BLOODY MUSCLE BODY BUILDER IN HELL – Basically a fannish 'Evil Dead' rip-off which distinguishes itself by ladling on a load of weirdo splat-stick visuals in its latter half. I think it was shot on super-eight in the mid nineties, and it shows – luckily, I'm a fan of the fly-blown look. If you're searching for a plot, you've probably guessed it already; a guy visits his childhood homestead with his ex and a psychic, hoping to pick up on some decent ghost vibes... well, his dad did flip out and murder his mum there all those years ago, so you could forgive him for thinking there might be something of an atmosphere about the place. He didn't count on all those crazy flying hands, though. BMBDIH keeps it pretty serious for a bit and even seems quite atmospheric, with its odd angles and creepy dolls lurking in washed out celluloid. But, come the gore, it soon finds that it can't keep a straight face. And neither will you, and why should you, BMBDIH's raison d'etre is ultimately to show a Japanese Popeye crushing monster's heads with his weights, I mean even someone as intrinsically miserable as Frankie Teardrop finds that a bit funny. Or if not funny, at least a bit 'groovy'. So, recommended if you like blood, guts and madness, and, at just over sixty minutes, it won't waste your time. And it's better than Evil Dead 2.
THE LOVE WITCH – Anna Biller, of 'Viva' fame, is back with 'The Love Witch', which I have to say is a great film. It's about a young occultist who tends to have an overwhelming effect on the guys who fall in love with her ie they die, one by one. It's a romance, in a really twisted way of course, and Biller frames love as a kind of excess that turns women into powerful but monstrous figures but men into confused and terrified wimps who can't handle their feelings. If you can't dig the romance angle you can take it as a serial killer flick, almost – that's technically what it is, but structurally, thematically and atmospherically it's not really a horror film, although Biller has absorbed plenty of Hitchcock and probably some Bava. It does look ultra cool and is visually striking, there's just such a plethora of colour and ornate design on show pretty much all the time, all set in stylised late sixties technicolor – Biller, a true auteur, spent ages making everything from sets to costumes. Films that tap into the grindhouse era are ten a penny in the genre, but 'The Love Witch', despite its apparent aspiration to seem phantasmagorically unreal, feels authentic in its obsessive fixation on the era of psychedelia and its swinging possibilities, and really brings some of that stuff onto the modern screen. So, although Biller has shouted down comparisons to Russ Meyer, I can really see where they come from, at least superficially, sexual politics aside (and I guess Biller's point here is that the politics shape the aesthetic). Anyway, 'The Love Witch' – dark feminist surrealism of a totally rad kind. Easily one of this year's best, so – see it!
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