Call Me a Psycho (1990)

Directors: Peter Ward, Andrew Jones, Ian Paterson
Writers: Peter Ward, Andrew Jones, Ian Paterson
Producers: Peter Ward, Andrew Jones, Ian Paterson
Cast: Peter Ward, Andrew Jones, Ian Paterson
Country: UK
Year: 1990
Reviewed from: YouTube (link at bottom of review)

Despite being about a serial killer, and the title notwithstanding, Call Me a Psycho is not a horror film. Rather it is a cop comedy about a couple of likeable but not particularly efficient policemen tracking down an escaped homicidal lunatic.

What it also is, is a fascinating time capsule. Because this isn’t the 2008 film Call Me a Psycho - this was made in 1990. Turns out the 2008 film is a remake by the same guys, the ‘Superteam Productions’ trio of Peter Ward, Andrew Jones and Ian Paterson, who share three-way credits for writing and producing and directing this zero-budget epic.

When I say ‘zero budget’, let me put that in context. The early scenes of the psycho (played by Paterson) escaping from a mental hospital are shot in an anonymous corridor where the signs on the various cell doors are hand-written on bits of A4 paper. One of the reasons why this can’t be considered a horror movie, even a borderline one, is because there is not a drop of blood, simply because there wasn’t any money to pay for it. (Though there are some animated dripping-blood screen wipes.)

And yet, as sometimes happens with these things, the enthusiasm of the film-makers overcomes their limitations and I actually enjoyed the film. Some parts are genuinely funny, mostly the bits which divert into Zucker-Abrams-Zucker-style surrealism: an alarm clock that makes bizarre noises, or a scene of a character typing in which he has three hands.

Typing on a personal computer circa 1990, that is. This really is a fascinating window into a world a quarter of a century ago. The cars! The clothes! The haircuts! The telephones! Wikipedia lists fewer than 30 British films from 1990, among them a handful of remembered titles including Memphis Belle, Nuns on the Run, the Mel Gibson Hamlet, The Krays, The Witches and Truly Madly Deeply. That really was the doldrums of the British film industry, and yet Superteam Productions grabbed themselves a camcorder (probably quite a bulky one!) and shot a reasonably coherently plotted, genuinely amusing feature-length-ish (69 minutes) comedy police movie.

The film’s success rests on the chemistry between Ward (who looks like a young Peter Sellers) and Jones as Detective Inspector Ward and D.I. Jones. They are clearly useless at their job, but not in a bumbling way, nor in a cynical way, just in a natural, easy-going, trying to do it but not very good and easily distracted sort of way. Most of the supporting cast are predictably wooden but the back-garden nature of the film renders that less of a problem than it might be.

There’s not much by way of plot: the psycho escapes, the two cops try to track him down while he goes on a (largely off-screen) killing spree. Scenes were shot outside Feltham Police Station in West London and at a local video store, Terminal 5 Video, which has a Terminator 2 ad in the window. It’s the little background details like that which make this so fascinating. One character wears a Skid Row T-shirt, another is evidently a fan of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine. There is a trailer on TV for borderline mystical BBC sitcom Mulberry. And the soundtrack features a number of not-cleared for copyright songs including David Essex’s 1973 hit ‘Rock On’ and the Echo and the Bunnymen 1987 cover version of ‘People are Strange’.

Because this film is so obscure that it’s not even listed on the IMDB, it behoves me to list the cast which, in addition to the principal trio, consists of Tony Lloyd, Clinton North, Brian Da Silva, Barry Hutton, Margaret McEnechey, Steve Clarke, Darren Tyrel, Gidden Stratton, Maurette Cahill, Lee Burl, Richard Tyrell, Betty O'Brien, Gareth Burt, Kelly Bradford, Ryan O'Neil, Adrian O'Neil, Nicola Darge and Tanya Darge. Where are they now, eh? There are no other credits; basically Ward, Jones and Paterson did everything themselves.

The Superteam, erm, team went on to make several further shorts and features before returning, in 2008, to the Call Me a Psycho script and remaking the film, almost word for word, using some of the same sets and one of the same lead actors. Over the years their films have been available on DVD from their website although it’s not clear how this first version of Call Me a Psycho was distributed if at all. Fortunately for those of us who like to watch this sort of ultra obscurity, Paterson posted all the Superteam films to YouTube in February 2014, hence this review.

The rating below should not, of course, be taken as any indication that this is, in any way, a ‘good’ film but it’s far from a terrible film and I have to give the film-makers props for doing what they did (which was at least something) with what they had available (which was nothing).

MJS rating: B

Troll 2

Director: ‘Drake Floyd’
Writer: ‘Drake Floyd’
Producers: Brenda Norris, David Hills
Cast: Michael Stephenson, Robert Ormsby, George Hardy
Year of release: 1990
Country: Italy/USA
Reviewed from: UK DVD (Moonstone)

Troll 2 is rubbish.

What, you want a more detailed review? Okay: Troll 2 is dreadful bollocks in every respect.

Oh, okay then. You dragged it out of me...

This film is misnamed twice: it is not a sequel to John Carl Buechler’s Troll, and it doesn’t even have any trolls in it! The little nasties here are explicitly and irrevocably stated to be goblins, and instead of Buechler’s prosthetic make-up and puppetry, we have midgets in papier mache masks with pingpong ball eyes.

Young Joshua Wait, played by the spectacularly untalented Michael Stephenson, is the sort of whiny, gee-whillikers American kid that just makes you want to reach into the TV screen and give him a bloody great slap. In a prologue apparently modelled on The Princess Bride, he is being read to by his Grandpa Seth (Robert Ormsby).

In Grandpa Seth’s story, Peter (Glenn Gerner) is being chased through the wood by some goblins and thinks he’s safe when he sees a beautiful girl, but it turns out that the goblins can disguise themselves as humans, and Peter gets eaten after all. When Joshua’s mother Diana (blank-eyed non-actor Margo Prey, who looks like she’s on drugs) enters his bedroom, we find that Grandpa Seth is in fact dead and the boy has just been imagining him. Or has he?

Michael Wait (George Hardy) and his family - wife, son and teenage daughter Holly (Connie McFarland), and four less talented, uglier actors you are unlikely to ever see - are doing a house-swap with the Presents family, moving from their nice suburban house to a little farm in the middle of nowhere for a week or two. Before they leave, Michael spells out exactly what lies ahead in a phone call to someone: “It’s called Nilbog. That’s right. N, I, L, B, O, G. Yes, Nilbog.”

That’s correct folks, they’re off to the sleepy hamlet of Nilbog (population: 26) and no-one comments until almost the end of the movie on the unusual name or what it says, spelled backwards. Presumably the Waits are related to all those people in old horror movies who are taken in by characters called Alucard or Dr Acula. Or perhaps they’re only going to Nilbog because they couldn’t find a guest-house in the little Welsh mining town of Llort.

Now, Holly has an on/off boyfriend named Elliott (Jason Wright) who has the ultimatum of dating Holly or hanging around with his immature friends, nerdy Arnold (Darren Ewing), blond Drew (Jason Steadman) and making-up-the-numbers Brent (David McConnell: Bats - bloody hell, somebody who has been in another film!). Elliott was supposed to accompany the Waits on holiday but doesn’t show - that’s because he’s travelling separately in an RV with his pals.

After briefly meeting the oddball Presents family (the father is Lance C Williams - credited as L Williams - who went on to play Dracula in a 2003 half-hour short called Birth of the Vampire), the Waits find a sumptuous spread laid out for them in the dining room: “typical country hospitality”. But Grandpa Seth appears to Josh and tells him that the family must not eat the food, which frankly looks hideously unappetising as it’s all garish primary colours and looks like plasticine.

Freezing time briefly, Seth gives Josh only a few seconds to work out how to make sure that not a bite is taken. I expected the boy to yank the table cloth so that it all goes on the floor, but no, he stands on a chair and pisses all over the food! Whereupon he is sent straight to his room.

Nilbog itself proves to be populated by redneck extras even uglier and less talented than the featured players including Sheriff Gene Freak (Gary Carlson) a hellfire-and-damnation pastor (Mike Hamill) and a really scary shopkeeper (Don Packard). But the oddest person of all - and the only entertaining actor in the entire cast is weirdo, pasty-faced, panda-eyed, bespectacled lady Creedence Leonora Dru (Deborah Reed) who lives in a converted church in the woods.

To cut a long story short, the population of Nilbog - all 26 of them - are goblins in human form but they’re vegetarian goblins. So while they want to eat the Waits, they need to transform them into plants first, which they can do by persuading them to eat some of the disgusting looking food on offer (the only item sold by the town store is Nilbog milk, for some reason). Of course, Joshua realises this but no-one believes him, nor do they think he is really seeing Grandpa Seth.

Of Elliott’s friends, Arnold gets caught by Creedence and turned into a tree, Drew tries to rescue him (by pulling away bark that has been crudely glued to his face) and Brent gets seduced by Creedence back at the RV when she appears in a more obviously sexy guise, their lovemaking causing the vehicle to fill with popcorn for some reason.

The Waits, plus Elliott, return to the farmhouse to find that the entire population of Nilbog has turned out to throw them a party, which basically involves everyone clapping along out of synch to the most irritating and bland repetitive ‘tune’ imaginable. Fortunately Josh and Grandpa Seth save the day using a combination of a molotov cocktail and a fire extinguisher which, if they had stopped to think about it, really cancel each other out. The pastor goes up in flames and is seen to be a goblin, and the family are then trapped in the house, though there is no explanation of why the goblins, who have all come outside, don’t simply go back in and attack them. Eventually they do this and Josh is somehow transported to Creedence’s house where she has a magical stone from Stonehenge(!) which looks about as convincing as the one that Spinal Tap used on stage.

Grandpa Seth has had to go for the final time - this is one of those films where lots of things ‘must’ happen but no explanation is given as to why - and leaves Josh a bag which he must only open when absolutely necessary. Surrounded by goblins (several of whom we have already seen die in the attack on the farmhouse), Josh successfully repels the vegetarian fiends with the contents of the bag - a double decker baloney sandwich! Then his family appear and destroy the evil little critters and their queen (Creedence, now a scary old hag) by touching the magic stone and concentrating, though nobody ever specifies what they should actually concentrate on.

In an extraordinary epilogue that is as unpleasant as it is nonsensical, the family return home, but Holly, Elliott and Michael head for work/school without setting foot in the house. Diana goes upstairs for a shower, and Josh subsequently discovers the shower cubicle full of green slime, then runs downstairs to find the goblins (yes, the dead ones) stuffing their faces with goop from his mother’s naked, eviscerated body. Eh?

Filmed by Italians in Utah with a largely amateur (by the look of it) cast, Troll 2 is a cinematic car-crash - so horrible that you just can’t look away. With the exception of Deborah Reed (Creedence) and Mike Hamill (pastor), nobody on screen can act - and those two only get away with it by playing the whole thing like a Christmas panto. Among all these people who never made another film, probably the most successful performer in the movie is the girl who plays the disguised goblin that tricks Peter in the fairy tale prologue. Michele Abrams - credited here as Michelle - was in the original Buffy movie as well as Cool World, Junior and episodes of Lois and Clark and Murder, She Wrote.

Writer/director ‘Drake Floyd’ seems to be Claudio Fragasso (though some sources credit old Joe D’Amato himself, Aristide Massaccesi) who is no stranger to fake sequels. He wrote Zombie 3 (which at least was partially directed by Lucio Fulci) and directed After Death, which was released in the States as Zombie 4 (those two are available on British DVD as Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 and 3!). He also wrote and directed House 5 (yeah right - also ‘starring’ Michael Stephenson) and in 1989 beat James Cameron to the punch with Terminator 2 (aka Shocking Dark aka Alienators)! Other notable writing credits include Zombie Creeping Flesh (released at least once as Zombie 5 - oh, now this is getting ridiculous), a couple of Italian fake Emanuelle pictures (Violence in a Women’s Prison and Women’s Prison Massacre), Rats: Night of Terror, D’Amato’s 11 Days, 11 Nights and latter-day peplum The Seven Magnificent Gladiators. And he’s still directing.

But the most extraordinary credit on display here is ‘costume designer: Laura Gemser’. Surely, I thought, that must just be an invented name but no, it seems that Black Emanuelle herself (also in such creaky Italian epics as Ator the Fighting Eagle) worked behind the camera on this film. She and Fragasso share several other credits, though it’s hard to see what costumes here needed designing apart from Creedence’s dress and jewellery. All the other humans wear shirts and jeans, and the goblins all wear rough sacking smocks.

Who on Earth can this film have been aimed at? Children and adults alike will find it equally unpleasant, although for slightly different reasons. It’s unalloyed rubbish which might have been forgivable in the early 1980s when anything could be released on video, but this crap was filmed in 1990. And why go all the way to Utah to make it?

Troll and Troll 2 have recently been released on a double bill DVD which has unfortunately raised the profile of this justifiably forgotten rubbish. Contamination Point 7, directed by 'Martin Newlin' the same year, was released as Troll 3 but has no connection with either of the first two films. That one actually was made by a pseudonymous Joe D’Amato which may explain the confusion over the identity of Drake Floyd.

MJS rating: D

[Addendum: Since I first posted this review, several years ago, Troll 2 has acquired an unexpected degree of infamy, not least because of its position as one of the absolutely lowest rated films on the IMDB. Cast-attended screenings, an extensive website and in fact a whole cult of Troll 2 has sprung up. Who would have thought it? And in fact, there is now a feature-length documentary all about Troll 2, called Best Worst Movie. And I'm in it!)

Hiruko: the Goblin

Director: Shinya Tsukamoto
Writer: Shinya Tsukamoto
Producer: Shinya Tsukamoto
Cast: Masaki Kudo, Kenji Sawada, Hideo Murota
Year of release: 1990
Country: Japan
Reviewed from: R2 DVD (Artsmagic)

There’s something about this film which isn’t quite right. Something odd, something out of kilter. Something completely separate from the fact that it doesn’t make a shred of sense.

It may not be obvious to the casual viewer, but having studied the film to compile the bio-filmographies on this disk, I can tell you what the problem is. This is a commercial horror film directed by the massively uncommercial cinematic maverick Shinya Tsukamoto, who brought us the impenetrable angst of Tetsuo the Iron Man, Tokyo Fist and Bullet Ballet. Imagine if David Lynch was hired to write and direct and produce I Know What You Did Last Summer III. It’s a clash of cinematic cultures and the result just somehow doesn’t work.

The plot, such as it is, concerns disgraced archeologist Reijiro Hieda (Kenji Sawada: Samurai Reincarnation, Happiness of the Katakuris) and high school student Masao Yabe (Masaki Kudo) who try to prevent a ‘goblin’ or ‘hiruko’ from opening up a chamber below the school where lots of other goblins live, or something. Hieda knew Yabe’s father Takashi (Naoto Takenaka: Tokyo Fist, Happiness of the Katakuris, and voices for Japanese versions of Pokemon and Disney films) who disappeared while exploring with Reiko Tsukishima (Megumi Ueno: Kamen Rider Black RX) on whom Masao had a crush. Also in the mix is the school’s spooky, apparently psychopathic janitor Watanabe (Hideo Murota: Yakuza Graveyard, Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, Sure Death 4) who wanders around the deserted buildings with a wicked-looking billhook.

The goblin itself is depicted as being Reiko’s head on spider legs, animated sometimes by very good stop-motion and sometimes by much less effective puppetry. The head has a long, deadly tongue and frequently sings an ethereally romantic ballad. Whenever anyone dies (usually by beheading), their face burns itself painfully onto Masao’s back - just one of many things which are never explained. There’s some sort of crown which Takashi Yabe took from the family home which has some relevance here too, but like most of the plot it’s absolutely impenetrable.

There’s a great deal of chasing down corridors and some gory splattering of blood and the ending, which ups the ‘goblin’ quotient considerably, is quite spooky, but ultimately the whole film is unsatisfying. It is at least watchable, which is more than I can say for any of Tsukamoto’s other pictures, and it’s well acted and technically proficient. But the main problem is that we know nothing about the characters or the situation and have no clear idea what they’re trying to do or how they’re doing it. Several important revelations seem to come from random discoveries which further weakens the, for want of a better word, plot. Hiruko: The Goblin is an interesting curio but too little is explained for the audience to actually connect with the story or characters.

MJS rating: C+

review originally posted 8th May 2005

The Dreaded

Director: Chris Robinson
Writers: Chris Robinson, Jim Willis
Producer: Jim Willis
Cast: Tim Cobb, Lisa Watts, Todd Jones
Country: USA
Year of release: 1990
Reviewed from: UK DVD

I had never, ever heard of this Texas-shot indie vampire feature and nor have many other people, apparently. I don’t have a single review of it in any magazine in my files and it is, surprisingly, not even listed in Stephen Jones’ Essential Monster Movie Guide. I only bought it because it was on a double bill disc with Project Vampire. But what the heck, I thought, I’ll give it a try...

Melanie Parker (Lisa Watts) and Vickey Anderson (Raney Lasusa) are flatmates. Melanie, whose brunette hair is often piled atop her head, works at the library under the scary head librarian Miss Prigg (Dixie Corrington) while blonde Vickey works in an office with even blonder realtor Evan Murchinson (Brad Cook). Evan and Vickey’s relationship is a bit light-hearted but Melanie is in a serious relationship with stetson-wearing police detective Mark Stovalle (Todd Jones). Unfortunately, every time they have a date he is called away on a case.

Into their world comes dapper and slightly creepy Andrew Frazier (Tim Cobb), who has a neatly trimmed beard, a smashing old-fashioned car and a tall, sinister butler/servant named Filmore (Harry McCord). Frazier buys an old house which Evan has been trying to sell, unsuccessfully, for a number of years - though it is never explained why the house was so notoriously hard to sell. Meeting Melanie in the library shortly after yet another date was ruined (when Mark was called away to a dancer whose throat was ripped open by an unseen assailant in a prologue), he asks her on a date and she accepts. He also uses some sort of hypnotism - a nice optical effect of briefly glowing yellow eyes - to subdue the stentorian Miss Prigg.

Mark finds himself sidelined in favour of Frazier while also investigating the dancer’s death which bears all the hallmarks of a recent, unsolved spate of serial killings in Dallas - which is where Frazier has moved from. Gradually we see more and more of Frazier’s vampirism: how he shies away from direct sunlight; a weird, rounded coffin which he sleeps in during the day (this is somehow hidden when not in use but it’s not clear how - all we hear is the grinding of off-screen machinery); and a clever and well done scene in which Melanie is standing in the background, hand on Frazier’s shoulder, as Mark argues with his disbelieving boss - but reverse shots of the two cops show Melanie reflected in a mirror, her hand in mid-air. That’s a nice, subtle touch.

Evan is offered a new job in another town and proposes to Vickey but is immediately grabbed and killed by someone. When Vickey comes to in the hospital, it being unclear how/why she escaped a similar fate, she is at first hysterical but later on seems completely calm about her boyfriend having been savagely murdered right in front of her. There is also a scene where four local teens sneak into what they believe is still a deserted house to make out. None of them comment on how well-furnished the house is for something which is supposed to have been empty for years. Three of them are killed - one escapes and is later seen sitting in the police station, shaking, but is dismissed by Mark and his black partner as drunk. We never hear about or see this teenager again and no-one seems bothered that three young people from the town have mysteriously disappeared - and there’s a witness.

It all culminates in a surprisingly well-directed and action-packed fight between Mark - who has come armed with a crucifix/dagger, having worked out what he is up against - and Frazier. There is a final, and not entirely clear, twist ending.

This 1990 production, which looks very eighties as characters parade around in hairspray and shoulder pads, was shot in 1989 as evinced by a poster for Look Who’s Talking at a local cinema. Also dating the film is a copy of Omni in the library. The picture has ‘local indie film’ written all over it and very few of the cast or crew seem to have ever done anything else.

The acting is not great although one or two of the cast shine through and the direction likewise varies. there are one or two editing flubs of character suddenly shifting position between camera angles but on the whole it’s quite well put together, and shot on film which is always a plus point.

Interestingly, the whole vampire angle is very underplayed with no-one even raising the idea or mentioning the V-word until an hour into this 86-minute film. Only in one brief shot do we see Frazier’s fangs. This is a character-driven piece rather than a straight horror film, mixed in with a police procedural and even a little humour.

Ultimately The Dreaded isn’t good enough to be memorable but it’s not bad enough to be memorable either. It’s a pretty average sort of film which, given that it was made in a little Texas town by people with little or no experience, is actually quite an achievement.

MJS rating: C+
review originally posted 26th October 2005