Kicking off my countdown with a dead cert -
TERROR – It might’ve been on TV back when I was in my late teens / early twenties, and I remember thinking quite clearly “I hate this film. It’s f&cking rubbish”, then getting ever so slightly angry. Since then, either it’s grown up or I have – hate has turned to love, the best of reversals. Watching ‘Terror’ these days is like dipping into a treasure trove of minor weirdness. We’re inside a horror film, granted, but we’re also in a world of overly conspicuous Daz packets, of ‘Sham 69’ scrawled in lipstick on a mirror, of intimidating S/M strip routines, of smoke-filled pubs where everyone looks a bit like Michael Winner, of flying cars, of scenes that don’t quite mutate into ones more typical of a ‘Confessions Of…’ movie, of someone who shakes their hair like they’re trying to dry it off after they’ve been caught in a downpour only they’re in the process of being stabbed to death… this avalanche of dowdy Britishness is gilded with cribs from none other than Argento – you can see it in flashes of kindergarten lighting and in bits like the one where someone lets a load of blood rain down on them (a variation on the maggot ceiling from ‘Suspiria’). The effect is baffling. There are at least two instances of long, winding build-ups to fake scares, and it’s quite telling that these don’t irritate the way they would in a straighter film – ‘Terror’ is really 100% goofball in attitude, if not always in demeanour. There is a radical disconnect at its heart. Scenes float together and make approximate sense, but the whole thing feels derailed. Maybe the wobbly conceit about a family curse pulls it all together somehow, but there’s plenty of random senselessness leaking out at the sides. Anyway, I could go on, but much to your relief I won’t. Let me end by stating the obvious – NJW, we love you!
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