DR BUTCHER MD – Having seen ZH many, many times, and remembering Chas Balun’s seemingly rabid enthusiasm from ‘back in the day’, I was pleased to finally make an appointment with Dr B (MD). Can’t really speak for the bedside manner, but I was quite satisfied to find that my prescription included a load of wild gore and crunky electronic music. Said ‘wild gore’ isn’t any different to that which features in ZH, and the same goes for most of the rest of the film beyond aforementioned atonal soundtrack and a bit of Roy Frumkes. But any excuse to revisit this one in either of its guises really, it’s just one of those ‘over-the-top trash classics’ that fully justifies such a dubious accolade.
WILLY’S WONDERLAND – N Cage is on slightly subdued form as a mute drifter who, for the sake of moving the plot forward, agrees to renovate an abandoned fairground with an evil past… overnight, alone etc etc. He needn’t worry, because when the possessed animatronic puppets come out to play, a bunch of intrepid kids are at hand to serve as fodder while Nick tries to work out what the feck’s going on. I used the word ‘subdued’ in my opening sentence there, but if Nick doesn’t say a right lot, the rest of the movie is pretty loud. Homicidal toy variants are ten a penny and an easy fumble – witness ‘Banana Splits, The Movie’, one I had high hopes for that turned out a little lacklustre – but ‘Willy’s Wonderland’ acquits itself with lots of gore, a dreamy disjointedness, and a defiant garishness which is silly but still manages to seem quite macabre. I liked it.
THE GARDEN OF TORMENT – I was taken unawares by ‘The Garden Of Torment’, a film unknown to me before the recent release from Nucleus. Set in twenties China, it charts an exiled GP’s dawning realisation that the bright young things he’s hanging with are Sadean degenerates who love nothing more than to torture the prole. TGOT has the languid feel of classy seventies Euro erotica, but resounds with a gathering menace as portentous as a slowly tolling bell (you’ll understand the reference if you watch the movie). The last half hour in the torture garden is actually pretty harsh by seventies standards, with amputations and eviscerations framing the bombastic posturing of the libertines. Some interesting stuff also about politics and violence, it being made around the time when a lot of sixties optimism had declined into seventies bombings. Good on Nucleus for putting it out is what I say.
CUTTING CLASS – I don’t drink all that much these days, but I’ve been trying to figure out whether the weirdness I saw in ‘Cutting Class’ was just a product of my acute hangover. Ostensibly a slasher, for the most part it plays more like a high school melodrama, in which a student returns after offing his dad… cue the next wave of (slightly tepid) killings etc etc. There’s a shakiness to it all, it’s full of weird little scenes and throwaway images that don’t resolve and don’t make sense, so you can forgive the clunky pace and the occasional sense of aimlessness, not to mention the lamest ‘reveal’ in slasherdom. I’m sure ‘Cutting Class’ was never very prominent on Brad Pitt’s resume, but somehow I’d rather watch a film with such weird contrivances as the duck hunt-based murder set piece and Roddy McDowell’s sock fetish than ’12 Monkeys’ (and you might be with me on that one, Dem!)
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