WRESTLEMANIAC – Went in without expectations, came out feeling quite chuffed – 'Wrestlemaniac' is a latter day slasher that doesn't particularly revolutionise the genre, but what it does it does well, and with a certain quirkiness. A bunch of aspiring porn makers head out into Mexico for a shoot and find an abandoned town 'haunted' by an El Santo wannabe who has a track record for removing the faces of his victims, not just their masks. 'Wrestlemaniac' doesn't take itself very seriously, and the the first thirty minutes are a thumb twiddling trawl through a set of arch one-liners. But once the horror hits, the film changes tone and becomes quite graphic and sometimes eerie. I liked it. Fave line - “They lobotomised this guy three hundred times and it didn't do shit”.
GHOULIES – I never liked 'Ghoulies' back in the days when horror gold meant a fuzzed up twentieth generation copy of 'Nekromantik'. How about now, in these far more mellow and resigned times? Well, sod it, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit the other day when I stuck it on Netflix. It's strange how movies from 'back then' seem alien now – the eighties look so gaudy and unreal. That's part of the attraction, along with the supernatural schtick and those messed up troll puppets. OK, it's anodyne compared with the stuff that was breaking ground at the time. Whereas some of the latter seems a bit lame today, films like 'Ghoulies' reveal their own charms with the passing decades creak creak.
THE BURNING – Never been a big fan of 'The Burning', but I felt a lot better about it when I saw it in hi-def recently. It's definitely a well made flick – you appreciate that kind of thing after forcing yourself through the piles of total dross I watch for a living (in my dreams). Also, despite there being a bit of a lag between the bravura opening and the first kills, it's also really well orchestrated, with lots going on character-wise for anyone who doesn't just want to watch a burned guy chop up a load of college kids. Whatever, it works, and really has that early eighties slasher vibe down pat, being quite ripe but also a bit of a downer. The first fifteen minutes are great, a melange of downbeat sleaze and shrill excess organised around that brilliant scene where the hospital porter does his carny routine, itself a miniature laying bare the dynamics of video nasty fancying. Pretty much the whole vibe of that era is there in capsule form.
 |