Italian Gothic Horror Films 1957-1989

Faux Goth And Multiply

Italian Gothic Horror Films
1957-1969
by Roberto Curti with a forward by Ernesto Gastaldi
McFarland Press ISBN 9780786494378

Italian Gothic Horror Films
1970-1979
by Roberto Curti 
McFarland Press ISBN 9781476664699

Italian Gothic Horror Films
1980 - 1989
by Roberto Curti 
McFarland Press ISBN 9781476672434

Just a very short but sweet shout out to an absolute powerhouse of a trilogy of reference books by Roberto Curti, comprising Italian Gothic Horror Films 1957 -1969, 1970-1979 and 1980-1989. Not that there aren’t still a few Italian Gothic Horror movies made to this day (and still just about being made, I’m very glad to say) but because, as you’ll see from the progression of the tomes themselves, it goes very much into decline by some point in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

So, each volume is set out in years and every Italian gothic (in Curti’s view) is included with a full listing of titles, alternative titles, casts, crew, distributors etc… just like Sight And Sound used to do, back in the days when that was a great magazine and not the pale spectre of a cinematic review it is these days.

Following on from each entry is a fairly large summation of the film itself, before Curti gets into the full meat and bones of each production, giving potted biographies of the key players, analysis of the way each film came to be funded and made… as well as any distribution and certification woes which eventually led to each film’s buoyancy or downfall at both the Italian and International box offices. And, clearly, Curti has been quite thorough in his research.

Of course, all the classics you would expect from tomes entitled in this manner are covered such as I Vampiri, Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, The Ghost, Suspiria, Inferno, The Beyond and so forth, all including valuable information about each film’s genesis that even the less than casual viewer may find noteworthy. It also delves into the possibly slightly shadowy area of the photonovel style magazines which accompanied some of the films in Italy when they were released... and even, in at least one case, when the film remained either unreleased or heavily censored, neither fate of which befell the photo magazine version.

If I had anything critical to say, asides from the author continually referring back to the Italian titles of many films and thus leaving me in the dark as to which film he’s talking about (and don’t get me started on the fact that a fair few of the English titles of the films have been released in alternate titles by various boutique labels since these works were first published), it would be his insistence of including certain non-horror films in the collection, when actually they belong to another genre entirely…

And I’m primarily talking about gialli here. I mean, there aren’t that many included and I totally understand the inclusion of films like All The Colours Of The Dark. I mean, that film is revealed in the final scooby-doo like reveal to be a giallo for sure but, in Curti’s defence, it does use the language and trappings of the gothic horror film and poses as such for the majority of its running time.

I’m much less forgiving about the inclusion of such thrilling gems as The Red Queen Kills Seven Times or A White Dress For Marialé. On the other hand, certain films that have been marketed as gialli in recent years, by nefarious labels trying to lure unwary customers into parting with their money by tying them into the currently popularity of that genre, are clearly and quite rightly defined as gothic horror here… so I’m glad someone else is with me when it comes to such brilliant genre films as The Perfume Of The Lady In Black or even the somewhat dreary Seven Deaths In The Cat’s Eye.

My biggest pleasure when I read these kinds of reference books is the number of titles new to me which I can add to my shopping list… and I certainly have only seen about a half to two thirds of the movies listed within these pages. That being said, when I started researching titles I was less than familiar with, I discovered that I already had around 90% of them to watch on Blu Ray, sitting in various piles around the room, often as part of boxed editions put out by the likes of Severin Films and Vinegar Syndrome… so that was a nice surprise!

Well that about wraps it up for me and Roberto Curti’s three volume set Italian Gothic Horror Films. These are probably the most useful books I’ve read on the general view of the genre and I would have to recommend them as essential cineaste reference books, as far as I’m concerned. Not a lot more to say about it other than there’s a lot of ground covered in these. Definitely worth a purchase.

Labyrinth

A Load Of Trap

Labyrinth
Directed by Ryühei Kitamura
USA 2025
Screened on 29th August at FrightFest

Warning: This one has spoilers.

Okay then... so Labyrinth was my fourth and final pick from this year’s FrightFest and I chose this one because I figured it would be a gory and violent film and, it’s been a long time since I saw one of those dumb, mindless, bloodletting movies. I thought it would make a nice change from the ghost stories and high concept films I’d been watching during the rest of the festival. 

Alas, Labyrinth just reminded me of why I tend not to gravitate to these kinds of films in the first place. It kinda uses the same style of plot as the Saw films (of which I only saw the first when it came out in the cinema... although I am assawed these are actually worth a look for my blog sometime) and just gives it a slightly different method behind the madness, so to speak.

So, we have a bunch of people who we all see abducted by... I’ll call them ‘angels of death’... in an extended sequence leading up to the title card. The abducted are played by Mekhi Phifer, Alexxis Lemire, Shane West, Chris Klein, Ami Park and David Sakurai. I think that’s all of them. Anyway, they are brought to a series of rooms and corridors by a character who is, presumably, supposed to be Satan, played by Tommy Flanagan... who seems to be attempting to channel Christopher Lee a tad. And they all have to survive a series of death traps to atone for their sins.

And I’m sorry to say... it all leads up to an ending which the audience will most likely see coming. I won’t give it away here but most people will get there long before the last sequence of the movie.

Now... it’s well acted and, it is hyper gory in terms of bloody carnage... although I was hoping/expecting the goriness to be a little more innovative or pushed beyond the norm for a movie which, more or less, exists just for these kinds of bloody set pieces. It can get quite intense in places too... such as the Russian Roulette scene. And the actors are all pretty good although, honestly, if you want the audience on your side you should probably not have killed off the most charismatic personality in the cast first. 

As the film plays out, it becomes clear that the various characters have all done something bad in their past and it’s the reason why they have ended up in a labyrinth of traps. But, again, you are kind of expecting that too.

I mean, it’s a well shot production but, honestly, as I’m writing these words and realising this is going to be a really short review, I can’t think of too much more to say about the film, either good or bad. There was a lot of laughter coming at me from the right hand side of the auditorium whenever one of the specific actors opened his mouth and said something but, I can only assume that’s because some of the crew or maybe his mates were all sitting in the audience too. It’s not as though he was saying anything funny. And some people were definitely getting freaked out a little (a girl sitting next to me was having a hard time with some of the scenes) with some of the gore... although, apart from a scene where the actor I mentioned above has to cut out his vocal cords with some scissors, there’s nothing new on show here... the usual decapitations, head to toe body splittings, crucifixions etc. If you’ve seen one horror trap movie you’ve seen them all is what I was thinking about these kinds of movies as I watched... but then I remembered the brilliance of such movies as the original Cube and then think, no, it can be done well.

Sadly, for my money at least, Labyrinth is not a movie that does this particularly well. It certainly does it competently and it looks very professional... there’s just not anything innovative in terms of the story content for me and, yeah, you really will see that ending coming from a mile off. Not one I’ll visit again, for sure.

Salmokji - Whispering Water

Water Way To Go

Salmokji - Whispering Water
Directed by Lee Sang Min
south Korea 2026
28th August 2026 Screening at FrightFest

Okay, so after the somewhat brilliant movie Nervous (reviewed here) I returned to FrightFest the next morning for my second of this year’s films, Salmokji - Whispering Water. Which looked pretty fantastic and grossed about a gazillion pounds in its home country, knocking Project Hail Mary (still haven’t seen that) off of the top spot.

Now then, it would be true to say that this movie was mostly what I expected it to be but, sadly, not nearly as much as I’d hoped it would be.

The film starts with the brilliant premise that a road route to and in a remote forest area away from the city has had the images replaced with a ghost head staring out of the big lake. The company responsible for shooting the films and stills delete the offending image but are hit with an ultimatum by their client that new footage needs to be up by the end of the day (which, makes no sense to me because... why would you not have a back up anyway) so a new team has to go and film it.

The last team are missing and with the former director on sick leave after his experience there but, they all go down to the place and, one of the innovations of the film, if you want to call it that, is the sped up journey of the van spherised and shrunk down to a moving globe of passing footage at the centre of the screen (look, that’s the best way I can think of describing the effect… go see it if you want to see what I’m talking about).

Of course, when the crew and their producer Su In, played by Lim Hye-yoon, get there, things of an uncanny and definitely spooky nature, all focused around the lake, start to happen. And then the producer who is ill turns up and, if that doesn’t strike up a warning alarm in your brain, then you probably will quite enjoy this one. Of course, before you can say Spirit Of Dark And Lonely Water (and if you get that reference you’re probably pretty old), all watery hell breaks loose and, as many a young lady could tell you, there’s nothing light hearted about your waters breaking.

Okay, so someone whose opinion I admire greatly was exiting the screening as I left and so I asked him what he thought. His response was that it’s clichéd and, yeah, I think he really hit the nail on the head for this one (thanks Jason).

And that’s a big problem for this film, which has quite a good opening premise but then starts to very quickly pile on the expected tropes for this kind of movie. And then repeats them… and then overplays them for the rest of the movie. The problem is, for instance, that once you realise the lake can masquerade as anything plus any safe space in or out of the area… there’s not much point in rooting for any of the characters. Everyone is doomed and, I’ll charitably allow the filmmakers (who have made a pile of money out of this thing, don’t forget), that this is the main reason why the film just isn’t very scary and none of the jump scares really work either.

Honestly, Salmokji - Whispering Water plays like a very tedious, young-teen minded film and so, yeah, this reviewer is many decades removed from the target audience but, I do find it infuriating that a film which is as well lensed as this one kind of shoots itself in the foot by doing exactly what is expected of it, rather than deviating and taking a more interesting route. This one just wasn’t my cup of tea, it’s sad to say.  

Nervous

Recorded Delivery

Nervous
Directed by Abner Pastoll
2026 South Korea/United Kingdom
27th August 2026 Screening at Frightfest

It’s that time of year once again and, as always, one of the films I decided to attend at this year’s edition of FrightFest was the opening film, Nervous.

Now I’d like to say I chose this screening because the film looked really interesting (and, indeed, it did and is) but my primary motivation on this thing was, as always, to be one of the first to check out the FabPress stall for new books and US Blu Rays from the likes of Severin Films, so yeah, mission accomplished on that count.

That being said, I’m so pleased this was the opening film of the festival this year because, it was a truly great movie. After a bit of a false start that is, since the first ten minutes played without subtitles on the Korean parts of the dialogue and then, when they finally realised, they started the film off again with the proper subtitle track.

So, an Irish girl called Sarah, played by Sarah Bolger, goes to Korea with her husband Sungsoo, played by Sungsoo Yune (hmm… I sensing a trend with the character names here). They pitch up at the isolated dream house that Sungsoo’s Aunt has effectively given them but when they get there they find a mysterious intruder who leaves quickly. Also, another lady kinda joins them in friendship called Eunbyeol, who is played by none other than Ko Asung, from The Host and Snowpiercer (reviewed by me here).

But the young couple also find an old gramophone in the attic, which plays a record emitting, seemingly, silence plus weird crackling. Could it all have something to do with the outbreak of dead men and missing women which seems to have been sweeping the area?

Not long after this, Sarah stops being able to hear her husband, who just starts coming out feint and muffled on the audio track of the film. And as Sarah gets more involved with the somewhat mysterious and seductive Eunbyeol, she (and the audience) realises that it’s all men that she can’t hear, while she can hear the women-folk just fine. What’s that I hear you cry? “Not all men!” Well yeah, I think that’s kind of the point… the film does have a not so subtle, ‘me too’ feminist agenda but… it takes its chances with all the other story beats and, in this particular milieu, I didn’t think it was out of place and it's a valid point to make.

And that’s as much as I want to tell you about the plot, suffice it to say that the rogue comments about serial killers and missing women does, indeed, come into play by the end of the tale.

It’s a pretty beautiful film to start the festival off with, to be sure. Absolutely stunning cinematography and frame designs. The director likes to use big rectangular blocks of tonally variant surfaces, textures and colours to both either use as a separator for a couple of characters in a shot or, in one spectacular moment in particular, to bring his characters together in a centred, dark panel of the frame while the two outside quarters of the screen are light and used to highlight that integration of people.

And, needless to say, the film also has some excellent sound design, which, for a film that trades in crackles and muffles, it really does need to have, to be fair.

Not to mention a sequence towards the end which will have you holding on to your right ear in sympathy with what one of the characters does to themselves. It’s a slow burn but that approach more than enhances a couple of scenes which, shall we say, are not for the squeamish.

And that’s me done with this years opening FrightFest film Nervous. An absolutely beautiful film which, okay, maybe needs a more compelling title but is absolutely exquisite and, I just hope it manages to secure both a theatrical and Blu Ray release in this country, at some point soon. Maybe a label like Mubi should take a look at this one.

Insidious - Out Of The Further

The Further Adventures...

Insidious - Out Of The Further
Directed by Jacob Chase
Australia/USA 2026
Blumhouse
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: Slight spoilers.

Okay then... another Insidious movie, namely Insidious - Out Of The Further and, well, it’s actually quite good in many respects, even though the franchise is now pretty much divorced from its original creator other than a production credit. Which means, of course, that Elise’s two assistants from the previous movies are no longer with us. 

But, hey, Elise is... as played by the 83 year old Lin Shaye and, yeah, that actress is still kicking ass in this movie. Elise is still dead, of course... but as usual, she’s helping out people from her unique place in The Further, the realm between life and death where the evil entities that plague the various corporeal, human inhabitants of these films live. And, since her two regular helpers are not in this installment (she’s the only character/actress to appear in all six movies to date), we’re introduced to a new, physical world helper in the form of Clare, played by Maisie Richardson-Sellers... and she’s a likeable enough character and the actress does a good job on selling her here, even though she’s really only brought in for the last third of the movie.

Okay, so this film focuses on a new family, three generations of daughters headed up by main protagonist Gemma (played by Amelia Eve), her daughter Maya (played incredibly well by Island Austin) and her own mother Ingrid (played by Laura Gordon). We initially see Ingrid die in a violent fashion in front of the young version of Gemma in the past. This is followed by the usual, big Insidious title coming up with the ferocious, atonal music accompanying it but, either my cinema had rubbish sound or it was pretty dialled back this time around. It didn’t startle me like they usually, quite purposefully do. 

And if I had a criticism of this film in general it’s that it does go through all the usual tricks of the trade of the modern horror film, like showing you where you think the scare is going to come from or shifting the audio landscape to not-quite-subconsciously herald in another intense scene... but it somehow manages to be completely unscary this time around. I don’t think it’s me but... this film did feel somehow less stressful than any of the other movies in the franchise and... I wonder if that’s down to the director over anything else? 

There are, though, some unsettling moments for a certain sector of the audience, I reckon... Gemma grows up to be a dentist and there is a full on ‘dental horror’ scene in this. It wasn’t particularly scary for me but it was inventive in what it reveals about one of the characters. I could see how it might set some people’s teeth on edge if they have a quite understandable fear of dentistry (I’m personally in a good spot with my dentist these days so... maybe that’s why I found it less distressing). 

My second criticism took the form of an homage scene and, my problem is it didn’t go far enough. So you remember the eye slowly being pulled towards a big, sharp splinter and then being gouged out in Zombi (aka Zombi 2 aka Zombie Flesh Eaters, reviewed here)? Well, a similar scene but using a much cleaner, sharper instrument is restaged here in reference... except the director seems to have an eye on the censors and it doesn’t quite get to the eye gouging. But that would have been nice to see in a modern movie, for sure... especially since the victim is also the main protagonist here. That would have really shocked the audience if she’d lost an eye and helped build the kind of ‘the gloves are off’ momentum that the film needed.

But. like I said, the film is pretty entertaining and a fair bit better than Insidious - The Red Door (reviewed here), especially because Lin Shaye has more of a role this time around. 

And that’s me done with Insidious - Out Of The Further. I thought this was a fine addition to the franchise and, I think if fans give it a chance, they should be into it too. It does open up a possibility of having sequels that are not just centred around the same family from the first five movies and I thought it did that in a more than credible manner. I just wish the scares could have been ramped up a notch. Oh, and stay for the mid credits scene and especially because, during those credits, you can hear in more detail something that composer Joseph Bishara does in the movie too... which is go into the realms of John Carpenter style scoring, specifically The Fog, at some points. So that’s cool too. 

Under The Shadow - Almeida Theatre

Djiin And Djang

Under The Shadow (stage adaptation)
Directed by Nadia Latif
Adapted by Carmen Nasr
From the film by Babak Anvari,
Almeida Theatre on Saturday 20th June 2026

The Almeida Theatre is possibly my favourite theatre... despite this being only my third visit since the mid-1980s, when I saw Joanne Whalley in a production of Wedekind’s The Lulu Plays (playing the role Louise Brooks made famous in Pandora's Box) and also, about nine years ago, an amazing adaptation of The Twilight Zone (reviewed here). I just like the look of the theatre, I think... although the surrounding streets seem to have changed quite a bit since I was last there. 

I’m on their mailing list though so was surprised then I saw that they’ve put on a theatrical production of the amazing ‘evil djiin’ movie Under The Shadow from 2016 (which I reviewed here). On the one hand it’s perfect for a stage adaptation because the film is mostly just set in one apartment building, for most of the time. But, yeah, there are special effects to think about which would make a stage adaptation very hard. Also, I couldn’t see how my favourite moment, when Shideh runs from the house in terror, only to be promptly detained by the local authorities for not wearing her head scarf, could be recreated on stage. And as for that last point... I was right, they didn’t even try and I can certainly see why it was cut, even just for pacing reasons here because you need to keep the momentum going on this particular stage show, I think.

But I went anyway and was astonished to find that, actually, it was a pretty great, solid two hours of theatre and I absolutely loved it. The format is such that, to get certain things across which are done easier and quicker on film, things had to be added. For instance, there are some wonderful scenes with the entire cast stuffed into a small space under a trap door at the front of the stage, which is doubling for their underground shelter from the bombs and, ultimately, missiles falling on their home city of Tehran and these serve to get huge amount of information across about both the characters and their relationships to each other... and the political turmoil of the country in 1988, when this tale is set. 

And there’s a lot more of Shideh’s husband in this for the first half, before he’s sent off as a doctor to ‘the front’. Again, lots of information given throughout these scenes and they work very well.

The performances in this, even from the child actors, are pretty strong too. I really liked Leila Farzad, the lead actress playing Shideh in this version and, I loved her chemistry with both her daughter and, especially, her older neighbour played by Souad Faress. Farzad really came across as a woman who is living with the hell of not being allowed to continue her medical studies, due to early political affiliations, while also being a modern, independently thinking woman in a country which, perhaps, did not encourage such attitudes at the time (if I’m off here in that assumption, please put me right in the comments below). 

The staging is wonderful too. The way the space is divided and an amazing set of Shideh’s apartment, with depth added through open doors (again, the artistic world owes a debt to Roger Corman’s set dressing technique) is impressive and allows for a small strip of ‘the street’ down the front of the stage. Okay, some of the scares didn’t quite work for me but I’m putting that down to being jaded and old and, I can tell you, they were certainly working for the rest of the audience. And the sequence where the unexploded missile lands above Shideh’s ceiling and is poking through it, revealed in a top section of the stage you didn’t even know existed until the reveal... is absolutely stunning. 

Another big change is the ending of the film... if I remember it rightly... and without giving too much away, it gives us something both more hopeful in one sense but, depending on how you interpret things, something far more cynical than the original version. In fact, I’d have to say that I kind of liked this ending a little better, which all hangs on a monologue given by Leila Farzad.

And that’s me done with the stage version of Under The Shadow, I think. I had a really good time with this one and was really pleased I saw it. However, it’s only on for another couple of weeks so do yourself a favour and grab a ticket while you can. And while you’re there, grab a small tub of the salted butterscotch ice cream from their bar, it’s wonderful stuff. 

 To grab a ticket for the show, check out their website here... https://almeida.co.uk/ 

The Sand

Sandwiches There

The Sand
USA 2015 Directed by Isaac Gabaeff
Frightfest presets DVD Region 2

Why can you never get hungry on a beach? Because of all the sand-which-is there!

Or, in the case of this film, The Sand, the answer is... because you are an unknown, carnivorous creature sitting under a large area of the sand and feasting upon any humans who get even close to making contact with said sand. 

Okay, so this film is another of the free DVDs I snagged at Frightfest some years ago and, again, it’s one of the better ones although, it does have some negative stuff in it too. Now, the first thing I thought of when I looked at the title was that it’s maybe a remake of the old 80s classic Blood Beach (a film sorely in needing of a modern HD release) and, even in Alan Jones’ introduction to the movie, which is an option to play on this DVD, he mentions that particular film. However, this movie isn’t really a straight up remake of that one at all and, although I wasn’t quite as taken with it as Mr. Jones, I did have a fairly good time with it, it has to be said.

The opening ten minutes or so was a little hard to get through for me, consisting of chaotic, shaky cellular phone footage of a teen party taking place on the beach one night, to establish some of the characters and also that the organiser had asked for everyone to put thier phones in a bag (yeah, that’s not going to be a set up for a scene later in the movie now, is it?) and that one of the party goers finds this huge, seaweedy looking rock, which most audience members will probably realise is an egg from early on. The party footage is interspersed with languid shots of an abandoned beach the next morning, in slow and languorous camera movements. Wait... did I say abandoned? No, there are eight people left sleeping from ‘the night before’ (four guys and four gals), all in the same area of the beach. Two on a lifeguard station, four in a car, one on a bench and one stuffed into an oil can by his friends.

As they come back to life and before their feet touch the sand, one of them sees a gull land on the sand, get stuck and then get eaten by it. She tries to warn the others (all are within earshot and sight of each other) but the hungover girl on the beach immediately gets stuck on the sand and shares the same fate as the bird... but not before one of the guys in the car runs to the rescue and gets similarly stuck and eaten himself (in one of the more picturesque and believable pieces of goriness in the movie). It soon becomes clear that the found ‘egg’ hatched at some point and all the other people at the party the night before have been eaten by the beach, in this abandoned strip where barely anyone comes. Once the surviving six realise that they can’t touch the sand and, once various hot dogs have been thrown  to try and ascertain the size and shape of the area of the sand which is hostile, the film consists of the various attempts of these remaining people to escape their fate, as the rules of ‘the sand’ and the monster beneath become more defined and their number gradually diminishes. 

And it is an entertaining movie with some nice performances by the likes of Brooke Butler and Meagan Holder. Some of the sequences, such as when one of the girls is balancing on the back bumper of the car trying to get the trunk open to get to the bag of phones inside, are fairly intense and suspenseful. Which makes it even more annoying when I say that, in some ways, the budget lets the film down a little. I know it’s a low budget horror production (shot in twelve days with the same cast and crew after another movie which fell through... I get it) and that’s often the best kind but, I have to say that much of the CGI in this really lets it down and I kinda wish they’d gone for more practical effects. When a passing policeman (temporarily protected by his non-organic shoes for a short while) who obviously doesn’t believe what’s going on, get his arm chomped off by the beast, the resulting stump gushing blood looks totally unrealistic and just, I dunno, kind of watery. 

Similarly, although the gazillions of small, cotton like tendrils of the creature which raise up from the sand when anything is in close proximity look quite effective but, when they decide to go full on giant tentacle terror towards the end of the movie, the CGI appendages just don’t look like they’re there in the same shot... they literally look like they’ve been cartooned over the top of the film (which they kinda have, I guess).

However, special effects don’t maketh the movie and, though I would have liked more money pumped into the effects work (and I rarely ever say that about special effects because, I usually don’t care anything about them), it was still an entertaining ride of a modern horror B-movie and I think it would play well as part of a an all nighter with friends and liberal amounts of alcohol. The Sand is nowhere near one of the better monster movies I’ve seen but, there’s obviously a lot of love gone into this one and it kinda works. 

Night Tide

 

A-Mora-Therapy

Night Tide
Directed by Curtis Harrington
USA 1961
AIP/Indicator Blu Ray Zone B

“Americans have such a simple view of the world.”
Mora, Night Tide

I’ve been wanting to see Night Tide for a little while now. Shot in glorious black and white, the film stars a young Dennis Hopper as sailor Johnny, who visits a coastal town on his weekend leave days. While in a jazz club, he meets the mysterious Mora, played by Linda Lawson, who works in an amusement side show playing a mermaid for a living. It isn’t long before the two start seeing more of each other, as Johnny starts hanging out with her and the beachside community in town, where she lives in an apartment above the Merry-Go-Round. However, the occasional fleeting presence of a mysterious Greek woman who frightens Mora... and the discovery that both of Mora’s previous boyfriends drowned at the full moon, leads him to fear for both his life and Mora’s, as he tries to understand the mysterious woman with whom he’s fallen in love. 

Okay, so with the inclusion of the mysterious, intimidating woman played by Marjorie Cameron, we basically have a vibe from this movie which gives it the feel of a watery remake of Val Lewton’s Cat People from 19 years earlier. Which is pretty much what it is with a possible difference, depending on how you personally decode the story beats. 

The film is almost a psychological drama with Mora pictured as actually being a real mermaid, with the Greek woman representing her fellow, siren-like fish people who are calling her to return to the sea during the full moon. There’s quite a lot of silence and pausing in terms of the dialogue of the movie and it’s really obvious to see, even from this early point into his career, that Hopper is actually a really great actor. Giving the part lots of expression and attitude (especially of naivete or innocence), he fleshes out the character with a lot of depth, as you can see him carefully considering everything in his head before he speaks... I’ve never had an awful lot of time for Hopper as an actor, to be honest but, this film really hits home just how good he was. 

Equally great is the confused and troubled Mora, with Lawson really going to town on the mysterious woman and her unusual attraction to the sea (especially when the moon is full). She perfectly compliments Hopper’s strangely sympathetic performance by giving him a cypher to play off of... as her character shifts between mental states to frighten Johnny as much as she mesmerises him, in her seduction of the character.

There is a slight difference between the basic idea holding both Cat People and Night Tide together in terms of story... in that there is a full on explanation here for what is troubling the main female protagonist. But where Cat People veers right into a very specific conclusion at the film’s end, Night Tide maintains the ambiguity and it’s not until things have gone horribly wrong, by the end of the picture, that the film allows a feint hint that the writer is both trying to have his cake and eat it, where this specific movie is concerned. It’s only at the end, where the dry ‘scientific explanation meets Scooby Doo’ is undercut by the fact that nobody can explain the Greek woman who has been appearing to Mora and Johnny throughout the film, that doubt is once more cast as to the true legacy of Mora’s character.

The film is moodily shot with a lot of slightly off-kilter, fun house style camera angles (from a Dutch fun house, obviously) which give it an almost Caligari-like feel in some places but, it also gives off an aura not unlike a certain film which came out a year after this one was made (although released later in some territories) which I also believe it shares some common DNA with... that being Herk Hervey’s Carnival Of Souls. Although the incessantly eerie pipe organ music of that later work is instead filled in with a more traditional score by famous Hollywood composer David Raksin, which sometimes hits the mark and, other times, undercuts it in a negative manner, it seems to me. However, the enigmatic mood is kept throughout and the score doesn’t relly harm it in most places. 

The film reaches a kind of unsatisfactory conclusion by the end of the picture, it has to be said but, it’s honestly a fun journey getting there. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Night Tide as an ambiguous thriller which strays into horror territory and, I think the film should perhaps be a little better known than it currently is. The Blu Ray from Indicator has the usual ‘let’s push the boat out’ flurry of extras which, I’m sure are very good but which I haven’t had the opportunity to sample myself, as yet. But I’m really glad they put this one out and I’m happy to have seen it. 

Undertone

Pod Fearing People

Undertone
Directed by Ian Tuason
Canada 2026
Vertigo Releasing
UK Cinema Release Print

Finally got to the cinema again (the last six months have been very hard) and about the only movie that could coax me out was one in which I knew the sound design would play a huge part. And, yeah, sound design is everything to Undertone, so I think I made the right call here.

So in terms of actual physical appearances by actors, this is a two hander, all set in one house, with lead actress Nina Kiri as supernatural phenomena debunker/podcaster Eva and Michèle Duquet as her silent, dying in bed mum. All the rest of the cast, including Adam DiMarco as her fellow podcast hoster Justin, are all voices playing out on her headphone receiver.

And, suspending disbelief about how podcasts which are being recorded for future airing can have live callers at random recording times, the film has a pretty claustrophobic atmosphere as Eva and Justin, over a space of a few recording sessions, work their way through listening to a series of ten anonymously emailed sound files concerning a young, ‘expecting’ couple during the night. Starting off with the husband recording these to initially capture his wife talking in her sleep.

That’s as far as I’ll go on the story content other than to make the comment that the initial set up obviously shares some DNA with the fantastic movie Monolith (reviewed here), which I saw play at FrightFest a couple of years ago. And, even more so in the case of Undertone, the action never once leaves the confines of Eva’s mother’s house. Eva leaves once but, yeah, the camera stays behind.

Now, I’m a sucker for these very small cast, single location pieces and, I have to say, this slow builds to being one of the most terrifying I’ve seen in recent years. Perhaps for the wrong reasons by the end of the movie but it’s all down to two things, asides from where the ideas thrown up by the recordings goes.

The first of these two is the wonderful performance by Nina Kiri. Apart from when she’s talking on her side of the podcast, it’s a solid silent performance which relies a lot on the reactive expressions Kiri brings to the table here, both to what she’s listening to but also to what’s going on in the house as she keeps an eye on her dying mother.

But the equal star of the show here is the aforementioned sound design. The films does have a deftly, light handed score on it but it’s the mix of sounds giving audio sensations of both what’s on the recordings and, again, simultaneously in the house... which makes or breaks this thing. And it’s well done here.

So well done in fact that, while I was perhaps disappointed by the obvious style of the conclusion the film has, my heart was still beating fast in my chest due to the absolute unremitting cacophony of the foley track.

So yeah, my final thoughts on Undertone is that it’s a very well performed and mostly well crafted slice of horror which, ultimately doesn’t allow for too many surprises by the end of the film but, makes up for it in sheer energy and artistic determination. Good for a scare and certainly one to partner up with the aforementioned Monolith as a nice ‘mates round for drinks’ double bill or even the third or fourth film in an all nighter (it certainly gets way too loud to sleep through).

The Reptile

Jacqueline's Pearcings

The Reptile
UK 1966
Directed by John Gilling
Hammer Studios/Studio Canal 
Blu Ray Zone 2

Warning: I guess this one has venomous spoilers in it.

I thought it was time to revisit a good old Hammer horror in the form of their 1966 entry The Reptile. It’s funny, I didn’t know it when I started it but, as soon as I saw the locations and sets, not to mention that it’s shouted out at the start that the film takes place in Cornwall, I was pretty sure this one was using the same locations to shoot as Hammer’s The Plague Of The Zombies (reviewed here). Sure enough, I checked it out and it was, indeed, filmed back to back with that movie... not to mention having some of the same cast members. It’s also got some very similar plot elements... more like a simplified version of that film. 

In this one, Harry Spalding (played by Ray Barrett), accompanied by his new wife Valerie (played by Jennifer Daniel) inherits a cottage in Cornwall from his recently ‘deceased in dodgy, pre-credits circumstances’ brother. The locals don’t all like strangers and are superstitious about a series of ‘deaths’ which they attribute to a ‘black plague’ but Harry and Valerie are befriended by the local pub landlord Tom, played by Hammer stalwart Michael Ripper, in a much more heroic and featured role than he got in many of his movies for the studio. They also have the local ‘character’ Mad Peter (played by John Laurie of Dad’s Army) helping them, a little, before he succumbs to what’s been ailing the other fatalities. 

But what’s this? Can the epidemic of bizarre, unexplained deaths have something to do with Spalding’s neighbours... Dr. Franklin (played by Noel Willman) and his lovely young daughter Anna (played by a young Jacqueline Pearce in her first feature film role, although Hammer’s The Plague Of The Zombies and another movie with her in it both made it to cinemas before this one, in the same year)? Maybe it’s the curious chap from India who lives with them and sings Anna into a frenzy so she can turn into a big snake woman and inject her venom into innocent victims that could be the trouble, perhaps?

Yep. This is how I like my horror movies... strangers coming into a small, bigoted community, refusing to move and then helping, with a small team of likeminded individuals, to rid the village of the local horror preying on them from within. It’s not got any flashy camera work on this one but it’s definitely a good ‘comfort horror’ movie and certainly a nice watch for Halloween (I watched this one the day after the 2022 Halloween Fright Fest, although I’m not sure how soon this review will make it onto this blog). Definitely a relaxing slice of genre and it’s a lot of fun too.

Jacqueline Pearce is expecially good in both her human form and when she’s pearcing... sorry, piercing... the necks of the locals with her double toothed, vampiric looking teeth. Apparently though, the creature suit and make up was too much for her to handle in her claustrophobic state so it was the last time she worked in that kind of role for anyone, by the sounds of it. 

The principal actors are all good and make a well oiled machine of a team but Michael Ripper is especially great in the role of Tom. It’s sometimes very easy to take for granted just how good some of these well known character actors were but, of course, they became known as such because they were regularly re-used by studios because they could be counted on to give a reliable, dependable and believable performance in whatever roles they were thrown into. Ripper has the bad fortune to be lumbered with a fairly fake looking, somewhat freaky and almost ‘hipster’ beard which, honestly, really works against the character but, it doesn’t stop him from being absolutely awesome in the role and he does, it has to be said, kinda steal the scenes away from everyone else in the picture, whenever he’s on. 

It was good, too, to see John Laurie in such good form as Mad Peter. He’s given some quite nice and eccentric dialogue in this one and he really chews up the scenery in this but, honestly, it totally fits the character he’s been given and it was obviously written for his comic strengths, even if he does meet a ghastly death at the hands of the title beast halfway through the movie. 

And, okay, a short review but The Reptile gets a strong recommendation from me. Sometimes the Hammer films of this time underperformed and, well, I’m not sure how well this one did (I suspect it was made for one of their double bills) but their output here was all quality stuff as far as I’m concerned and, even the ones that maybe didn’t quite make the right pace, were usually still very entertaining. This one’s definitely worth a watch or three. 

Night Of The Big Heat

All You Can Heat Buffet

Night Of The Big Heat
aka Night Of The Burning Damned (US)
aka Night Of The Burning Doomed (US TV)
Directed by Terence Fisher
UK 1967 
Planet Films Distribution/88 Films
Blu Ray Zone B

 Warning: Minor spoilers.

Okay then. I’d not seen Night Of The Big Heat before 88 Films issued this new Blu Ray transfer, although I’ve got it in the back of my mind that it probably played on British TV a fair amount during the 1970s and 80s. This one is set on a small island called Fara where, in the middle of winter... and at odds with the rest of the country... the inhabitants are suffering a huge heat wave. Patrick Allen plays novelist Jeff Callum, who is on the island writing his new book and who runs the local pub alongside his wife, Frankie (played by Allen’s real life wife Sarah Lawson). Then Jane Merrow turns up as his new secretary, Angela, who had a fling with him in her past and wants to reconnect... plus take no prisoners as far as his wife is concerned. 

This all goes on against a backdrop of strange goings on at the island, with the big tropical heat just a symptom of something else that’s happening. There are instances of strange, high pitched whirrings in the air sometimes and this is usually a prelude to somebody being confronted by something off screen and then being burned to death, as is the case when a character played by Kenneth Cope runs away after attempting to rape Angela... only to be confronted with ‘something unusual’. 

Trying to get to the bottom of it all is Godfrey Hanson and his amazing scientific instruments, played deliberately unemotionally by the great Christopher Lee. And, billed as a guest star  (he is only in a few scenes dotted about the movie at various points) is the equally great Peter Cushing, as the local Dr. Vernon Stone. Shenanigans ensue when Jeff and Godfrey form an uneasy alliance after the latter shares his theory that the heat is a by-product of beings from another planet coming to the island as the vanguard of an invading species, who need the heat in order to survive. 

And, it’s a film on which I’m now very torn. On the one hand, it has all the makings of a good ‘comfort horror film’ and I suspect it’s one I shall come back to every now and again. On the other hand, there are a lot of problems with it, tempered by the heat being a good excuse for Jane Merrow to run an ice cube over her half exposed torso and neck. I mean, some of the dialogue and story ideas are awful, which is strange considering it’s supposed to be an adaptation of a novel by John Lymington. Apparently it was rewritten from scratch a day or two before filming. It kinda shows.

And the film also suffers from some very low budget and not terribly effective monsters. Most of the time the monsters are unseen and thus create a certain amount of suspense and jeopardy until the big reveal. Unfortunately, the big reveal is just light pulsing rocks looking like they’ve been constructed from canvass. So, yeah, not good. 

The other problem is... the body count in the film wouldn’t be nearly as bad if some of the characters just acted on common sense rather than whatever the heck they do here. For example, people are practically going off to their deaths in ways that can be easily foreseen and, I suspect, easily escaped from...

In one scene,  for instance, Godfrey uses his walkie talkie to contact everyone in the inn to tell them to turn off the lights as it’s what is drawing the creatures to people. And so a token is made of showing some of the characters doing just that but... do they heck!?! When we return to the scene of the people in the inn, they have clearly left a few lights on... obviously to light the shot, I get it but, yeah, it makes no sense by this point in the film and it’s almost like the various main protagonists are trying to get themselves killed by doing the lamest things ever. So, yeah, I have no sympathy for their actions throughout the film, for sure. 

But, the pace is nicely fitting for the film and it has a kind of interesting score by Malcolm Lockyer. Now, I don’t know Lockyer at all apart from his music for the first Doctor Who movie (reviewed here) but, I have to say, I recognised the style immediately as sharing the same DNA of that score and was waiting for his name to come up in the opening credits. Which is another thing that pushes it into comfort movie territory for me, for sure. 

The denouement of Night Of The Big Heat is abrupt and totally unsatisfying, it has to be said. If you thought the ending of the movie version of The Day Of The Triffids was bad then, yeah, you ain’t seen nothing yet. So, all in all I would have to say that, in many ways the film is really terrible but, I found myself thoroughly entertained by it so, I was very happy to have 88 Films’ wonderful transfer hitting shops. It’s not one I’d recommend to everybody but fans of studios like Hammer and Amicus should maybe try and catch this one, for sure. 

The Mummy - Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor

Life’s A Dragon, 
Then You Die

The Mummy - 
Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor
United States/Germany/China/Canada 
2008 Directed by Rob Cohen
Universal UK Blu Ray

Warning: Some mild spoilers.

We were all smacking our lips in anticipation of a third film in the Rick O’ Connell Mummy series after the brilliance of The Mummy (reviewed here) and the pretty great follow up The Mummy Returns (reviewed here). And we were all dreadfully disappointed in what finally came out in cinemas. Stephen Sommers, who wrote and directed the previous two installments, did not direct this movie... other than he’s listed as one of the producers. I hate to say it but... it really shows. I don’t know why he wasn’t involved but his 2004 movie Van Helsing, where he further expanded his reimagining of the classic Universal monster movies, was not treated kindly by critics or box office alike. I don’t know why because I thought that particular take was also pretty good but, I don’t know, maybe that’s why he didn’t do the third Mummy movie. He is sorely missed in this sequel. 

Now, the film isn’t a total mess... it certainly works as a typical action adventure movie of the 2000s but, that’s where this film also fails big time. The thing about the previous two installments is that they were both something very special... so expectations were high this would deliver a similar concoction and, to be fair, a lot of the ingredients which made those two a huge success are present and relatively correct. There’s a huge element missing though and, that element would be... fun. Despite an overemphasis perhaps on the humour found in the first two, this film is not the entertaining romp it should have been and falls flat a lot of the time. That being said, there are one or two notable things in the film and, honestly, it’s not the cast’s fault for sure.

We only have two returning actors from the first film present and correct here... that would be Brendan Fraser as Rick O’Connell and John Hannah as Evelyn’s brother Jonathan. And they’re as good as they can be with this script... as are all the other actors. Another character returns from the previous film, Rick and Evie’s son Alex but, of course, since this is set halfway through the next decade again (each Mummy move in this series is set in a different decade) and Alex is supposed to be considerably older and grown up, he couldn’t be played by the same actor (as this was only about seven years since the last film). Instead they get Luke Ford, who makes a not bad stab at this and even, somehow, manages to have some of the same character traits of the child version from that last story. I say somehow because, character consistency is not high on the priority with the next actor I’ll talk about... again, not her fault.

Okay, so the great Rachel Weisz did not, for reasons known best to her (with many different reported explanations for her absence but I think I believe her when she says she didn’t like the script), return for this sequel. However, the character of Evelyn is all present and correct and the original actress was replaced in this film by Maria Bello. And she does a great job so I mean it as no disrespect to say that, in this role, she is no Miss Weisz. Now, one of the problems I have with her is that she is playing it in a much different manner to the character we’ve come to know. That decision could be defended by remembering that, in the last movie, Evelyn was resurrected from the dead as both herself and the daughter of the murdered Pharaoh in the first film... so a slightly different personality could be a valid choice... if that fact were at all referenced in this one but, nope, not much (if anything) is said about it (this time it’s her husband who gets killed and then brought back to life). She does get a nice line of dialogue though... which I’ll come back to in a minute. 

For the record, both Arnold Vosloo and Oded Fehr declined to return for this film also... so the original script must have been pretty different from what we ended up with. 

Two other big actors in this movie are both kung fu legends in their own country... Jet Li as the villainous Dragon Emperor himself and future Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh. Both are great but, come on... another reason people were chomping at the bit for this movie was that we wanted to see them both put their kung fu skills to use (and a ten minute fight scene between the two would have been most welcome). It would be an understatement to say that neither has a chance to shine in this one... especially in Yeoh’s case. 

Right... there are a few nice things. One is that we are re-introduced to Evelyn at a book reading of her latest novel, based on the second of her adventures. When someone asks her if the character in her book is based on her, Bello’s face is revealed and she says... “Honestly, I can say she's a completely different person.” Which is a nice and cheeky nod to the audience (pretty much the only one in the film, I’ll get to that) that she is a different actress taking over the role. It’s the exact same kind of metatextual comment on casting that George Lazenby delivers at the end of the pre-credits sequence in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (reviewed here) when he turns to the camera and says, “This never happened to the other fellow.” So... a nice moment. 

The only other nice thing in this movie... for me... asides from a nod to the first two films by having the name of Jonathan’s night club be “Imhotep’s”... is the inclusion of a small bunch of abominable snowmen... aka yetis... who help out our merry band of heroes at a crucial time. They’re nicely done although, I’ve no idea how two of the creatures can make a visual reference to the game of American Football... to be sure. Maybe try not to think about that too hard. 

A curious thing is that, when Jet Li’s character is fully resurrected, he can take on various forms. The two things he shape shifts into seem curious choices. One is a three headed dragon which bears an uncanny resemblance to King Ghidorah in the original Godzilla films and the other creature he changes into seems to slightly resemble King Caesar, from that same cycle of Godzilla films so... I dunno... I’m surprised the studio didn’t get sued over this. Maybe the director was secretly trying to pitch for a Godzilla reboot at the time? Who knows but... anyone who is into their kaiju eiga would surely get a jolt at seeing these creatures here.

As I was watching the film... I was trying to figure out why it just doesn’t work. There’s loads of humour (which mostly falls flat for me... unlike the other two movies), the action set pieces are well put together, the actors are all good and Randy Eidelman’s score for this (although partially replaced by stuff from John Debney, it would seem) is sweeping and fine... if not a patch on the scores provided for the earlier films by Jerry Goldsmith and Alan Silvestri. I think, for me, the film loses out in terms of the script and the way the humour is played. The script is really stating the obvious and explaining every last thing to the audience and capitalising it... me and my father looked at each other this time when a particularly stupid line (one of the unintentionally stupid lines) came up. And the other problem with it is that, unlike its predecessors, the audience aren’t let in on the joke. Asides from the “different person altogether” line, there are none of the sly winks to the audience that the other two had. It feels like its taking itself too seriously and, consequently, it never really gets us on its side... it’s just not as entertaining as either previous installment and... yeah... it’s just a bit of a let down.

No further films were made (as yet) in this series although, the Tom Cruise version of The Mummy (reviewed here) does include the book of the dead from the first film as a visual reference in one scene... so it’s technically taking place in the same universe. A fourth one featuring an Aztec Mummy was planned but never came to fruition... again, as yet. As for how I stand on this... well, for me, The Mummy - Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor certainly hasn’t grown on me. It was as much of a disappointment this time around as the previous times I saw it so, yeah, if you only see this one, don’t miss out on the first two just because this is not up to scratch. I hope someday the original writer/director and cast will come back to do just one more but... who knows if that will happen. 

Return To Silent Hill

Dodgy Pyramid Scheme

Return To Silent Hill
Directed by Christophe Gans
France/United States/United Kingdom/
Germany/Serbia/Japan 2025
Entertainment Film Distributors
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: A hill full of spoilers herein, I guess. 

Well, okay then. 

I was kinda looking forward to a third Silent Hill movie when it was announced, especially since it’s directed by Christophe Gans, who did the first movie and who also directed the masterpiece that is Brotherhood Of The Wolf (reviewed by me here). This third film, Return To Silent Hill, is kind of a soft reboot for the franchise in that the only returning characters I could detect here are the grotesque nurses and, of course, Pyramid Head.

However, it has to be said that, for a good deal of the running time I was a bit disappointed in this one (although for the first half an hour or so I was convinced this would be the best of the three to date). I certainly had no problem with the lack of context to the surrealistic nightmare that was the town of Silent Hill and all that goes on in its environs, that’s for sure. And following an almost optimistic, love story approach to the opening of the story, the quick spiral into the main lead (played by Jeremy Irvine) going to the town in question in search of his girlfriend (played by Hannah Emily Anderson) and the driven, unflinching and unrelenting plunge into frequent, morbid and nightmarish suspense was something which initially had me on the edge of my seat. Again though, only for about half an hour or so until I figured out something... and here’s where my short review gets kinda spoilery folks. 

After a direct confrontation between the male lead and the fan favourite Pyramid Head, I figured out something pretty basic about the nature of these two and so I stopped caring about what was going to happen to the anti-hero of the piece. If I’m not very much mistaken (and it’s made both clear and then obscured or muddied by the last sequence of the film, as I see it), then the main protagonist is also an aspect of Pyramid Head, from what I could tell... or did I get that wrong? He’s just a self induced metaphor for the horrors of Silent Hill. That’s my interpretation of the visual data here, at least. 

So after this... I knew he couldn’t come to any harm and I kinda stopped caring (although it’s not made implicit until near the end of the movie for the ‘hard of thinking’, it seems to me). And, although the film is well made in terms of inventiveness (presumably culled from the video game Silent Hill 2, which I’ve not played myself, only the first one) and it’s very well put together, I had a few other problems with the movie too. 

One of those is... it’s not all that scary. Which should be a cardinal sin for a film in this particular franchise. For instance, the sexy, mutant nurse thingies which were such a marvelous and terrifying element of the first two movies, seem to have absolutely no visual impact here at all. It almost feels like the director has included them because people expect them to be here. But the effect of them is totally diluted and they seem an easy enough challenge to overcome. 

And the other big thing which really unsettled me was the way in which some of the acting was rendered. Especially the main lead played by Jeremy Irvine. Now congratulations to Gans if this was indeed supposed to look flat and clumsy like a video game interpretation of living human beings but, I don’t know, was it something in the make up or lighting that made me feel that Irvine wasn’t even on set. He felt, a lot of the time, like a bad CGI render of a person, much like you would find in a game. And it was totally off putting and maybe contributed to my personal apathy in regards to this film. I am caring much less about manipulated pixels and much more about flesh and blood when I watch a movie. It’s almost like the director ran a filter or some such thing over some of the main characters to make them seem more lifeless than perhaps they should have been. So, if it was a deliberate choice then well done for making me think I was watching a video game but... yeah, I don’t want to see a video game when I’m sitting in a cinema. I want to see something that will move me or connect with me on an intellectual level, rather than break everything down to something somewhat lesser than the sum of its pixels. Which is sadly what happened here for me. 

And so that’s my main takeaway from Return To Silent Hill, I’m afraid. It started off well like a white knuckle ride but steadily lost any traction as I lost empathy for any of the characters or the situations they found themselves in. What I thought would be my favourite film in the franchise turns out to be the worst entry in the series. So, yeah, nothing more to say on this one, I’m afraid, That’s me done on these for a while.  

The Vault Of Horror

 

Taking It EC

The Vault Of Horror
UK 1973 
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
Amicus/20th Century Fox  Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: A vault of spoilers. 

The Vault Of Horror was another of the Amicus portmanteau horror films with which they had a lot of success and, as the title suggests, the five stories found within (not including the framing story, I would guess) are adaptations from various 1950s EC comics, repeating the formula from their Tales From The Crypt movie (reviewed here). Despite the title and what it claims on the opening credits, which play out mostly over shots of London, none of the stories in the film are actually taken from the original The Vault Of Horror comic... instead, the segment entitled The Neat Job is taken from an issue of Shock Suspense Stories while the others are versions of stories first published in the pages of Tales From The Crypt. 

The film starts off with an elevator picking up various of the five main characters, played by Michael Craig, Curd Jürgens, Terry Thomas, Daniel Massey and Tom Baker. They are all going down but, down way further than any of them expect, as the elevator deposits them all in an underground chamber. They can’t get the elevator to take them back and so, for the rest of the film, they exchange stories about various nightmares which have been bothering them, allowing the audience access into the five segments which make up the majority of the film’s running time. 

Now, I’ve actually read four of these stories but only remember three of them in terms of a little of the details, because I read the entire run of Tales From The Crypt a few years back. So in the first story, I can definitely tell you that the term adaptation is loosely used. Don’t get me wrong, we still have the same story and the final panel of the comic is rendered as the final shot of that story but, yeah, it’s been watered down somewhat.

To explain, the first story is based on the Tales From The Crypt story Midnight Mess. In this, Daniel Massey pays a private detective who goes to find his lost sister, who has been left everything after their father has died. The detective, played by Mike Pratt (Randall, from Randall And Hopkirk Deceased) finds her but is killed by Massey, who then goes to find his sister. He can’t get served in a restaurant because it closes early in the village she is staying in, so he goes to her house and kills her. He then goes back to the restaurant, which now appears to be open. However, when he’s served dishes made from blood and human flesh, he complains and gives himself away. The waiter pulls back the big curtains in the restaurant to reveal a big mirror... casting only his reflection. All of the other diners are vampires, including his sister who also has a drink when the patrons set him up in the bar as a human bar tap, syphoning his blood ‘fresh from the source’ as the still alive Massey has a tap plugged into an open wound on his neck. Incidentally, his sister is played by real life sister Anna Massey. 

The problem with this segment... and why it’s watered down, in my opinion... is that in the original comic book, the lead character was an innocent. He doesn’t kill anyone but he suffers the same fate anyway... with the last panel being much more graphic in its depiction, if memory serves. I get the feeling the writers here turned him into an evil character so that it feels morally right to have him killed in such a grim fashion. Which kinda weakens the story but, there you go, this film pulls its punches a bit, that’s all. 

The next segment, The Neat Job, is the one told by great British comic actor Terry Thomas, where he marries a character played by actress Glynis Johns. This one is actually quite fun and you can tell these two must have really enjoyed working on this. It turns out that, after they are married, the wife finds out her husband is one of those people with a mania for neatness and everything in its proper place... with even his tool room with jars for each different kind of screw thread or length, kitchen cupboards with tick boxes to indicate stock replenishment etc. After a while, her attempts to please her husband culminate in a sequence where she bumbles about and manages to wreck a couple of rooms as she tries to re-tidy them for him when he comes home. On his discovery of the shambles, she deals him a huge hammer blow and we see the comedian with a claw hammer sticking out of the top of his head before he topples. In the final scene of this story, his wife has pulled out all his various body part and internal organs and put them all in correctly labelled, categorised jars. 

The third story is This Trick’ll Kill You and it’s features a stage magician played by Curd Jürgens and his wife played by Dawn Addams. While on holiday in India, looking for magic tricks, he stumbles onto a really good version of the old Indian rope trick but he can’t persuade the young lady performing the trick to sell it to him at any price. So he arranges a private show for his wife in their hotel room and, while the girl is performing the trick, he stabs her dead. He then re-performs the trick and his wife climbs up the rope but, suddenly, she disappears at the top of the rope and a slowly spreading puddle of her blood forms on the ceiling where the rope was leading too. The rope then gets out of control and has its revenge on Jürgens. 

The fourth story, Bargain In Death, is the worst of the five and features Michael Craig in a dire and slight tale of a man who slows his heart to fake death so he and his friend can split the insurance money... and then expects his friend to dig him up but, obviously, that part doesn’t happen. He does get dug up though, by a gravedigger played by Arthur Mullard at the request of two young medical student friends who need the body. In a curious piece of what would now be called stunt casting, the two med students are played by Robin Nedwell and Geoffrey Davies, who were known as the ‘comedy doctor’ duo in the long running British TV sitcom Doctor In The House. The other nice part of this is when one of the characters is seen reading the novelisation of the Amicus Tales From The Crypt movie.

The fifth story, Drawn And Quartered, stars Tom Baker as a British artist living in Haiti. When an old friend stumbles on him, he finds out that his old agent who had deemed his paintings worthless and bought them for a song, has colluded with an art critic and buyer and his paintings are now fetching high prices in London. So he goes to a voodoo man who gives his painting hand magical powers and he returns to London to take his revenge. Anything he paints and then erases or destroys gets erased or destroyed in a similar fashion and so he paints the three and causes them pain and death by taking their hands or eyes or, in the case of his agent, played by Denholm Elliot, gets him to shoot himself due to drawing a red dot on the forehead of the painting. However, he shouldn’t have left his own self portrait out in the open after he found leaving it in his safe was depriving him of oxygen after a while! Any kind of accident could happen to it. 

And that’s the five stories and then, of course, the elevator doors open to a graveyard and it turns out the men are all dead and forced to tell the same stories to each other for eternity. However, unlike the comics, the Vault Keeper who used to present the tales didn’t make it into the movie.

But it is an entertaining movie and it’s easily one of my favourites in the Amicus portmanteau horror series, falling just behind Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors (reviewed by me here). Roy Ward Baker’s direction is assured and, once again, he uses some interesting camera movements... like that trick he does where he will zoom into something at the end of a camera pan to change the focus of the frame. Douglas Gamley’s score is also pretty good and he seems to use the Dies Irae musical motif a lot throughout the movie (darn, I wish there was a soundtrack CD to this one... or to any of Gamley’s music, to be honest). 

And, yeah, not much else to add to this. The Vault Of Horror, despite being the only one of the Amicus horror portmanteaus that didn’t star Peter Cushing, is a really entertaining little film and one I would happily watch a number of times. Something about the print or transfer on this seemed a little dodgy, I thought but, it’s still pretty watchable and I’m sure the Blu Ray authors have done the best they can with the materials. Definitely worth a look sometime if you are into this period of British horror movies, for sure.

28 Years Later - The Bone Temple

Savile Row

28 Years Later - 
The Bone Temple
Directed by Nia DaCosta
UK/USA 2025
Columbia
UK Cinema Release Print

Warning: 28 Spoilers Later...

Okay, so 28 Years Later - The Bone Temple, is the fourth in what I shall call the ‘28 Units Of Man Made Measures Of Duration’ franchise and the second of the trilogy which is a sequel to the first two films. It’s also a very direct sequel to 28 Years Later (reviewed here) and, as much as I loved Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels (reviewed here), I’d have to say I really didn’t love this fourth film at all. This one has two story elements which, inevitably, meet up in the final act. 

So we have the somewhat overly long continuation of Spike (played by Alfie Williams), who finds himself reluctantly joining the team of satanists who base their look on Jimmy Saville, lead by Sir Jimmy Crystal (played by Jack O'Connell) and we have the other story element... Ralph Fiennes playing the doctor who befriended Spike in the first movie, this time actually having somewhat of an epiphany and actually coming up with a cure for the RAGE infested zombie-like creatures, in the shape of “I’ll be your Bub for this movie” Samson (played by Chi Lewis-Parry)... which is the only part of the story I was truly invested in, truth be told.

Basically, the whole movie plays out like some kind of home invasion movie, one of my least favourite genres of cinema, as the Jimmys do really nasty, brutal things to innocent folk... somewhat hammering home the obvious message that, while the RAGE zombies are a credible threat, they’re not really evil like that observed when humanity is given free reign. No surprise that the Jimmys are the villains of the movie. 

Um... yeah, I don’t have much good to say about this installment, to be honest... apart from Fiennes amazing performance of an

Iron Maiden number towards the end of the film (which is not a group I know but he put on a good show), it just didn’t hit right with me and felt somewhat out of place under the franchise umbrella, I thought, 

A criticism is that they never mention Jimmy Saville by name, invoking the name Jimmy Crystal instead for whatever reason but, it has to be said, with the look and the mannerisms... and constant cries of “Owzat!”... any audience member born in the UK of a certain age will have absolutely no doubt in their minds who this ‘cult of Jimmy’ is based on. There are also more Teletubby references, for those who dig such things. 

The end of the movie sets up the third (fifth) part by having the return of a character (and a taxi... and a nice signature nedle drop) from the very first movie, 28 Days Later, which will please fans of that movie and which promises some kind of connection to the films outside of the RAGE monsters themselves. 

But, yeah, somewhat of a shorter review than that of the last movie and I apologise but, I just didn’t find this one very interesting. Not completely dull but somehow less creative than the other films in the franchise, I thought. Although that epilogue and the final fate of the Jimmys as seen in this one does seem to set up the idea that... well... there must be other interesting things to say about the whole scenario after this one. 28 Years Later - The Bone Temple isn’t a complete dud but, yeah, it’s definitely the worst of the films so far and I’m fine to wait however many years it is until the next part of the franchise, for sure. 

Tarantula

Firefox VS Spider

Tarantula
USA 1955
Directed by Jack Arnold
Universal/101 Films 
Blu Ray Zone B/DVD Region 2

Warning: Small, eight legged spoilers coming your way. 

“I’d say you were the biggest liar since Baron Munchhausen”
quote from Tarantula

Well Tarantula is a film I wasn’t that impressed with when I first saw it, although I absolutely adore 1950s, atomic age B-movies and... revisiting it now on a very good Blu Ray transfer put out by 101 Films as part of a dual edition (yeah, some companies are still putting both the Blu Ray and DVD in the same set combinations)... I’d have to say I’m still not all that swayed over by it. Jack Arnold was an absolute master of these kinds of films with things like the first two Creature From The Black Lagoon films, The Incredible Shrinking Man and, even uncredited work on the classic This Island Earth. This one falls fairly flat though, especially when you compare it to, say, the absolute masterpiece that was THEM! (reviewed by me here). It does have a couple of things going for it though...

One is that some (but not quite all) of the special effects and make up effects in this one are handled pretty well, for the most part. The other thing is that the script does nothing to make light of the ridiculous plot (although the make up in one scene may well make you laugh) and the actors are all very good at projecting a certain amount of gravitas around the story. These actors include monster movie regular John Agar as the perpetually smiley, heroic Dr. Matt Hastings, Leo G. Carrol as the resident mad scientist Prof. Gerald Deemer and the sensuous Mara Corday as the professor’s new work experience student (as we’d express it these days) and love interest for Agar, Stephanie 'Steve' Clayton (who would go on to play a few supporting roles for her friend Clint Eastwood in The Gauntlet, Sudden Impact, Pink Cadillac and The Rookie but, I’m getting ahead of myself... I’ll get to Clint in a little while). 

Also in the cast, as the sherif of the small town of Desert Rock and friend to Agar’s Hastings, is Nestor Paiva. Regular readers may remember Paiva as the boat captain in both Creature From The Black Lagoon (reviewed here) and Revenge Of The Creature (reviewed here)... and also for his role in The Falcon In Mexico (reviewed here). I almost didn’t recognise him at first because, although he was born in California, I always associate him with playing roles with a strong, sometimes Mexican accent and, also, his almost bald head here is prominently displayed, rather than covered with a hat. Hearing him speak perfect American English was a bit of a shock, to be honest. 

The film opens quite starkly and effectively. A camera pans around the bleak desert landscape until it fixes on a man wandering through and then collapsing. He dies but by then we can see he has deformed features. This is because, as we later find out, the serum Professor Deemer is working on to make animals grow to giant sizes in order to solve the world’s food shortage problems, causes an unnaturally quick manifestation of the rare disease acromegaly when injected into a human. Acromegaly, is of course, the famous rare condition contracted by famous character actor Rondo Hatton, which pushes the bones and muscles around the face to give everything a warped look (something which gave him good work in various villainous roles in his short, painful life... the Rondo Awards are named after him).  

Anyway, the professor buries another of his initially willing human victims, after being attacked by him and... the laboratory is partially burned down. What he doesn’t realise is that, while he was rendered unconscious in the fight, the dying human lab rat injected him with the formula as well... not to mention the fact that the professor’s already unnaturally huge tarantula has escaped and, of course, it roams the desert killing cattle, horses and humans until everybody can put two and two together... mostly as a not bad special effect superimposition of a real tarantula interacting with miniature sets and being projected against real life actors in some sequences. I think there’s probably some puppet work here too but, in regards to the big spider’s many on screen appearances, the puppetry is kept to a minimum.

So that’s the set up and, it’s not a terrible film to be sure (fourth biggest box office hit of the year) but, I have to say, the storyline and lack of any real twists and turns leaves me a little cold when compared to other movies like this. However, some of the make up effects, such as when Leo G. Carrol first shows signs of acromegaly, are put together extremely well. Alas, on the last time you see him, just before he is injected with venom by the tarantula so it can eat him, the make up is so over the top that he appears to have one eyeball that has melted all the way down the side of his face. If this sounds silly, it is.

What also sounds silly but, really isn’t, is the way the live footage of a real tarantula is scaled up and inserted into the shots. This kind of approach rarely looks good but, in Tarantula, Jack Arnold just about gets away with it... it looks quite acceptable and decent. I say almost because, on one tell tale shot where the big guy is one again clambering over a small mountain, some of its legs disappear behind the sky so, you can definitely see where the live action and the miniature were badly lined up, in that instance. 

And, big spoiler here, the Tarantula is finally put down in the final reel by a jet fighter pilot firing rockets or napalm or some such. The close up shots of the pilots eyes (pretty much the only thing visible of his face) combined with his voice, made me sit up straight. I looked it up and this is, indeed, the second uncredited screen role in a Jack Arnold film for a young Clint Eastwood, seen here piloting a jet long before his stint in Firefox. And, of course, this film’s leading lady would, as I said earlier, play a supporting part in four of Clint’s movies too. I wonder if this film is the first time they met... or even if they did meet as, I don’t think Clint shares a screen with anyone in this film... just sits in the cockpit, talking into his radio. 

And that’s me pretty much done with the quite entertaining but, really not great, Tarantula. The score is a mix of original and old rerecorded and tracked in pieces, from the sound of it... the opening Universal logo was the tip off for me on that front, which begins with the same opening bars as Creature From The Black Lagoon. It’s all quite effective though and very much of its time. Let’s face it, though, while Tarantula may not have the thrills and spills of certain other, more thoughtful atomic age monster movies, it’s still quite watchable and, if you have a hankering for spending time with this kind of thing (and who doesn’t?), then you’ll certainly want to be adding Tarantula to your list, if you’ve not seen it before.