Silent Cry

Director: Julian Richards
Writer: Simon Lubert
Producers: Peter La Terriere, Tim Dennison
Cast: Emily Woof, Douglas Henshall, Clive Russell
Year of release: 2002
Country: UK
Reviewed from: VHS screener

Silent Cry is the 'lost' Julian Richards film. Shot in 2002, it remains unreleased outside Germany (not the first British film to find itself in this situation - see Project Assassin) although it did receive a belated UK premiere at the National Museum of Photography Film and Television in 2004.

Strictly 'work for hire', Silent Cry falls chronologically inbetween Darklands and The Last Horror Movie. While it certainly doesn't have the innovation and cult appeal of the latter, it shares certain stylistic/thematic traits with the former, notably an urban conspiracy based on corruption at the highest level and a protagonist whose accidental involvement in the situation proves to be anything but. I thoroughly enjoyed Darklands, being able to see past Craig Fairbrass' astoundingly wooden performance, but I'm aware that some other folk were less enamoured of Julian's debut feature. So I'm loathe to suggest whether or not Silent Cry is better than The Wicker Man Comes to Newport; I can however confirm that it does not have Craig Fairbrass in it which should be recommendation enough.

Emily Woof (also in the unjustifiably obscure Pandaemonium) is terrific as single mother Rachel Stewart whose baby dies only a few hours after he is born. But through her distress, Rachel realises that when she visited the baby in the hospital nursery on that first night - when he seemed to be perfectly healthy - she saw consultant Dr Richard Herd (Kevin Whately: Inspector Morse, Auf Wiedersehen Pet) up to something; he seemed to be switching ID tags on two babies. Was one of them hers? I may be reading too much into this but the sense that something was seen but not really registered brings to mind Argento movies such as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage.

Returning to the hospital, Rachel finds herself stalked by menacing, six-foot Police Detective Betts (Clive Russell: Neverwhere, King Arthur) and in escaping she unwittingly involves hospital cleaner Daniel Stone (Douglas Henshall: If Only..., Kull the Conqueror) in the situation. In short order, Rachel's world falls apart through the Terminator-like determination of the ruthless Betts. All she has to go on is the name of the mother of the other baby, ‘Joanne Dreyer’.

Rachel and Daniel's desperate search for the missing baby takes them into the seedy depths of London's nightlife, pursued at every turn by Betts who will stop at nothing - including cold-blooded murder - to silence them. Fortunately Daniel has friends in low places who provide unexpected help, including one scene where Betts is forced to back down which seems to owe a little to the old Amicus movie Tales from the Crypt.

Also in the cast are Frank Finlay (Ghosthunter, the 1977 TV Dracula) as Rachel's family doctor, Craig Kelly (Beyond Bedlam, Queer as Folk) as a colleague of Betts, Stephanie Buttle (Urban Ghost Story) and Richard Lumsden (from sitcom Is It Legal?) as Rachel's friends and Steve Sweeney (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) as a friend of Daniel's.

Cinematographer Tony Imi also photographed recent-ish British horror thrillers Downtime and Lighthouse and many years ago shot the likes of Cathy Come Home, Up the Junction and Percy's Progress! Darklands’ David A Hughes provides the score. Tim Dennison also produced Evil Aliens and Room 36.

Silent Cry is a cracking little thriller, very tense and - in its third act - shockingly brutal. Julian Richards' direction is confident and effective. The biggest criticism one can make is that Simon Lubert’s script does depend on a maternity unit following practises that British hospitals haven’t used for some years now, such as keeping new-born babies apart from their mothers in a nursery, and other hospital-related aspects - such as easy access to a maternity unit - are pure fantasy. Evidently Lubert’s initial idea for the script came several years ago when this sort of thing could still happen.

Christ alone knows why this gripping, very watchable picture hasn't been able to find a UK release on either big or small screen, considering the rubbish that does make it into distribution.

MJS rating: A-
Review originally posted 4th January 2005

Solid Geometry

Director: Denis Lawson
Writer: Denis Lawson
Producer: Gill Parry
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Ruth Millar, Peter Capaldi
Year of release: 2002
Country: UK
Reviewed from: UK TV broadcast

This short story by Ian McEwan was very nearly filmed by the BBC in the mid-1970s but production was cancelled at the eleventh hour because (allegedly) a make-up artist objected to one of the props - a pickled penis in a jar. That may well be true, in fact, as the Beeb was certainly riddled with enough union politics at that time to make it easier and cheaper to scrap a whole production than replace a make-up artist. Now Denis 'Biggs Darklighter' Lawson, having already directed one short, has adapted the story as part of a Scottish short films project.

I haven’t read the original story, but McEwan is a ‘literary’ author, not an SF writer and this production certainly betrays the hallmarks of someone dipping their toe into the genre and then wasting a good idea by completely failing to understand the field’s potential. Basically, Scottish advertising exec Phil (Lawson’s nephew, the ubiquitous Ewan McGregor, who made this the same year that he made Attack of the Clones) receives several boxes containing 42 volumes of his great-grandfather’s diaries plus various esoteric items - including a (very large) pickled penis. His grandfather has endowed £25,000 to Phil if he will edit the diaries, which contain vast amounts of esoteric mathematical formulae and some very naive discussions of sex.

Increasingly obsessed with the diaries, Phil packs in his day-job, much to the annoyance of his girlfriend Maisie (Ruth Millar). In a nicely edited flashback we see that his great-grandfather (Peter Capaldi: Neverwhere, Wild Country) discovered an esoteric geometric shape which was in some way multidimensional - “the plane without a surface” - which unfortunately is represented here by an origami chrysanthemum. When perfectly created, this shape will disappear into another dimension, taking with it anyone who happens to curl themselves around the shape.

Phil and Maisie grow more distant, then seem to come back together again, but has Phil really forgiven his girlfriend for petulantly smashing the jar with the penis in, or does he have other plans?

Actually, this makes the thirty-minute film sound considerably better than it actually is. Not only is very little explained (that’s fair enough) but even less is explored. We don’t see or understand Phil’s growing obsession, nor is there even the slightest discussion of what such a discovery could mean, either in the flashback or the main story. Mostly this is an excuse for McGregor to get his kit off yet again and indulge in some lengthy romps with Millar which totally fail to add anything to either character or plot. It’s difficult to make a half-hour short drag unnecessarily, but Lawson has managed it here.

Without knowing the source material, it’s impossible to say how much of this lacklustre story is McEwan’s and how much is Lawson’s creation. But whoever is responsible, this is a real disappointment which simply doesn’t do anything or go anywhere. And why is there a pickled penis? Who knows? It’s entirely irrelevant to what little there is of the ‘plot.’

Some nice digital cinematography by Robin Vidgeon (Hellraiser) and editing by Kant Pan (Summer Scars, LD 50) don’t make up for the lack of story and shallowness of characterisation.

MJS rating: C-
Review originally posted 10th December 2005

The Realm of Never: Moratorium

Director: Christopher Del Gaudio
Writer: Christopher Del Gaudio
Producers: Christopher Del Gaudio, Vernon Gravdal, Loretta Mirabella
Cast: Darren O’Hare, Jason Murphy, Jacqueline Muro
Country: USA
Year of release: 2002
Reviewed from: screener disc

I don’t half get sent some odd stuff to review on this site. I mean, I love it, but boy, sometimes I really have to work hard to work out what to say. Not with the bad stuff. Really bad movies are easy - and fun - to review. And really good stuff gives me plenty to get my teeth into. But then there’s the stuff that’s not like anything else.

Moratorium is a half-hour episode of an anthology series called The Realm of Never which airs on public access TV in the States. Now, we don’t have public access TV in this country and, truth be told, I don’t really understand the concept, my only real knowledge of it coming from repeated viewings of Wayne’s World.

Most public access TV is, I gather, of the Wayne and Garth variety which is why The Realm of Never is so unusual. Not only is it drama, but it is shot live, using three cameras, in a deliberately retro style (and black and white). This, combined with the ‘set’ being not much more than a curtain and a couple of bits of furniture, gives the series (it seems, based on this one episode) a threadbare, archaic appearance which is, I have to assume, completely intentional.

Moratorium is basically a four-hander. Myles Goddard (Darren O’Hare) is a political intern who has been exposed to some sort of virus that grants him omniscience and thereby allows him to understand what is really going on in world politics. Medical expert Dr Beverly Mathias (Jacqueline Muro) and military advisor (or something) Wyndham (Jason Murphy) are interrogating him to find out what he really knows, much to the consternation of his aunt Amanda (Joannne Antonucci, wearing heavier make-up than I have ever seen on any human being). In the second half of the half-hour there is a military guard standing to the side who says a couple of lines (in Russian, I think) but otherwise seems to have no bearing on the matter.

Myles’ viral-induced omniscience reveals to him that our world is being run by shape-shifting aliens. I think. I mean, he never actually comes out and says this but it seems to be what he is alluding to for the best part of thirty minutes. Whether this state of affairs is a good or bad thing, whether Myles’ knowing about it is good or bad, whether other people know or not - sorry, I couldn’t pick up on any of this. There’s lots and lots of dialogue but it’s all very obtuse. There’s also a fair share of pauses and a disconcerting number of times when characters paraphrase what someone else has just said, prefaced with, “So you’re saying...”

I realise that the budget is about twenty bucks, the studio is the size of a telephone kiosk and the whole thing is done live, but my biggest frustration was that no-one does anything. This is the most static, non-visual thing I have ever seen on a TV screen. It’s basically a radio programme; although the Realm of Never website understandably claims comparison with The Twilight Zone and Playhouse 90, it felt more like Dimension X or X Minus One.

But maybe that’s the intention, maybe that’s writer/director/producer Christopher Del Gaudio using his limitations. I find it very, very difficult to review Moratorium out of context as a stand-alone short film because I just don’t know what allowances to make for it. The cast are pretty stiff - but is that deliberate homage to the wooden acting that was more common on TV in the 1950s? There is also a colour epilogue, a Dennis Potter-style twist on what has gone before which raises still further the question of how one should view the preceding twenty-odd minutes.

I think the only coherent criticism I can make of The Realm of Never is this. It seems from the website that Del Gaudio writes and directs all the episodes, but the best anthologies work because of the range of writers and directors they use. Obviously The Realm of Never is not going to attract writers of the calibre of Richard Matheson or Harlan Ellison, but the script is almost always the weakest part of any low-budget production. The plot of Moratorium, inasmuch as it is discernible through the obfuscatory dialogue, seems to be a standard paranoid conspiracy theory which can’t help but make one think of David Icke and similar loonies. There didn’t seem to be any questioning of whether Myles’ ideas were merely drug-induced fantasies. The central idea was discussed to death but not really explored and it came across as a load of new age, crystal-gazing hippy hooha, which I don’t think was the intention.

I always review films on the basis of how well they achieve what they set out to do with what they have available, but I don’t have enough cultural experience of 1950s American live television to evaluate the former and I don’t have enough grasp of public access TV to judge the latter. I’ll give the show the benefit of the doubt, because Del Gaudio seems to know what he’s doing, but I can’t say this was really my cup of tea. Still, full credit to the guy (and his crew and rep company of actors) for doing something different and evidently doing it successfully.

MJS rating: B
Review originally posted 21st December 2006.

Three

Directors: Kim Jee-Woon; Nonzee Nimibutr; Peter Ho-Sun Chan
Writers: Kim Jee-Woon; Nitas Singhamat; Jojo Hui, Matt Chow
Producers: Oh Jung-Wan; Nonzee Nimibutr, Duangkamol Limcharoen; Jojo Hui
Cast: Jung Bo-Seog, Kim Hye-Soo; Pongsanart Vinsiri, Suwinit Panjamawat; Leon Lai, Eric Tsang
Year of release: 2002
Country: South Korea; Thailand; Hong Kong
Reviewed from: Thai VCD

New to Asian cinema and not sure which country’s films you want to explore? Why not try this convenient sampler movie, a horror anthology comprising three segments of 40 minutes or so from three Pacific countries. Applause Pictures (Hong Kong) and Cinemasia (Thailand) had previously collaborated on the dramas Jan Dara and Montrak Transistor, and for this movie South Korea’s Bom Productions was brought into the fold.

The first story is Memories, written and directed by Korean hotshot Kim Jee-Woon whose directorial debut The Quiet Family was ‘remade’ by Takashi Miike as Happiness of the Katakuris. Jung Bo-Seog (Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors) stars as an un-named man who is starting to go mad since his wife (Kim Hye-Soo: Dr K, Eternal Empire) disappeared and can see her ghostly apparition (a stylistic nod to Ring’s Sadko). At the same time, the wife (neither character is named) wakes up on the street and wanders around, trying to work out where she is and indeed, who she is.

This is a very stylish, slow-paced film - it opens with an agonisingly slow closing-in shot which barely merits the term ‘zoom’. While it’s fairly obvious that there is some sort of Carnival of Souls deal going on with the wife, the resolution is suitably shocking and unexpected and really very nasty.

Nonzee Nimibutr, who directed the Thai segment The Wheel, was an award-winning director of TV commercials and pop videos before scoring a smash hit when his second feature Nang Nak outgrossed Titanic at the Thai box office. Internationally, he has established a reputation as a producer, being the man behind both Bangkok Dangerous and Tears of the Black Tiger. For Three, he co-wrote a story with Nang Nak art director Ek Iemchuen but the finished screenplay was written by Nitas Singhamat.

The Wheel is based around a Thai theatrical troupe, highlighting the intense rivalry between the lowly masked players and the respected puppeteers, and the tradition that puppets must not be used by anyone except the puppetmaster who created them.

Puppetmaster Tao suffers agonising visions after his wife and child are drowned while following his instructions to “drown the puppets”. After Tao also dies, mask actor Master Tong (Pongsanart Visiri) sees his chance to take over the puppetry and move up a caste. He tries to remake the puppets and claim that they are new ones, but the curse holds him in its sway, destroying not only him but also the troupe’s young stars/lovers through the supernaturally orchestrated jealousy of his son/apprentice Gaan (Suwinit Panjamawat: Tears of the Black Tiger).

Puppets are always scary. From the ventriloquist’s doll in Dead of Night through to Chucky in the Child’s Play movies and beyond, those grinning, lifeless mockeries of real people can, when well-handled, scare the life out an audience. The puppets in The Wheel are traditional, scary-faced Thai demons and though they never ‘come to life’ they exert a terrifying influence over those who seek to control them. With some gruesome, ghostly goings-on and a shadowy, night-time setting, The Wheel is easily the scariest of the three segments in Three.

The Hong Kong segment, Going Home, was originally announced as being directed by Teddy Chen (Purple Storm) but in the end he received only a ‘story by’ credit (along with Su Chao-Pin). Detective Chan Kwok-Wai (Eric Tsang: Project S, Gen-X Cops) and his young son Cheung (Li Ting-Fung) move into a semi-derelict apartment block, the only other occupants being the mysterious Yu Fei (Leon Lai: Wicked City) and his wheelchair bound wife Hai’er (Eugenia Yuan). Cheung is perturbed by Yu’s young daughter, a little girl in a red coat (a nod to Don’t Look Now of course) but his father tells him not to be silly.

When Cheung goes missing, Chan naturally makes an enquiry of his only neighbour and finds himself trapped by the deluded Yu whose wife - though he has conversations with her - is not so much paralysed as dead. But there’s a lot more to the story than a simple Psycho knock-off: Yu is suspicious of western medicine and is using traditional Chinese medicine to cure/revive Hai’er. Like all the best ghost stories, Going Home has not just a simple twist at the end but a succession of increasingly horrific/enigmatic revelations.

Peter Ho-Sun Chan is the director (with, interestingly, an Australian DP, Christopher Doyle: Rabbit-Proof Fence, Psycho remake). Chan helmed He’s A Woman, She’s a Man, was named as one of Ten Directors to Watch by Variety in 1998, and more recently produced the superb HK/Thai horror flick The Eye.

There are rumours that Three, following its success at a couple of film festivals in London, may be heading for a UK theatrical release, but I jumped the gun on this one and picked up a Thai VCD, which has a decent widescreen transfer, though it naturally suffers from typical VCD artefacting and The Wheel in particular is overly dark. But it was only a fiver, though I’m going to spend as much again anyway when/if this comes to my local cinema. Being the ‘International Version’, this disc has good English subs (though there are a couple of spelling mistakes in them) and also includes a trailer for Three (which interestingly shows the films in the order: Memories, Going Home, The Wheel) plus trailers for The Eye (in Thai) and Michelle Yeoh’s action fantasy The Touch (in English).

[Three was followed by a second anthology, Three... Extremes which was released first in the west. Consequently the US release of this film was retitled Three... Extremes II. - MJS]

MJS rating: A-
Review originally posted 19th April 2008.

Sentinels of Darkness

Director: Manos Kalaitzakis
Writers: Manos Kalaitzakis, Duncan Skinner, Barbara J Helverson
Producer: Manos Kalaitzakis
Cast: Eileen Daly, Charly Barber, Sandra Darnell
Country: UK/Greece
Year of release: 2002
Reviewed from: Greek DVD (with thanks to Kathryn de Roet)
Website: http://sentinels-of-darkness.50megs.com

Even by my standards, Sentinels of Darkness is a truly extraordinary film. Actually, it seems to be several truly extraordinary films bolted together. It’s an Anglo-Greek production only ever released in Greece and is therefore one of the rarest British horror films of recent years. I believe that there may only be two copies of this DVD in the UK: Eileen Daly has one and I’ve got the other.

Ah yes, dear old Eileen. She’s in her element here.

Sentinels of Darkness is technically an anthology film, divided into three segments, the titles of which are only revealed in the end credits, and with the third, longest segment also acting as the framing story for the other two.

Greek Adka (Michalis Iatropoulos) shows an old book to American Paige (Vicky Harris, who was in a Nico Mastorakis film called .com for Murder alongside - holy crap, is this real? - Nastassja Kinski, Huey Lewis, Roger Daltrey and Julie Strain!). Adka explains that the book and a few leaflets which say things like ‘Join our clan’ and ‘Conquer the future’ and ‘Enlist now’ are the only evidence left which prove the existence of someone called Velislava. Almost immediately we are into a 1940s flashback where Velislava (Eileen of course) is some sort of vampire high priestess and Sandra (Sandra Darnell: Dreamscape) is a rogue vampire of some sort. There is a very confusing sequence where Velislava seduces and beds a bloke in a Nazi-style uniform while Sandra apparently points a gun at them from some shrubbery. But when Sandra fires the gun she destroys some sort of statue instead which we have never seen before.

This highlights two problems about this first segment (which is entitled ‘Curse of a Deathless’). The first is that most scenes are shot against an unlit black background, using just such props or set dressing as required. Consequently it’s very difficult to get any sense of space and the impression is given throughout that people talking to each other were shot separately. In this instance, it seems that we were confusingly cutting between two separate scenes rather than within one scene but later the opposite seems to be (equally confusingly) true.

The other problem - well, it’s more of a theme really - is that vast amounts of things explode in this film. There are physical pyrotechnics, there are digital fireballs. Things blow up like you wouldn’t believe.

Velislava sits on some sort of throne in a minimalist court set flanked by two male vampires, one of whom is Sandra’s boyfriend and possibly the fellow we just saw seduced by the ever-ready Ms Daly. (Before this we have a shot of two gunmen wearing purple hoods blasting away at Sandra without killing her; one of them holds his gun sideways in a way that no-one did in the 1940s because in those days nobody made dumb action films where people hold their pistols sideways to look cool.)

“We have graced you with the unique gift of deathlessness,” proclaims Eileen, probably the only actor in Britain who could say a line like that without corpsing, “and all we got in return was arrogance and insubordination. How dare you disrespect us in such a hideous way?”

To be fair, there is worse dialogue that that in this film, a lot worse. But I rapidly stopped writing it down when I realised that pretty much all the dialogue was like that. Damn it, I’m not transcribing the entire movie. The whole of this first segment is a never-ending stream of sixth form poetry, as if this was written by a 17-year-old goth chick with dyed hair, too much eye-liner, a Sisters of Mercy poster on her bedroom wall and an ambition to be some sort of unspecified ‘artist’. It gets slightly better in the second and third segments but only in the sense that those pages seem to have been written by a 20-year-old goth chick who has got laid, left art college, taken down the poster and decided to specifically become a ‘writer’ of some sort.

Really, you have never heard dialogue like this. It is as portentous as it is pretentious, full of hilariously overblown metaphors (“the ruby wine of life”) and utterly devoid of contractions so that every single line sounds like an announcement (or like Data on Star Trek). It’s like listening to an endless list of crappy fantasy book titles. That’s it: every line of dialogue sounds like the title of something. Something bad and unreadable. With a dragon on the cover.

As far as I can make out, Sandra has somehow betrayed her vampireness (her ‘deathlessness’) so she is sentenced to have her immortality revoked (leaving her, I suppose, deathlessnessless) and then be executed, when she shall suffer her deathlessnesslessness.

Specifically, she is to be crucified. Because it wouldn’t be a dodgy goth horror flick without some sort of ‘shocking’ anti-Christian imagery. (Speaking of imagery, there are Nazi eagles in the set and the costumes but without any swastikas.) As Sandra hangs bloody and bruised from a cross, surrounded by rotting corpses on similar crosses, she has a narrated flashback to when she first met, and was vampirised by, her undead boyfriend - who I think is called Dragan and is played by Peter Godwin (Pervirella, Razor Blade Smile) but only because I can identify all the other named male characters in the cast list.

All the scenes in this segment are jumbled up for some reason so we then have an inexplicable sequence where Velislava cuts her wrist to drain her blood into a cup, which an unharmed Sandra drinks. Ah heck, I’m going to give you another bit of dialogue here. This is the oath that Eileen (I can’t keep typing that bloody character name) makes Sandra repeat as part of this little ceremony.

“I am a vampire.
I worship my ego,
I worship my life,
For I am the only god that is.
I am a vampire."
(And anyone who knows their Hancock’s Half Hour will probably feel like joining me in a recitation of ‘Rinky tinky on purple grass.’)

Anyway, I don’t know what Eileen was expecting to happen here to Sandra but she is shocked when, well, nothing happens. Sandra reveals that she and Dragan switched the cups so she drank her own blood instead of Eileen’s. And the segment concludes with Eileen dying on a cross instead, which is now lying down on the side of a chalky hill for some reason.

Which brings us back to Adka and Paige and their British friend Jessica/Jessie (Welsh model Charly Barber) who are watching the end of a dodgy, sub-Hammer, 1960s horror/action movie called You Only Die Twice (‘A Filmfangs Production’). “In my early days in this country,” says Adka, “I was a propmaker for Filmfangs. Let me tell you what really happened.”

And thus we move swiftly into the second segment ‘Vampire Vendetta’ which is devoid of dialogue, being entirely narrated by an unnamed female vampire slayer (Natalie Jones, who was in a 2005 Doctor Who episode and is not, despite what the IMDB reckons, the porn star of that name). The star of You Only Die Twice was an actor named ‘The Duke’ who is described in the voice-over as “a horror movie star with a thing for street hookers” and who is successfully killed by the Slayer in a reasonably well-directed action scene featuring lots of breakages and explosions. But “The Duke’s only offspring, the invincible Nemesis” - a weird chick with straight, dyed red hair and a long, purple gown who floats down from the rafters - successfully resurrects her poppa by stabbing the Slayer then using the bloody dagger in some sort of ceremony.

The Duke is played by veteran Greek actor Nikos Tsachiridis who started acting in the early 1950s. His 120+ films include Island of Death, obscure 1970s Chris Wicking-scripted Anglo-Greek horror The Rhodes Incident aka Medusa and an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. British stuntwoman Dani Biernat plays his daughter, her stunt credits including Devil's Playground, The Phantom Menace, Tomorrow Never Dies, 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, Life on Mars and Doctor Who.

The Slayer recovers, and some months later is doing a favour for a pimp. Well, he had helped her in the past so she owes him a favour and has agreed to collect a couple of prossies who are overdue from their latest, erm, what would one call it? Anyway, they should have finished by now but but they’re late so the pimp has asked this woman whom we know only as the Slayer to drive over to somewhere and collect them. And although she’s back to full fitness after the unfortunate stabbing incident a few months ago, there don’t seem to be too many vampires around so she’s happy to do a bit of chauffeuring for her pal the pimp.

Yes, it really is as nonsensical as the above paragraph makes it sound. And of course this rather suggests that the two naked young ladies (Cindy Read and Amanda Dawkins, both of whom were also in Sacred Flesh) currently indulging in a lesbian tryst for The Duke aren’t actually ‘street hookers’. But never mind. There is a good deal of tastefully photographed and even slightly erotic sapphic ooh-la-la, accompanied by a swinging jazz soundtrack and overseen by a delighted The Duke. But then he has to take it too far and kill one of the whores while chowing down on the other.

All of which leads to a fight between the Slayer and Nemesis, under the watchful eye of The Duke, which ends with the Slayer smashing a bottle over Nemesis’ head and then slicing her head off. Whereupon The Duke howls an over-dubbed “No-o-o-o-o!” - the only word of actual dialogue in the segment - and bows his head for the Slayer to chop that off too.

Which is all well and good but isn’t this supposed to be Adka’s account of what happened on the set of You Only Die Twice when he was a propmaker? How does he know any of this? And why has he suddenly vanished from the linking material to which we return. Paige and Jessica now appear to be room-mates, with Jessie trying to get over a relationship, so Paige persuades her to come out to “the hottest place in town” - a night club called ‘The Coven’ (which Paige mispronounces ‘coe-ven’).

In this establishment they meet two men who already know Paige: balding Jordan (Duncan Skinner, who also wrote some of the script and subsequently executive produced Kim Sønderholm’s feature Craig) and the club’s owner Ian (Ian Robertson) who has the voice of Roger Moore and the hairstyle of Steven Segal. Returning for a second night, the girls are drugged by the men (who are, of course, vampires) and turned.

Then suddenly, without explanation, Adka turns up, whereupon Ian calls him a “self-appointed slayer” and kills him. Poor old Adka. When the movie started he was studying that ancient book and it looked like he would be a major character. But since then he has had about three lines of dialogue and screen time of about 90 seconds. And now he is dead and no-one ever mentions him again.

The two girls are unhappy about killing people to survive but decide that it might be okay if they only feed on horrible people. Paige comes across a pimp (David de Villiers) slapping around a whore (former ‘Miss Greece’ Evelina Papantoniou) and challenges him. He comes at her with a flick-knife but she disarms him, beats him up and then ties him to the upright brush of a car-wash so large that it must be a lorry-wash. Which you must admit is an odd thing to tie someone to. And the ladies then bite his neck and drink his blood.

Meanwhile, Ian and Jordan are worried for some reason, sure that Paige and Jessica will harm them. Jordan, on his own, is given a present by the girls to say thank you for introducing them to a life of violence, fear and sticky red liquids. It’s a lovely present, all wrapped up in paper and everything. When he unwraps it... it’s a book. But not any book, it’s Velislava’s book, which has a 3D demon face on the front. Apparently when Adka came to rescue them he brought this and dropped it and Ian picked it up and kept it in his study but Paige stole it from there. Don’t you love films where major plot points are not shown but simply described in summary by a character when it becomes expedient to do so.

Well, some sort of beam of stuff blasts out of the demon face on the cover and kills Jordan. Then Ian arrives and sneers that the book is “nothing but a gimmick” but, in the film’s only genuinely - if momentarily - effective sequence, who should emerge from the book but Veliswotsit herself. Yay, Eileen’s back in town! And her enforced sixty year holiday inside the book has turned her into a good vampire so she kills Ian in some way and gives Paige and Jessie a pep talk about how to use the gift of deathlessness wisely.

That third segment is called ‘The Coven’ (or probably ‘The Coe-ven’) but it’s not quite over yet because we now visit a cinema which is hosting a weekend-long retrospective of Filmfangs movies (called, naturally, Filmfangsfestival). Paige, Jessie and lots of other people who we are possibly meant to recognise (but don’t) watch a trailer for Dungeon of the Demonic Doctors (“filmed in realistic Squirm-o-vision!”) and then the first few minutes of Satan’s Sluts (starring ‘Mona More’ and ‘Brenda Bare’). This has a dark-skinned girl (Elaine Eastman), named Ebony even though she’s a long way from being actually black, arguing with a blonde girl (Donna Chiappini) in a night-club washroom. After Blondie leaves, Ebony snorts some coke and then meets a pale, dark-lipped gothette (Nena Chronopoulou) who takes her home and bites her neck.

At this point, a sleazeball sitting next to Jessica (played, I think, by the film’s director Manos Kalaitzakis) asks her if she wants to get high, which cuts to Jessie and Paige back home with the guy, advancing on him with a flick-knife. And the whole thing wraps up with six and a half minutes of credits, padding the running time out to 72 minutes.

Don’t get me wrong, Sentinels of Darkness isn’t actually bad - apart from the dialogue which is hilariously awful, especially in the first segment. The production values are actually fairly lavish, once we get past the we-can-afford-the-furniture-but-not-the-walls stuff. Most of the acting’s pretty good and the cinematography is great, Greg Theodoridis bringing an almost Bava-like colour palette to the photography. Visually, the film is remarkable.

But the plot doesn’t hold together at all. The first two segments have no real connection with the main bulk of the film, apart from Eileen’s brief, arbitrary resurrection near the end. All the ‘Filmfangs’ stuff is obviously meant to be an homage to Hammer but it’s laboured and obvious. Worst of all, the film simply doesn’t fit together. Adka’s demise is so swift and arbitrary that there must surely have been a much longer, unfilmed scene there.

There is so much crammed into the brief running time - first segment, second segment, third/framing segment, fake trailers and film clips, plus a prologue of captions apparently written by that 17-year-old goth chick, all in about 65 minutes of actual film - that there is no chance to explore anything in depth. Paige and Jessica’s revulsion at becoming vampires, the female slayer’s background and motivation, anything at all about Adka - none of this gets dealt with or even touched upon, and Christ knows what’s going on in that first segment which really just seems like a random collection of scenes from some longer story.

Possibly one reason for the disjointed, unsatisfactory nature of the script is the extraordinary writing credits which are considerably more complex than the Inaccurate Movie Database would lead you to believe.

The prologue, which presumably refers to Adka and Paige looking at the book and leaflets, was written by Manos Kalaitzakis and Duncan Skinner with ‘featured poetry “Drink Deeply and Dream” by Apoetess’ (sic), which presumably refers to the opening captions. The story and screenplay of ‘Curse of a Deathless’ are credited solely to Kalaitzakis ‘featuring selected writings by Marius Montefeltro; featured poetry “The Hunger” by Lee Clark, “The Gift” by Joni Latham, “Angel Heart” by Apoetess.’ With that number of people contributing words to something that doesn’t run much over a quarter of an hour, is it any wonder that it makes no sense? ‘Vampire Vendetta’ is again credited solely to the director (without any poetry) but then ‘The Coven’ has a story and screenplay credit shared between Kalaitzakis, Skinner and ‘Barbara J Helverson aka Bonniejean’. Skinner gets an additional solo credit for having written the ‘retro trailer voice-overs’.

You can actually read Joni Latham’s poem ‘The Gift’ here. I think it’s what Sandra says in voice-over during the flashback of how she met Dragan. I think. On another webpage, Latham refers to ‘Bonnie Jean Hamilton’ who is presumably ‘Barbara J Helverson aka Bonniejean’. [Yes, this is the same person: Barbara Helverson, who wrote the short story of 'the Coven' as BonnieJean Hamilton, a combination of a childhood nickname and her maiden name. Kalaitzakis found the story on a website although Helverson has subsequently removed it from the web in the hope that it might one day be properly published. Apparently the story is sustantially different to the film. - MJS]

Filmed entirely in English, Sentinels of Darkness was shot in both countries. The first segment was actually filmed at Ealing Studios, the second was made in Islington and the rest of the film was shot just outside Athens, with post-production in both the UK and Greece. Despite the presence of many British actors in the cast, all of them except Eileen and a couple of the porno girls are actually based in Greece, even some of the ones who shot their scenes in London. Incidentally, four actors are credited as ‘Yodt lead’ and ‘1st, 2nd and 3rd Yodt victims’ which puzzled me immensely until I realised that these were the gun-toting actors seen in the clip from You Only Die Twice (= YODT). One of these, Christos Mantakas was also in legendary 1999 Greek sci-fi comedy - and I promise that I am not making this up - Attack of the Giant Moussaka.

The Greek DVD of Sentinels of Darkness includes two trailers, thirty seconds of behind-the-scenes footage of stunt co-ordinator Peter Brayham, four minutes of bloopers (mostly involving Duncan Skinner) and an eleven-minute montage of behind-the-scenes photos. One of the trailers reminded me quite how many things blow up in this film, as I think I have mentioned. One superb moment which had slipped my mind until I saw the trailer was that one of the masked goons in the You Only Die Twice gunfight gets hit by machine gun fire, leaps into the air - and explodes! Boy, I have never seen a vampire film with so many explosions.

Michalis Samiotis was the special effects supervisor, an experienced bod who also worked on Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, the 2005 BBC adaptation of My Family and Other Animals and an Aussie romcom called Beware of Greeks Bearing Guns! Like everyone in the Greek film industry (it seems) he has worked with Nico Mastorakis, in his case handling effects on Edge of Terror. For the UK shoot(s), Samiotis was joined by none other than Alan Whibley of a certain Cornish 'studio'. Make-up and prosthetic effects were handled by Melbourne-born brothers George and Roulis Alahouzos who, a few years later, created some of the headpieces and costumes for the opening ceremony of the 2004 Olympics. Harold Herbert, who also worked on Attack of the Giant Moussaka - I’m telling you, it’s a real film - handled the digital effects.

One final recognisable name is Louise Ross, who appeared briefly on screen in Sacred Flesh and who used to be marketing manager at Redemption. On this film she was location manager for the UK unit.

Which just leaves the question of who is Manos Kalaitzakis, to which the answer is I haven’t a clue. I can find no biographical information anywhere on the web and no other credits. The Inaccurate Movie Database reckons he was 1st AD on a 1987 Greek picture under a slightly different name so that probably isn’t him. Especially as, judging by the photos and footage in the DVD extras, he would have been about ten at the time. He’s a mystery man and his sole cinematic work is a mystery film which evidently had a VHS and DVD release in Greece in 2002 (the on-screen copyright is 2001) but doesn’t seem to have ever been released in the UK or, frankly, anywhere that isn’t Greece.

Incidentally, check out the VHS sleeve and specifically the names at the top. That’s the bloke who plays Adka for a minute and a half, two women who appear briefly in clips of fake films (the gothette in Satan’s Sluts and the ‘Yodt lead’) and someone called Eillen Daly! On the DVD release, not only was Eileen’s name spelled correctly but Lydia Iliopoulou had been replaced with the considerably more famous Nikos Tsachiridis (The Duke) although Nena Chronopoulou was still on there so she must have a good agent. (I thought that her name was spelled ‘Kronopoulou’ on the sleeve but it’s actually ‘Xronopoulou’, under which name a Google image search throws up a few sexy nude photos of her but no information.)

It’s a real shame that this remains so obscure because it’s a fascinating film. It’s not really that bad and where it is that bad it is at least entertainingly bad. But much of the film is quite decent: direction, acting, design and number of explosions. What happened to this film? Why did it disappear from view like this? Answers please on a postcard of the Acropolis...

MJS rating: B

Review originally posted 14th November 2008

Reign in Darkness

Directors: Kel Dolen, David Allen
Writers: Kel Dolen, David Allen
Producers: Kel Dolen, David Allen
Cast: Kel Dolen, David Allen, David No
Country: Australia
Year of release: 2002
Reviewed from: UK DVD (Screen Entertainment)

You may have heard the phrase 'Show, don’t tell.' If you have, you’re probably not David W Allen or Kel Dolen, the guys who made this dull Australian vampire film, set (for no apparent reason) in South Africa. That’s the bit of South Africa where everyone has a strong Aussie accent, apparently.

Kel Dolen himself stars as Michael Dorn (an homage to the Star Trek actor?) who is part of a “small team of molecular biologists” researching a possible cure for HIV. In fact there are only two biologists in this team: Dorn and Scottie (Scott Tyack), plus one bureaucrat, Alex (co-writer, co-director David Allen who has subsequently added his middle initial to his screen name, presumably to distinguish himself from the legendary special effects artist who directed Puppet Master II) and a gun-toting heavy called Lance (Chris Kerrison) who has a Southern United States accent and sometimes wears a Confederate flag bandana. Because, you know, molecular biology research programmes often require firepower.

Reign in Darkness has three big problems (well, four if you count the fact that it all takes place in bright sunshine). It’s boring, it’s packed with inconsistencies and stuff that just doesn’t fit together in any conceivable way - and it’s narrated to death. For most of the movie, wooden actor Dolen drones on in a flat, lifeless monotone, explaining what his character is feeling, what he’s thinking, what he has just done, what he plans to do next and occasionally what he is actually doing while we’re watching him doing it. This is not some sort of film noir-style narration that a (good) film might get away with, it’s just somebody reading out a (fairly rubbish) story while we see it acted.

Dorn and his three colleagues are studying a virus called K-17 (which an opening caption tells us is believed to genuinely exist...) only their version is called RVK-17 for some reason. They’re not sure who they’re working for and their test subjects are tramps and hobos, whom they inject with the latest batch of RVK-17 to see what happens.

Dorn and Lance drag a tramp out of his cardboard home and inject him, instantly turning the ‘gentleman of the road’ into a maniac who attacks Dorn. Meanwhile narrator-Dorn tells us that these people are “like lab rats”. Well, no, not really. Lab rats are usually found in the controlled environment of, you know, a lab. They’re not just wild rats picked up on the street and injected with stuff. As Dorn tries to fight off the tramp, Lance saves him by blasting several shots from his automatic pistol into the man - while he is lying on top of the struggling Dorn!

Now here’s a tricky one: which of these is dumber? The idea that you can shoot someone (at point blank range) and the bullets will not continue through their body into the poor sod lying directly underneath them. Or the experimental procedure of Dorn’s team which is to find a homeless person, inject them with a virus which causes them to turn into a maniac (this is already known, it’s no surprise), do so without any way of restraining the person and then shoot them before they can be studied, thus rendering the whole thing pointless. This scene is typical of the film in having ideas that might sound good, might even work in isolation, but simply don’t make anything approaching sense when put together.

Despite miraculously escaping Lance’s bullets, Dorn has been stabbed by his own hypodermic needle which apparently still contained some RVK-17 and this turns him into a vampire. For some reason and in some way. Not a maniacal vampire who wants to kill and eat the first person he sees, but a haemavore nonetheless. Why the virus should affect him differently to the tramp is never explained. But he runs off, uses his new vampire superstrength to kill some anonymous goons sent to catch him and resigns himself to life as a fugitive. Oh, and there’s some back story about how one of the earlier test subjects went renegade and killed Dorn’s wife, back at the start of the project.

Now, Lance has some unseen masters with whom he converses while standing in a fuzzy spotlight surrounded by darkness (they call him ‘bounty hunter’ although we have already established that he is no such thing). These masters (actually it’s just one voice which not only is even more flat and lifeless than the narration but which constantly fades in and out of audibility) tell Lance that he must track down Dorn, helped by someone called Gage.

This turns out to be a tall guy with short hair died a sort of greenish-yellow and it must be said that Korean-Australian David No stands out not so much by his distinctive barnet, more by virtue of being the only person in the cast who can act. Lance and Gage can’t stand each other but have to work together to hunt Dorn. Gage is called a ‘half-breed’ but this is never explained and makes no sense if this form of vampirism is caused by a virus (not that the film-makers seem to have much clue what a virus actually is...) No’s other work includes Subterano, The Matrix Reloaded and Mr Nice Guy, in which he fought one-on-one with Jackie Chan.

Much of the film then consists of these two tracking down Dorn who returns to his flat (which has a Metropolis poster on the wall - the sure sign of a film-maker using his own home) where everything has been turned over by someone searching for something. They didn’t find his gun because he cleverly hid it under his CD player but they have taken his sword. Dorn also retrieves a photo of himself and the late Mrs Dorn. He sets himself up in some shed or room or building or I don’t know, it’s never explained, where he makes himself some kevlar body armour and a long trench coat lined with kevlar. Again, we have a choice. Is the dumbest thing here the idea that one person, without any specialist knowledge or equipment, could run up state of the art bullet-proof clothing in a dingy room virtually overnight? Or is it that bullet-proof body armour is completely superfluous for a character who has already discovered that he has amazing healing powers. Make him able to survive being shot or give him bullet-proof clothes, but why do both?

While rarely bad enough to be entertaining (or even interesting), Reign in Darkness does occasionally provide some unintentional laughs, mostly in scenes where someone blasts away at someone else at point blank range while the other person simply runs away unscathed. There is also the world’s least exciting car-chase in which two expensive sports cars are driven at reasonable speeds because they must be returned unscratched to the dealer who lent them after filming wraps. Although credit where credit is due, the film-makers do make the red car look like it has crashed by tilting it to one side, popping the bonnet open and sticking a smoke machine under it.

There are good moments in this film - there is for example an almost Kubrickian shot of a guy blasted in the head while framed in a doorway - but they are few and far between and fail to compensate for the ludicrous plot, terrible dialogue, lousy acting and relentless bloody narration. It all ends with a confrontation between Dorn and a sort of master vampire called Raphael Ravenscroft, one of the people who were commanding Lance. Apparently there indeed are real vampires and the development of RVK-17 really was an attempt to cure AIDS but only to ensure a plentiful supply of uncontaminated blood for the vampires. Or something. This goes on forever. I mean, I didn’t time it but I would estimate 10-15 minutes of just two people talking. The whole structure of the film is out of whack with what seems like a climax about halfway through. It’s only 90 minutes but it drags and drags and drags. It took me three evenings to sit through it all because I kept falling asleep.

Anyway, Dorn despatches Ravenscroft and his shadowy, hooded cohorts with a gun that they initially scorn until he announces that it is loaded with silver bullets.

Silver bullets? Dude, that’s werewolves not vampires.

Dorn then blows up some building and drives off.

On their website, Dolen and Allen explain that they had no training or experience in film-making when they shot Reign in Darkness. They’re actually marketing executives who decided that the tricky part of film-making is selling the thing so they applied themselves to raising the money and then, it seems, made the film itself almost as an afterthought. It shows, it really does. Despite their claims to have read some books on the subject, this is what a film looks like when it’s made by people whose only knowledge of films comes from watching the things. I mean, all credit to them for creating something from nothing, for getting up off their backsides and actually making a feature-length film. But it didn’t have to be this poor.

At heart, Reign in Darkness is a very cheap Blade knock-off and its emphasis on ‘genetically created vampires’ puts it in the same sub-subgenre as The Witches Hammer but the Aussie film has none of the charm of the British one, none of the fun, none of the excitement. It’s just a heavy slog through illogical, over-narrated drama, devoid of anything that could reasonably be called thrills, horror or action. It doesn’t help that, aside from David No, pretty much nobody in the cast has any acting experience. In fact the only other person with any sort of credits to speak of is stunt co-ordinator George Novak whose career goes right back to Mad Max. He is credited as ‘Bum’ so he may be the guy who gets shot while lying on top of Dorn, but somebody else is credited as ‘Homeless man’ so who knows (or indeed, cares)?

Actually there is one funny thing in the credits (two if you include the misspelling of ‘criminal’ in the copyright notice). There are separate credits for the people who animated the thoroughly over-the-top ‘RapidFire Productions’ logo - even though this is only used on the trailer, not the film itself.

Also on the R2 Screen Entertainment DVD are original trailers for I Spit on Your Grave and Don’t Mess with My Sister, both more interesting than the main feature. There is also a trailer for Andreas Schnaas’ Demonium, a very short teaser trailer for Nutbag and a trailer for Bangkok Hell which is in Thai and unsubtitled!

According to the RapidFire website, Reign in Darkness was shot for A$49,000, sold to 27 territories and “won numerous awards.” Dolen and Allen have also made The Industry, a black comedy about the Australian film industry plus two short films, Snap and Time II Die. Their most recent work is a Star Wars fan film called Wrath of the Mandalorian (dear Lord...) and they have a feature called The Gates of Hell in post-production. Perhaps they have learned about film-making since they made Reign in Darkness. Hopefully, they have at least learned the principle of ‘Show, don’t tell.’

I know I’m being very down on this film and really it’s not terrible, I’ll admit that, but it is massively Not Very Good.

MJS rating: D+

Wishcraft

Director: Richard Wenk as 'Danny Graves'
Writer: Larry Katz
Producer: Paul Brooks, Larry Katz, Jeanne Marie Van Cott
Cast: Michael Weston, Alexandra Holden, Austin Pendleton
Year of release: 2002
Country: USA
Reviewed from: UK video (Metrodome)

Here’s a fun teen slasher movie with an interesting supporting cast. The local sheriff is Meat Loaf (using the name ‘Michael Aday’), the coroner is Poltergeist’s Zelda Rubinstein (her scenes with Meat Loaf are great), one of the boyfriends from Sex and the City is a teacher, and the main character’s mom was Miss DePesto in Moonlighting!

The principal cast is headed by Michael Weston (Cherry Falls) as High School nerd Brett and Alexandra Holden (In and Out) as Samantha, the head cheerleader for whom he carries a torch. The usual high school jolly interplay of ‘jocks’ and ‘losers’ is here interrupted by the anonymous delivery to Brett of a magical totem which will grant him three wishes. Like any red-blooded teenager, he wishes for a girl; specifically for Samantha to go to the prom with him. His second wish is for Samantha to fall in love with him. Both come true, much to the amazement of Brett and his dorky friend.

But at the same time, a series of very gruesome, apparently supernatural murders start striking down their fellow high school students. Something incredibly strong - and frankly quite imaginative - is on the prowl. Just what has this got to do with the magical totem, and can Brett use his last remaining wish to put everything right?

To take the second question first: what do you think? This is a teen slasher film, it’s light years away from the monochrome nihilism of Night of the Living Dead. Some sort of happy ending is pretty much guaranteed. As for the first question: that’s a big ‘don’t know.’ The Scooby-Doo resolution to the killer subplot has very little connection with Brett and Samantha’s situation.

Wishcraft is a fun 98 minutes of unpretentious, competently made teen horror, with some likable leads and some nicely underplayed comic relief from Meat Loaf and Rubinstein. The story doesn’t make an enormous amount of sense, but loose ends are tied up - in a fashion - and good triumphs over evil.

MJS rating: B

Sabu

Director: Takashi Miike
Writer: Hiroshi Takeyama
Producer: Jun Haraguchi, Tsukasa Ikegami
Cast: Satoshi Tsumabuki, Tatsuya Fujiwara, Kazue Fukiishi
Year of release: 2002
Country: Japan
Reviewed from: R1 DVD (Artsmagic)

Although Takashi Miike may be notorious for the broad variety of films he has made in his packed directorial career, nevertheless Sabu stands out as unusual. In fact it's unusual by being relatively normal, certainly by the standards of the man who brought us Ichi the Killer, Audition, Fudoh: The New Generation and Happiness of the Katakuris (all of which were photographed, like this film, by cinematographer Hideo Yamamoto). It's the only historical drama which Miike has (so far) helmed, an adaptation of a novel by Yamamoto Shugoro which was made to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Nagoya Television.

Satoshi Tsumabuki (Tomie: Rebirth) plays Eiji, sentenced to hard labour on an island prison for stealing from his employer. Tatsuya Fujiwara (Battle Royale) is his childhood friend and colleague Sabu who believes in Eiji's innocence and tries to find out who framed him. And that's about it in terms of plot but there's a great deal more in terms of character. For his first few months on the island, Eiji doesn't say a word. And when Sabu asks around about his friend - they grew up together in an orphanage and were apprenticed together to a maker of paper doors - he is warned not investigate any further. Complicating matters slightly is the boys' shared attraction to Osue (Kazue Fukiishi: Samurai Resurrection).

The bulk of the film switches back and forth between Sabu's bewilderment, failing to understand the local politics and machiavellian going-on which surround his friend, and Eiji's life in prison where he is initially rejected as a loner but gradually becomes respected. There's a terrific scene when a destructive storm hits the island and the prisoners are granted their freedom in order to allow them to survive, yet Eiji rallies them and leads an effort to save the buildings and put out the raging fires.

Though there is a certain amount of violence, directed with Miike's expected realism and grittiness, and the involvement of some organised crime, this is not in any way a horror movie or yakuza picture. It is beautifully shot (and presented in terrific widescreen) and shows that Miike can direct wonderfully without any sort of gimmick. It's not like anything else he has done (at least, any of his other pictures that I have seen) but in that sense it resembles his other pictures in that most distinctive of Miike-esque ways - by not being like any of his other pictures.

Artsmagic's disc contains the two-hour TV version rather than the shorter theatrical edit and is packed with extras including interviews, promotional materials and Yours Truly's bio-filmographies of cast and director. They have for some reason used the Miike biography I wrote for Rainy Dog rather than the one I did for Sabu, but it's only one paragraph different…

MJS rating: A-

Young Demons

Director: David DeCoteau
Writer: Matthew Jason Walsh
Producer: David DeCoteau
Cast: Kristopher Turner, Ellen Wieser, Landon McCormick
Country: Canada
Year of release: 2002
Reviewed from: UK rental VHS

Here’s what I don’t understand about Young Demons (which was originally Part III of the unconnected Brotherhood series of films): although the screenplay is credited to Matthew Jason Walsh (Witchouse I and III, Deep Freeze, Bloodletting etc - plus the other three Brotherhood pictures), the story credit is shared between him and David DeCoteau.

Now, I have a lot of time, both personally and professionally, for both Matt and Dave. But this film has a story so basic that you could write it on the back of a postcard and still have room for the address and the stamp. How could it take two grown men to come up with this? Here’s what I envisage:

Matt: “Here’s an idea: a group of highs school students doing a live-action role-playing game in the school after dark, and something is stalking them.”
Dave: “Cool.”

Sorry guys, I love you both but this is not your finest hour, is it? (The Inaccurate Movie Database also credits someone named Ryan Carrassi with the script but he’s not credited on screen. The IMDB also credits him with “adaptation dialogue” on The Pool and with writing and executive producing an Italian sequel to that film. I find it all highly dubious. Anyway...)

A very, very long prologue sees two students break into their school at night, somehow, in order to place some props and stuff around the place in readiness for ‘the game’ the following night (gee, I hope nobody finds and moves them tomorrow). Mike (Matthew Epp) and Tony (Carl Thiessen) spend ages wandering the halls and corridors before being caught by a weird guy wearing, frankly, what appears to be a burqa. I think he’s meant to be some sort of medieval knight but he just looks like a devout, female, slightly warlike Muslim.

The next day, we meet the students who participate in the game. Lex (Kristopher Turner, who was in a Canadian kids SF series called 2030 CE) is the equivalent of a dungeonmaster - called 'the leader' here - and is the school’s token goth, complete with black nail varnish. We also meet Megan (Ellen Wieser), Victoria (Julie Pedersen), Kip (Andrew Hrankowski - who played ‘third man having sex’ in an episode of The L Word!), token slightly black guy Stan (David Johnson) and Roger (Landon McCormick), who is a bit of a jock but is offered the chance to take part in ‘the game’ without knowing what it is. He accepts because he has a crush on Victoria.

Lex’s brother Ramsey (Paul Andrich) has just returned from an archaeological dig in Egypt where he has unearthed a gold pendant depicting Anubis and a bound volume of Ancient Egyptian scrolls (written in hieroglyphics but not in cartouches and on amazingly white paper for what is supposed to be four thousand year-old papyrus). Ramsey gives these priceless artefacts to Lex which is, to say the least, bloody generous of him. Lex decides to use the pendant as the prize for that night’s game and the book as... well it’s not clear but he’s going to use it somehow.

That night, everyone turns up dressed in medieval costumes (apart from Roger). Lex has a 'radio controlled headset' which apparently not only connects him to the school PA system but also allows him to hear anything that anybody says anywhere in the building. He gives occasional pretentious ‘clues’ but doesn’t take part in the action till the very end.

Well, I say ‘action’...

The majority of the film, the whole of what would be the second and third acts if this had a three-act structure, is the five ‘players’ being stalked, one-by-one, by the guy in the burqa, sometimes assisted by Mike and Tony, who are now outfitted in leather shorts and chain-mail cowls. (One character later describes this look as a “Mummy Returns outfit” because, yes, the Ancient Egyptians wore a lot of chain-mail...)

Kip falls over and somehow gets red stuff (presumably blood, presumably not his) underneath his clothes so he takes a shower, keeping his white briefs on. This being a David DeCoteau film, he takes the opportunity to stroke his firm, manly, masculine pecs while apparently being quite unconcerned about whether he has washed all the red goop off his back.

Kip falls victim to the burqa guy, as do Victoria and Stan, but “falls victim” may be a slight exaggeration. All that happens is that burqa guy, when he catches them, puts his hand on their head and lowers them towards his waist in an unsubtly suggestive manner. Don’t go thinking that this is a horror movie. There’s no gore apart from a couple of brief, unexplained shots of a decomposing head in a saucepan in the school kitchen.

The majority of this film is people being chased through the school but there’s absolutely no tension or thrills whatsoever. This is partly a deficiency of the script: we don’t care about these characters because we know nothing at all about them - and we know even less about the bad guy in the burqa. It is also a deficiency of production because about half of this film is shot in slow motion. It runs 77 minutes (the UK video sleeves claims “approx 90 minutes”) but if everything was run in real-time it would probably last less than an hour. Slo-mo can be effective when used sparingly but in this film no-one walks or runs anywhere at faster than half-speed. Anyone who has ever seen Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace will be put in mind of that great gag: “Some of the episodes were under-running by up to eight minutes so any scene that didn’t have dialogue was done in slow motion.”

For most of this film nothing happens - and it happens very slowly. Once Victoria is captured, she wears leather shorts too and spends an inexorably long time rubbing Mike and Tony while they’re chained up somewhere. For some reason, token slightly black guy Stan doesn’t have to do the same thing.

Eventually Megan (who doesn’t want to play ‘the game’ any more) and Roger (who thinks it's all weird anyway) confront burqa guy who turns out to be... the one character with a name and dialogue who isn’t in ‘the game’. That’s right, it’s Lex’s brother who informs them that he is not only a reincarnation of Ramses II (Ramses, Ramsey - get it?) but also a direct descendant. Yes, he looks so North African...

Ramses/Ramsey has a knife to Megan’s throat, which somehow causes her dress to change colour. There’s some guff about him planning to rule the world if he can do something or other by sunrise but this is swiftly defeated by Lex and Roger with a completely arbitrary deus ex machina move which makes Ramsey collapse in a heap and restores Mike, Tony, Kip, Stan and Victoria to their original costumes (but not Megan, for some reason).

Young Demons makes no sense at all. Oh, and the title? There’s no suggestion that anyone is a demon, although Victoria, once she has fondled the boys’ chests, develops blue veins on her torso and a Buffy-style frowny forehead. But demons? No mention. Somebody does say at one point that the kids who play ‘the game’ are called ‘the Brotherhood’ so I suppose we should at least acknowledge that. As for ‘young’, well, this is a cinematic American high school and as such all the students appear to be in their mid-twenties.

Young Demons is just dull and let me reiterate that it makes no sense at all. It’s not just the smoke and coloured lights that cause ‘the game’ to lack believability, there’s the whole concept which just isn’t explained - because it can’t be explained. It looks like DeCoteau had access for a weekend to a high school and nearly enough medieval costumes, shot a bunch of scenes and then tried to fashion a film out of them. That’s not how this film was made, obviously, but that’s certainly what it looks like.

Looking for someone to credit, I should mention DP Paul Sudermen who also lit The Sisterhood for DeCoteau. He does a good job of making the school look spooky, but that’s undone by not only the relentless slow motion but also an obsession with tilting the camera from side to side which eventually leaves one with no other option but to assume that the school has been magically relocated to the deck of a storm-tossed ship. It’s difficult to make your audience feel seasick with a film that is entirely set on land, but Young Demons damn near manages it.

Walle Larsson contributes the music, and there’s a great deal of it. Shawna Balas (The Brotherhood II) was production designer. Patti Henderson (Wishmaster III and IV) designed the costumes. Special make-up effects, such as they are, are credited to Doug Morrow who also worked on eXistenZ, Wishmaster III and IV, The Brotherhood II and, most horrifically of all, Inside the Osmonds.

It’s really difficult to see who could get anything out of Young Demons. It’s not terribly sexy, it’s certainly not horrific in any way, it’s not exciting and the cast (few of whom have done any other features) are pretty wooden. It feels like a contractual obligation, but Dave DeCoteau is his own man nowadays and shot this for his own company, Rapid Heart. I suppose there was a market. On the other hand, as there’s no sigh of The Brotherhood V, maybe there wasn’t.

The various video/DVD sleeves follow the traditional Brotherhood design of clustering the characters at the bottom of the image. None of them show the slightly black guy.

MJS rating: C-

The Poison

Director: Ch Ratchapol
Writer: Yodnam
Producer: Jirun Rattanaviriyachai
Cast: Nantawat Arsirapojanakul, Julaluck Kittiyarat, Sushao Phongwilai
Year of release: 2002
Country: Thailand
Reviewed from: Thai VCD

In the jungles of Thailand, a group of young men gather, armed with swords and bows. In another part of the forest, atop a sort of altar thing, a ceremony is taking place. A young woman in a white dress stands before a priest. Behind her is an older woman (her mother?) in a blue dress, and numerous villagers are stood around.

The girl in white (let’s call her Su) gives the priest a small statue. He invites her to touch a sort of stone font with a candle in the centre; when she does so a small, golden snake magically appears from her arm and melts into a pool of blood-like liquid which runs down carved grooves in the stone into a brass cup. The priest takes this cup and anoints a baby held by one of the other women.

Suddenly the men we saw at the start attack, brutally cutting down men and women left right and centre. There are even young boys of 12 or 13 hacking away with their swords. Only Su (Julaluck Kittiyarat aka Ying Jularuck, also in epic mermaid-vs-giant fantasy Phra-Apai-Mani), her mother and the priest escape to a big temple, but the young men follow them there. The priest is cut down, Su’s mother is grabbed and spits two jets of poison from her open mouth into a man’s face, but is then killed with a flaming arrow in the back.

Bad idea. Su glowers, her eyes glow, her skin starts to change colour, and before our eyes she transforms into an eighty-foot long giant cobra! She whips men with her tail, crushes men in her coils - and we even get a quick POV shot as she eats one whole.

Eleven minutes in and this is instantly the best snake-woman film I have ever seen! (And regular readers will know that it’s a genre I’m very fond of!) This isn’t just a very large snake, this is a supernaturally giant serpent rendered in very good CGI. If Bert I Gordon was alive today and making snake-woman films, this is what he would make.

The only downside is that this VCD, distributed by Right Beyond, has no English subtitles. That’s why Su (and everyone else) will have to have made-up names in this review. There are apparently English subs on the DVD - maybe I should have spent that extra five dollars.

One hundred years later...

Five young men and a woman, laden with cameras and video-cameras, arrive at the altar. I think they’re shooting some footage for the Discovery Channel or something. The altar looks a good location but one guy (let’s call him Andy) is unhappy about shooting at what was obviously once a sacred place. So they all pack their equipment again and set off. Across a river, through an amazing cave.

As they walk through the jungle, Andy is suddenly shot dead. And so are three of the others. This is a shocker. We’ve spent the past ten minutes with these people and assumed that they were the main characters. Now suddenly they’re under attack from a couple of dozen bandits armed with M-16s and AK-47s. The leader of the video team (let’s call him Joe, played by Nantawat Arsirapojanakul aka Tor Nantawat: Lhob Pai Tang Ar-kad, Bullet Teen, Rang Pen Fai, Hunch) shoots back with an automatic pistol as he leaps for cover (someone has been watching too many John Woo movies, methinks).

Joe escapes, along with a moustachioed guy but to be honest there’s no point inventing a name for him because he took a hit and he dies shortly afterwards.

The bandits - whose leader wears a Ramones T-shirt! - make their way through the forest and suddenly come across a young woman who seems to appear from nowhere. It’s Su, dressed in white still though a more modern dress. They challenge her but are distracted when one of their number is bitten by a snake, and when they look back she’s gone. The bandits continue through the jungle but suddenly find themselves surrounded by hundreds of snakes which attack and kill several of them, including the Ramones fan.

Joe is hungry, tired and lost when he comes across Su sitting by the river. She takes him to the temple, which is well lit with flaming torches, and explains something that is probably important but I don’t speak Thai. At one point there’s an insert shot of her naked except for a twenty-foot snake strategically wrapped around her.

In the dark jungle - actually it’s extremely well-lit, considering that it’s the middle of the night - the bandits continue under a new leader, whom we’ll call Zack. He spots a snake in a tree ahead and shoots it. Back at the temple, Su feels a sharp pain in her arm. She goes out into the jungle to confront the bandits but they evidently now know who/what she is because they hold her with two magically glowing lassoes. But Joe appears and shoots through both ropes, makes the bandits drop their weapons, then helps a weakened Su back to the temple. He spots a patch of scales on her shoulder and she explains everything to him, including flashbacks to the prologue.

To be honest, the film goes downhill on the second disc and I had to keep reminding myself “Eighty-foot cobra, eighty-foot cobra...” to stay interested. Joe carries Su through the jungle to a road where the video team parked their vehicles - blimey, that’s easily found! He takes her home and tends to her and there are lengthy, soft-focus romantic scenes. With no subtitles, these are just boring.

Then who should turn up, in a very expensive red sports car, but Joe’s girlfriend Amanda (or whatever), evidently very rich and beautiful but not a truly nice person. Joe explains that he has found someone new and she slaps him and runs out crying - straight into Zack...

Another night-time scene of Su and Joe together by a lake is interrupted by the arrival of Zack and co., with Amanda and with plenty of guns. Jealous Amanda grabs a pistol and shoots at Su but Joe leaps forward to protect her and takes three bullets in the back. Su is mad now and does the eighty-foot cobra thing again - yay! - but rather than attacking Zack and Amanda she just grabs Joe in her coils and disappears into the lake.

Back at the temple, Joe is stretched out on the stones and Su is praying to a broken statue of an eight-armed god. Zack, Amanda and the bandits arrive and there is a tense stand-off. Unfortunately, rather than another giant cobra, we get the clichéed spectacle of Zack and Su blasting bolts of magical energy at each. She knocks out all the bandits and knocks down but doesn’t stun Amanda, but Zack has her cornered when - zap! - Joe comes to her rescue with his own bolts of magic.

That’s right, once again we have someone with no magical ability suddenly acquiring it in the final scene to save the day. It’s a shame the cobra didn’t reappear but as if to make up for this, Su turns Amanda into a snake which slithers away.

The first disc starts with unavoidable trailers for dreadful Vin Diesel action stinker A Man Apart, the latest one-word-will-do film from Nu Image Submarines (which evidently reuses sets and CGI models from Octopus) and Japanese scarecrow horror flick Takashi. After the film finishes, disc 2 has trailers for Australian train-surfing film The Pact and Hong Kong human-canine soul-swap comedy Every Dog Has His Date.

Nantawat Arsirapojanakul and Julaluck Kittiyarat seem to be quite big stars in Thailand (Julaluck has even released her own yoga video!) but I can find nothing on any of the other cast. If you know anything at all about Sushao Phongwilai, Lakkhet Wasikachart, Tasanawalai Ongartsittichai, Krt Suwanaphap, Yanwisat Bokert, Orawan Terrakirilin, Jinsujee Namthong, Arch Wangtaweephaiboon, Sakwich Timsan, Tanapon Teerasin or Thuanthong Teerawat Phokasap - please drop me a line!

Nor can I find anything else directed by Ch Ratchapol, though that certainly doesn't mean he hasn’t done anything else. The excellent cinematography is by Artit Hongrat with special effects by Michelle Thi and Jeab Ssi.

The Poison (original title Asirapis) is a mixed bag. A terrific first half is let down by a slow, talkie second half (though I’m sure it’s more interesting if you can understand what they’re talking about) and the ending, though it notches up the interest again, is an unimaginative hoary old ‘you zap me, I’ll zap you’ cliché. But that can’t take away the fact that the production values are top-notch, the effects are great, the direction is slick, the acting good, the cinematography superb and, most importantly, a woman turns into a giant cobra! The first eleven minutes alone are worth the price of admission and although this VCD was very good quality (almost no artefacting) I would recommend the DVD.

MJS rating: B+