NIGHT OF DEATH – This obscure early eighties French horror flick is set in a retirement home. The elderly residents are cannibals and there's a gialloesque killer stalking the town down the road. A nursing assistant starts a new job at the rest home and quickly becomes the focus of various oddballs, including the staff. 'Night Of Death' is quite difficult to place. It seems to go for a quirky, blackly comedic angle, albeit a fairly dry one which can't quite accommodate the surprising outbursts of gore that splurge every now and then. There are also Polanski-esque stylings, with the OAPS lurking, spying and creeping down corridors like neighbours from 'The Tenant'. The combination of ironic, arty tone and scenes of pensioners munching on human hearts is intoxicating enough, and there is an intriguing air of political allegory about it all, but 'Night of Death' is interesting rather than wholly satisfying. Worth watching though, and definitely a curio.
CLASS OF 1999 – 'The Class Of 1984' was a difficult film to follow up, it being one of the definitive teen exploitation flicks of the eighties. CO1999 doesn't quite get there, but it's a pretty good attempt. It's set in a familiar apocalyptic VHS type future America, where cities are divided up into no-go zones full of new-wavers and guns... sensible places to put the nation's schools, according to whichever hacks were on board for the script here. In another clever move, three ex-military androids have been repurposed to serve as teachers in these hellholes... who could've predicted they'd massacre all those lowdown dirty punks when they wouldn't go along with the lesson plan? Certainly not Stacy Keach, with his albino rat-tail hair do. It's a little bit baggy, but good fun nonetheless, particularly when the teacher-droids go all 'Terminator'.
THE MESSENGERS – From the Pang brothers. It's a typical 2000's mainstream ghost flick ie features a preponderance of jump scares and rusty plot devices wrapped in slick packaging. Kristen Stewart has relocated to the sticks with her family. The new house they've chosen has the advantage of coming with a sunflower farm, although as ever the estate agents have missed out that bit about the previous occupiers dying horrible deaths and the possibility of vengeful hauntings. 'The Messengers' is a passable time killer for those in a forgiving mood. It's a good looking film, and the Pang's aesthetics might throw undemanding viewers off the scent of its numerous inconsistencies.
EVENT HORIZON – Sam Neil is on an interstellar mission, spouting bollocks about folding space time and black holes and the like. I wouldn't trust him, either. You sense that his quest to recover and explore the wreck of an experimental vessel will end in tears. 'Event Horizon' is fairly entertaining, and is a variant of the “traditional horror flick set in space” epitomised by something like 'Alien'. As many others have no doubt pointed out, 'Event Horizon' could almost be characterised as “'The Haunting' beyond the stars” - if only it had a gram of subtlety. It is sort of similar in that the space craft where all the bad shit goes down is framed as a kind of sentient entity with a malevolent pull on its guests, but it jettisons any real creepiness for a load of people running around shouting and being in peril. That's OK as far as it goes, but the opportunity to explore something more 'horrific' seemed missed, and my memories of seeing it back when it came out are more positive than the impressions which followed my viewing of the other day.
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