RED MIST – A pack of attractive but fairly nasty medical students make an arch-nemesis of a feeble-minded janitor and do all sorts of horrible things to him, including feeding him a funnel full of drugs and calling him ‘freakdog’. I mention the nickname because it’s also ‘Red Mist’s AKA. Janitor ends up in a coma, but his spirit gives his life support system the slip and reaches out to get ‘em all by means of possession; which one’s it trying to be, ‘Patrick’ or ‘The Meatcleaver Massacre’? From the airbrushed smiles of its protagonists to the tepid bits of torture porn that plug the empty narrative, ‘Red Mist’ is ‘2007’ to the core. Little scraps of joy fall here and there courtesy of its blunt ways and callous attitude (I found its portrayal of necrophiliacs as bumbling oafs to be quite insensitive). It’s a film full of tacky shit – many of the possessees hiss “freakdog…” and try to look a bit evil whenever they’re about to do a kill – but it rattles through its schtick swiftly enough not to bore. An added fillip is that it’s one of those flicks where a lot of UK TV actors try to sound American, always a little amusing to me at least.
SOUTHERN COMFORT – The national guard gets it wrong in the bayou and riles some Cajun trappers; Keith Carradine tries to keep a level head whilst Brion James gives it stary blue eyes. Funny, even though it’s short on thrashing tendrils and metamorphic monstrosity, ‘Southern Comfort’ always reminds me of ‘The Thing’. In principal they’re quite similar I think, just that stifling sense of a closed little world where macho men seem destined to do themselves in through their own rampant paranoia. Hypnotic and tense, atmosphere thick with Ry Cooder and swamp mist at every turn. I’d choose ‘The Driver’ or ‘Warriors’ over this as my fave Walter Hill, but it’s a close third.
THE NESTING – Armand Weston did quite a lot of porn and this, a supernatural horror flick about an agoraphobic writer’s big dark house full of secrets. It’s never shaken off a slightly tepid reputation and is for the most part overlooked these days, unfortunate when you consider the fawning regard for other early eighties creepy house movies eg the mediocre ‘Amityville Horror’. ‘The Nesting’ is flaky but strong on atmosphere. Beyond the rote plot moves and a tendency to lumber looms the feeling that flows from rooms full of shadow in a house surrounded by endless forest. If that fails, you might be tickled by the odd flourish of ineptitude (that shrink, that roof incident), and if you need a little more, there’s always croaky John Carradine and a sickle to the head. It’s a pity that, in the end, it’s just a fairly conventional ghost story wrapped in the usual through-the-motions type mystery. But I’m drawn by the well-framed rot and murky style, and just that densely wooded upstate New York thing.
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