FRANKIE'S HALLOWEEN HANGOVER AKA 'THE END'! #13
29/10/21
SLEEPAWAY CAMP 2: UNHAPPY CAMPERS – From a time when slasher movies were starting to give a sly nod and a wink… but who needs irony when you already have death by the worlds shittest toilet (and its horde of face-suckling leeches)? Angela returns, and her embrace of some kind of neo-fascist nicey-nicey ideology doesn’t prevent her from racking up a statuesque body count. Great fun.
THE GRAPES OF DEATH – Strangely, it’s not the only vineyard-adjacent zombie flick (see also… ‘The Vineyard’). The French countryside erupts into Brueghelian clamour, all done with typical windswept, dreamy style by Rollin; if that’s not good enough, the ‘heroes’ are basically two trade unionists who would rather moan on about politics than shoot-em-up. It’s not ‘Resident Evil’, that’s for sure.
THE HEADLESS EYES – Fuzzed out guitars vibe incessantly to cutlery-thrusting mania in this trash epic from the slime-pit of seventies NYC. Looks like it was filmed on celluloid toilet paper (I happen to think that’s a positive). If its verité-style longueurs don’t leave you feeling seasick, you may rejoice in its panorama of no-fi grindhouse squalor. The lead psycho-man is very expressive when he does his proto ‘Maniac’ turn. Oh yeah, it’s about a guy who gouges people’s eyes out with a spoon.
30/10/21
NIGHTMARES IN A DAMAGED BRAIN – Humour me, but through the veil of scuzz there’s a certain kind of ambition here, that slightly oblique, laconic feel you got with a lot of seventies arthouse, unexpected edits, fun with symbology, that sort of thing. Guess no-one took any of that shit seriously the moment they set eyes on slasher guy frothing at the mouth in that peepshow booth. Perhaps the most enigmatic of the nasties, which seems like a strange thing to say about a movie that blows its wad on spurt-laden S&M decapitation scenes.
DEATH BED – Always a pleasure to revisit, ‘Death Bed’ is full of a whimsical weirdness that sends my thoughts in the direction of something like ‘Edward Gorey goes Grindhouse’. Has all the expected awkwardness and heavy-handed lyricism of a student film, but still it manages to spellbind with its tale of a bed that eats anyone who sleeps in it, even going as far as to provide a sort of mythological back-story for all its strange goings-on. Charming and morbid, a unique film.
GIRLS SCHOOL SCREAMERS – Troma-handled eighties tedium that redeems itself through some nice atmosphere and crudely inserted moments of gore (the latter look silly but liven things up). If you like big houses full of heirlooms, this could be your thing if you’re not already dosed up on ‘The Antiques Roadshow’.
IN THE EARTH – Some good stuff from Wheatley here, but not on the same level as ‘Kill List’ or ‘A Field In England’. Scientist and park ranger head off into a UK forest to uncover the mystery of someone’s disappearance. It all gets a bit hazy. I liked it, but my patience started to wear a bit thin when the missing researcher turned up as a sort-of outdoors Sylvanian DJ.
31/10/21
DEATH SCREAMS – As much as I love it that Arrow still puts out these obscurities, it’s always a shame to hear the sound of scraping coming up from the bottom of the barrel. I’m well versed in the art of appreciating boring films that no-one else can be arsed with, but even I had to squint to make out the good in this one. There’s a long bit in an amusement park, then some slasher action at the end. Only the sense of a slight bad-film disconnect / ‘offness’ kept me interested.
LITTLE NECRO RED – From Necrostorm, the studio behind ‘Adam Chaplin’ and ‘Taeter City’. Anyone familiar with their stuff will know that it basically involves an avalanche of technically well-done prosthetic gore. If you want specifics here, I’ll be honest and admit that my Halloween bottle of cheap Lidl Bacardi was well into its early morning phase, so my recall is less than perfect, but it all has something to do with a missing girl, her diary, and a witch in a cave with lots of boils. Oh yeah, and people getting their heads, limbs and innards ripped away in various permutations. Don’t forget all that.
I think I've done about fifty films in total this October, not bad considering my monthly average is less than ten these days. It's been fun, but I definitely need to lie down for bit. Thank god for clocks back...
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