definitive statement from the obviously talented director (or, I think he is, anyway).
CONTAMINATION – Oh, the memories. Back when I was a kid and 'Contamination' was a 'video nasty', the only version which came with a barcode always seemed to hang around on dodgy market stalls in Northern towns. I'd walk past what would be my own copy for weeks on end. Looming through the chip fat fumes, case battered and sticky, it looked like a relic from a foetid realm beyond my grasp. Not some warehouse. Not some video depot. A different PLACE. And how it beckoned, tilting through the fog, out of reach, somehow untouchable. Too horrible to contemplate, let alone take home. I knew that it couldn't possibly live up to the slimy and wretched images that coursed through my mind when I gazed upon the blurb on the back. But that somehow didn't matter. And, on the day I finally managed to rally enough courage to speak to the man with the glass eye and get it home under a needlessly furtive handshake, I found out that, yes, it was cut. And that the lingering stench of curdled chip fat from the market had followed me into my house and wouldn't leave. But something about that cover, about the prone, ripped up form of the guy in the hazmat suit, still seemed to promise the unspeakably nasty. The washed out, grainy picture and muffled dubbing still hinted at barely excised horrors lurking just beyond the oxide of the tape (or those censor's snippers). In short, 'Contamination', or the VHS copy I coveted so feverishly, was an emblem, a latter day talisman invoking a different realm, the taboo, the strangely sacred.
Now it's in HMV (or, in my case, the latest Arrow sale), I don't quite feel the same way about it. Hmmm. Things have moved on, in many ways.
At least we can see it now AS a film, rather than as video toilet paper. As everyone knows, it's Luigi Cozzi's 'Alien' rip-off featuring some slimy eggs which make people explode for no reason, a rubber monster with a headlight for an eye, lots of wandering about in South America, and Ian McCullough as a very bitter ex-astronaut. It's not very good. Or maybe it is. I couldn't tell you, because sometimes for me watching films like this is what listening to The Beatles is for some people ie. they stop taking it in, stop processing and feeling it, 'cos it's just THERE. I'm not a Beatles fan, by the way. I'm more into The Velvets. Actually, I'm more into 'Contamination', for that matter. And I've noticed, one thing that a lot of 'these kind of films' (by which I mean mostly Euro exploitation from the seventies / eighties) have in common is that they always have a ratio of 'boredom to awesome to ridiculous' qualities which varies from case to case but is rarely ever quite 'bang on'. Here, there is boredom (need I elaborate?), there is, granted, some awesomeness (the music, bodies exploding in creepy slow motion etc) and there is certainly some ridiculousness (the rest of it). The ratio is a little too weighted in favour of boredom for my liking these days, but it is still respectable. A ripe film. I still like it. What more can I say, really? By the way, this isn't a whinge along the lines of “everything's rubbish now it's not on a VHS tape that's been puked on”, because I'm full of admiration for the likes of Arrow for continuing to put this kind of thing out (and 'Nekromantik', too! Wouldn't have bet on that one, even a couple of years ago). Just weird how things change. S'all.
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