NO-ONE LIVES – Fun schlocker from the director of 'Versus' and 'Azumi'. It's about a family of armed robbers who tangle with the wrong dude after one of their gigs goes badly wrong. Just how 'wrong' aforementioned dude is becomes apparent when all those news reports from 'America's Most Wanted' point in one direction only... 'No-one Lives' is slick and has a certain relentlessness to it. It also has that heightened sense of slightly delirious badassery you want from films about unrealistic criminals taking on unrealistic criminals, and some pretty good gore in places. Definitely worth a shot if you haven't already.
THE CHURCH – 'The Church' isn't Soavi's shining hour, but it still gets a few things right. I realised this after witnessing a few scenes of languid chaos in a church (in The Church, actually) give way to an equally casual shot-in-passing of a kid sat around playing a trumpet. Ah, it takes a special mind to conceive of such things... meanwhile, the world carries on turning. Anyway, for the uninitiated (see what I just did there ?), 'The Church' is about a church, The Church (stop it, Frankie), built over a pit containing the victims of a pogrom-type massacre from back in the day, which is about to unleash something demonic because of a meddling historian (or something). As is usual with this kind of thing, story and plot take a back seat to atmosphere. There is some of that, but there's also a lot of plodding. When Soavi lays on the visuals they seem appropriately majestic and otherwordly in a Ken Russel kind of way, and elevate the film towards the shining beacon it could've been with a little less 'scene setting'.
DEMON SEED – From the late D Cammell comes this strange item which is part sci fi / horror pot boiler and part excursion into mysticism. You would expect the latter from someone who was partly responsible for 'Performance'. In 'Demon Seed', a conscious computer takes over Julie Christie's futuristic household and basically rapes her for the sake of having a child. This robo-roughie element is dealt with quite coldly, and lends a real curdled undercurrent to a movie which is for most part about a captor – captive dynamic. Gender politics aside (they are ambiguous here ultimately) 'Demon Seed' is utterly of its time and is furnished with a very seventies imagining of the shape of things to come. More interesting is the post-hippie aspect, with its occasionally trippy visuals, droney electronic soundtrack and frequent hand wringing about the nature of consciousness.
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