Sanctimony

Director: Uwe Boll
Writer: Uwe Boll
Producers: Uwe Boll, Shawn Williamson, Paul Colichman
Cast: Casper Van Dien, Eric Roberts, Michael Pare, Catherine Oxenburg
Year of release: 2000
Country: Germany/Canada
Reviewed from: Festival screening (Cannes 2000) and UK rental tape (Metrodome 2001)

Seattle detectives Renart and Smith (Michael Pare - Space Fury, Lunar Cop - and Jennifer Rubin: Nightmare on Elm Street 3, Little Witches, Last Lives) are on the hunt for a serial killer dubbed the ‘Monkey Maker’ by the press. So far he has killed an impressive 15 times(!): the first six had their eyes gouged out, the next six had their ears cut off, and the most recent three had their tongues cut out. That’s one sick puppy.

Meanwhile yuppie stock trader Tom Turner (the far, far too good-looking Van Dien: Starship Troopers, Sleepy Hollow, Revenant, Dracula 3000), who works in an extraordinary, ultra-modern, darkened office with only a bank of high-tech monitors and a telephone headset, is getting bored. He visits an underground fetish club where a select few can, in a back room, watch snuff movies being made. Renart has a tip-off about the snuff studio but arrives just too late to catch anything or anyone, so he returns to his heavily pregnant wife (Oxenburg, who is of course Mrs Van Dien in real life and played Princess Diana in at least two telemovies).

The Monkey Maker claims another victim, and this time there’s a witness - Tom Turner - whose story is full of obvious holes but who has a good lawyer. Despite being warned off by their boss (Eric Roberts: The Shadow Men, that Doctor Who TV movie), Renart and Smith investigate further into Turner’s world - but who is controlling the game? Them or him? Sanctimony builds to an extraordinarily nasty third act, which sees one of the main characters hideously murdered, another almost murdered in a staggeringly sadistic trick, another murder shown live on TV and a poetically filmed two-gun rampage in a restaurant.

It would be very easy (and lazy) to see this as a lower-budget spin on American Psycho, which came out around the same time, but the only similarity is that the killer is a yuppie, and we know his identity pretty much from the start. Sanctimony is a gripping detective thriller with a side order of serial killer horror; not a whodunnit but a willtheystophimfromdoingitagain? Boll had previously made a German serial killer movie, Run Amok, and subsequently directed the zombie-packed movie of the Sega game House of the Dead.

Also in the cast are David Millbern (Slumber Party Massacre, Deep Freeze), Crystal Lowe (Children of the Corn: Revelation), Dolores Drake (who was also in that Doctor Who TV movie) and Ken Camroux who has the bizarre claim to fame of having made two movies in 1999, both called Y2K.

A minor gem, Sanctimony is exciting, scary and highly recommended.

MJS rating: B+
Review originally posted 3rd March 2005

The Legend of Viper's Hill

Director: David A Lloyd
Writers: Norm Scanlon, David A Lloyd
Producer: Norm Scanlon
Cast: Tina Michaud, Donna Henry, MJ Tedford
Country: Canada
Year of release: 2006
Reviewed from: screener disc
Website: www.thecousincompany.ca/vipershill.htm

The problem with The Legend of Viper’s Hill is that, having watched it – and enjoyed it – I’m still not sure what the actual legend is. As a ghost movie, it’s a commendable effort with some frights and some action, but the basic premise is confused and unclear.

Donna Henry stars as Meredith Baron, who has inherited an old family home in the small town of Viper’s Hill on the death of her mother. Seventy years earlier, Meredith’s grandmother hanged herself after a brutal rape and the house has since then witnessed two further suicides: Cedric Plume blasted his wife and kids with a shotgun before shooting himself, and Michelle King (MJ Tedford - any film with someone called MJ in it has to be good!) sliced her own throat from ear to ear. All these incidents are seen in flashbacks and the protagonists also appear as ghosts.

Meredith travels to Viper’s Hill to view the property, accompanied by slimy family lawyer Larry Cline (David Rusk) who acted as landlord on behalf of her mother, and there they meet local handyman Clifford (Tom Griffin) who manages the day-to-day running of the place. It’s not really clear whether anyone else has ever lived there or whether the Plumes and King were the only residents in the last seven decades. What is clear is that the locals don’t like the place and its gruesome history.

Also travelling up to Viper’s Hill to view the Baron house is investigative reporter Jackie Coulter (Tina Michaud), who has received an anonymous tip-off that a descendent of Rosie Baron will be returning to the scene of the crime.

The foursome settle in for the night and various ghostly things then start happening, resulting in the deaths, somehow, of Cline and Clifford. The key words here are ‘various’ and ‘somehow’ because there doesn’t seem to be any rationale to the ghostly goings-on. Rosie Baron fades in and out of various scenes while Plume and King both appear in more corporeal form, a ghostly voice whispers people’s names, the power cuts off, scary faces or bloodied hands lunge at people. It all builds to a frantic chase round the building by Meredith and Jackie, searching for a way out, with Plume, King, Cline and Clifford appearing behind various doors. Are the lawyer and handyman now ghosts like the other two, or are those their bloodied, still-standing corpses? There is some talk of ‘Rosie’s revenge’ but revenge on whom? How and why does she kill Cline and Clifford? Why did she kill King and the Plume family? What is the ghost trying to achieve?

Down in the basement (not a good place to escape to, I wouldn’t have thought), Jackie and Meredith find the grave of Theodore Brick, Rosie’s rapist, who lurches up from his resting place, complete with scary monster face and big, rubber hands. This just makes the confusing plot even more confusing and seems to be an excuse for assorted fright/fight scenes. There is no explanation as to why he has become this deformed monster nor why the rapist is now apparently joining in with the rape victim in wreaking supernatural revenge (of some sort, for some reason) from beyond the grave.

The whole story is intermittently (and rather irritatingly) narrated by a psychiatrist and an epilogue finds him living in the house where all these events took place. But then he falls victim to yet another completely different slice of supernatural weirdness (involving his television) and the film ends with the house blowing up!

For a haunted house movie to work, it needs to be structured as a mystery story. There must be some consistency to the phenomena and an understanding in the final act – for both the characters and the audience – as to why these things are happening. Some recent indie ghost films that I have watched, such as Savage Spirit and In Memorium, have achieved this but unfortunately we get neither of these in The Legend of Viper’s Hill so we’re left with a sort of random selection of unconnected spookiness and scares. It’s spooky and scary in the right places – and if that’s what you want from a horror movie, all well and good - but the story, such as there is, simply doesn’t make much sense. Nor is there really anything by way of character development, with much of the dialogue limited to Clifford and Jackie explaining the history of the house to Meredith. (There’s one especially odd scene, when the power is off, with Jackie saying she is going to fill in the time by taking photographs of the house – while it is in pitch blackness. That left me scratching my head.) Overall the film needed some serious script revisions - and it’s a real shame that the script lets the film down in this way because production wise it’s a good little indie movie, using its limited budget well and scoring highly in terms of direction, acting, photography and sound.

The other problem is simply that the house used looks like something built in the 1970s rather than the 1930s, so it’s difficult to see how anything could have happened there seventy years ago. That’s actually a fairly big problem because almost all of the film is set within the house. The music (by Dennis Williams) isn’t great either, truth be told, emphasising scares which would work fine on their own.

Horror film-makers need to understand that an unexplained movement in the background is much, much scarier if we are left wondering whether we actually saw anything or not. If it is accompanied by a music stab, we know we saw something and that, naturally, makes it less scary. Too many films, both big and small, use their score to tell us what is happening on screen when we can see what is happening, thank you very much.

If it sounds like I’m being unduly harsh on The Legend of Viper’s Hill, I don’t mean to be. This debut feature from Canadian indie outfit The Cousin Company (director David A Lloyd and producer Norm Scanlon are the cousins in question) is a commendable achievement. Hopefully the cousins can learn from this movie and do something really impressive with their second feature.

MJS rating: B-

review originally posted 11th October 2006

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1996)

Director: Mark Shekter
Writers: Mark Shekter, Robert Sandler
Producer: Garry Blye
Cast: Clara Blye, Don Francks, Jennifer Martini
Country: Canada
Year of release: 1996
Reviewed from: UK VHS (Channel 5)

What the hell?

That was my reaction at the start of this 45-minute animated version of the Jules Verne classic which is very different in both approach and execution to the slightly later Franco-Belgian animated version. We start, according to an English-accented female narrator, in London in 1897 where 13-year-old Alexa Lindebruck (who has a very American accent), has entered the annual science fair.

What the hell?

Her demonstration involves showing that her pet guinea pig Hercules can find his way through a maze to a plate of ice cream before it melts.

What the hell?

Hercules sets off but is grabbed by a bat (what the hell?) which tries to carry him off, but Alexa uses the judge’s monocle to shine sunlight into the bat’s eyes (what the hell?), causing him to drop Hercules into the ice cream. Alexa is promptly awarded first prize.

Oh and Hercules can talk.

What the bloody hell is all this?

Apart from the girl’s surname, which is reasonably close to ‘Lidenbrock’, this has absolutely nothing to do with Jules Verne. My hopes for the rest of the story were low.

Alexa’s father, Professor Lindebruck, wants ‘the Academy’ to back his expedition to follow in the footsteps of Arne Saknussemm, an explorer who may have discovered a way to reach the centre of the Earth. The professor has a rock which was discovered in Italy but has been shown to have originated in Iceland and he believes this proves that there is a vast network of tunnels and caverns beneath the Earth. The president of the Academy, Doctor Greed, pours scorn on Lindebruck’s suggestion and sends him packing.

So now we’re getting a bit more like the book. I mean, talking guinea pigs - what the hell was that about? Okay, we’re in London in 1897 instead of Hamburg in 1863 and instead of a nephew named Axel the Prof has a daughter named Alexa. But at least we have references to Arne Saknussemm and there are even passing references to a housekeeper named Martha so these people have actually read the book. The difference between the book’s Axel and the cartoon’s Alexa - apart from sex, name and relationship to Prof. Lindebruck - is that where Axel was a bit of a harmless idler, uninterested in science, Alexa is a keen amateur scientist. As we have seen.

Back home with his daughter, Professor Lindebruck tosses the rock onto the fire where it breaks, revealing inside a message from Saknussemm, explaining where and when in Iceland the entrance to the caves can be located. The Prof is off, leaving Alexa at home, but she decides to pack a bag, grab Hercules, saddle a horse and catch up with her father. Unfortunately she bumps into Dr Greed who is in a carriage with his pet, the bat from the opening scene. Oh, and the bat, whose name is Ivan, also talks. The carriage is driven by an orphan teenager named Gower who works for Greed and who is sent to spy on Lindebruck. He stows away on a steamship chartered by the Professor and finds that Alexa and Hercules are already aboard. Dr Greed follows on a faster ship, gets to Iceland first and hires a hulking thug named Crunch to assist him.

Prof. Lindebruck, still unaware that the two youngsters are aboard, reaches Iceland, follows Saknussemm’s instructions and begins his journey underground where he finds that the explorer has thoughtfully marked the way with arrows. The kids follow him, and Greed follows the kids.

When Alexa and Gower fall into a deep pool of water, Hercules races ahead to find their father who returns and rescues them. But that night Gower is whisked away by Crunch to Dr Greed, who forces him to run ahead and change a Saknussemm marking, which sends the Lindebruck expedition down the wrong tunnel. When, having escaped a Raiders-style rolling boulder, they find themselves trapped on a shelf above a precipice, Gower confesses and apologises.

The team parachute down to the shores of what is swiftly named the Lindebruck Sea and for a short while we’re back in the book. They spot phosphorescent lighting illuminating the vast cavern and a subterranean forest from which they construct a raft and they put to sea swiftly when they are attacked by a mastodon. Out on the water, they are picked up by a giant turtle and then watch a fight between a plesiosaur and an ichthyosaur (neither of them terribly anatomically correct). Alexa falls overboard; Gower rescues her but he is then sucked down into a whirlpool.

On the far side of the Lindebruck Sea, Hercules finds a key marked ‘AS’ in the sand and this unlocks a set of large doors which lead into another vast cavern. (Though we have departed from the book once again, it is at least in keeping with the book that one of the problems with a story like this, if it is not to take place in a network of narrow caves, is the required presence of enormous caverns with their own illumination system.) Inside this particular cavern is a lost city - “possibly Atlantis” suggests the Prof - and inside a temple at the centre of the city is a circular, dishlike altar with a large emerald at its centre.

“The absolute centre of the Earth!” gasps Prof. Lindebruck, which is rather a literal and impractical interpretation of the book’s title. If that really is the centre - assuming that all the theories about fiery balls of magma are incorrect - isn’t there some problem with the gravity which is keeping these people standing around the altar?

Anyway, Greed and Crunch are there too, having crossed the sea on Saknussemm’s own boat, and they tie up Lindebruck and Alexa and put Hercules in a handy birdcage. But Gower arrives and quietly unties them. Just as they free themselves, the ground shakes and a geyser of volcanic lava bursts up underneath the altar dish, lifting it up. Our four heroes scramble aboard but Greed won’t leave the piles of emeralds which litter the temple. The dish shoots up and bursts out of the top of a volcano, riding down the slope on a lava flow and delivering the quartet safely into the European countryside. They ask a passing urchin where they are in English, French, German and finally Italian, which works because the volcano from which they emerged was Stromboli.

Unfortunately they have no proof of their adventure - except they have because Gower thought to stick one of the emeralds in his jacket. Prof. Lindebruck gives a successful lecture to ‘the Academy’, takes on Gower as his new lab assistant and ponders his next project - a voyage to the Moon.

Hmmm. The bare bones of Verne’s book are here, with Alexa substituting for Axel, with Gower sort of substituting for both Axel’s fiancee Grauben as the love interest and the Icelandic guide Hans as the extra pair of legs on the journey, and with Prof. Lindebruck being decidedly kinder and less driven than the novel’s Prof. Lidenbrock. The whole subplot with Dr Greed racing them to the glory of discovering the subterranean world is entirely new, but it does give the story some narrative structure, as does the forced duplicity of Gower. The original novel is very episodic, as Verne was wont to be, and largely relied on impressive set pieces, but with only 45 minutes to tell the whole story there’s really no room for such set pieces, the Lindebruck Sea sequence aside.

The cartoon features three songs: when Alexa nearly collides with Greed’s carriage, he sings about how the only things that he cares about are fortune and fame; Hercules performs a Broadway-style song, explaining that most scientific advancements were actually made by guinea pigs (which is a clever and amusing idea); and there is a very sweet duet between the two teenagers as each wonders what the other thinks about them. Each of the songs is accompanied by fantasy sequences, placing the characters into other times and places, and they don’t feel intrusive, occurring naturally at suitable points in the story.

For all its undoubted liberties, this version of Journey to the Center of the Earth has a distinctly Verne-ian feel and never gets distracted or anachronistic (once we get past the ‘science fair’ scene). Even the talking animal sidekicks aren’t too bad, played for genuine comedy rather than the usual misdirected attitude that assumes that cartoon animals are inherently funny.

So where did this version come from? The tape starts with a bewildering succession of animated logos - for Channel 5 (the video label, not the TV channel), Macrovision Quality Protection, Abbey Home Entertainment/Tempo Video and Goodtimes Home Video Platinum Series - before launching into the title sequence for Goodtimes Family Classics, a generic animation of characters and books with insert shots from this particular story. After the end credits there are further idents for Blye Migicovsky Productions Inc., Phoenix Animation Studios Inc. and Bedtime Primetime Classics, with a copyright notice reading ‘Jaffa Road Liv Ltd Partnership.’

Even more complicated than the various logos is the battery of credited producers. Garry Blye (of, presumably, Blye Migicovsky Productions Inc.) is actually credited as ‘producer’, Mark Shekter is the ‘senior producer’ and Michael B Hefferon is the ‘supervising producer’; Shekter, Blye and John Migicovsky are ‘executive producers’ with Charles Falzon as ‘co-executive producer’. There is a ‘production executive’ with the great name of Tammy Litwack Brown who presumably has a different role from the executive producers and indeed from the ‘executives in charge of production’ who are Tony Stevens-Fleischmann from Phoenix Animation Studios Inc. and Nancy Chappelle from Catalyst Entertainment Inc. (who somehow missed out on including their animated logo on the tape). There’s a ‘line producer’ too, but by that point my hand was getting tired so I gave up taking notes. Good grief. How many people does it take to make one cartoon?

Shekter and Blye are still working together for a company named Microtainment Plus and between them have a very impressive roster of people and shows that they have written for or produced, including Steve Martin, Bob Hope, the Smothers Brothers and Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Their most recent production is the rather self-explanatory teen series Vampire High. John Migicovsky went on to become President of the Columbia Tristar Media Group while Charles Falzon became President of Gullane Entertainment (who own Thomas the Tank Engine, among other things).

Although this is a Canadian production there is nevertheless a credit for an animation studio in Seoul, which seems odd as none of the many names in the credits are Korean. There are also, bizarrely, credits for ‘live action sequences’ of which there are, um, none at all. My guess is that when the series of which this was part, Bedtime Primetime Classics, was originally aired on Canadian TV it had some sort of wraparound live-action framing story. The video release was then probably renamed Goodtimes Video Classics, with a purely animated title sequence - but with the original end credits. That’s my guess, at least.

Glenn Morley and Marvin Dolgay are credited with the music although Mark Shekter is credited (at least on the sleeve) with the songs. The animation and character design are actually pretty good, of a standard that one might expect to see on Cartoon Network or Saturday morning shows. Alexa could almost be an ancestor of Kim Possible.

The interesting cast, whose roles are not identified, are: Clara Blye (probably the narrator), venerable Canadian institution Don Francks (My Bloody Valentine, Johnny Mnemonic and every TV show under the sun), Jennifer Martini (Babar, Goosebumps), James Rankin (Super Mario Brothers cartoon), Ron Rubin (Angela Anaconda, Sailor Moon), Stuart Stone (Voodoo Dawn, Serial Killing 101, Donnie Darko) and Colette Stevenson (Rats, Replikator - I think this is a different actress to the one who was in Corrie in the early 1990s).

Despite my initial trepidation, I ended up actually enjoying this version of JTTCOTE. I think its intended pre-teen audience would lap it up - and might be encouraged to perhaps try one of Verne’s books for themselves. In contrast, the 2001 Franco-Belgian version, in staying truer to Verne, is more suitable for an older audience who don’t expect songs or animal sidekicks in their cartoons. As far as I can tell, there are four other animated versions of the story: an accurate-looking Spanish one, a less acurate one called A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (which features a Dr Greed-like rival named Professor Kippner), an episode of a pre-school series called The Triplets and the second Willy Fog TV serial.

MJS rating: B
review originally posted 8th August 2005

Heartstopper

Director: Bob Keen
Writers: Vlady Pildysh, Warren P Sonoda
Producers: Kate Harrison, Lewin Webb
Cast: Meredith Henderson, Nathan Stephenson, Robert Englund
Country: Canada
Year of release: 2006
Reviewed from: screener DVD

On a stormy night, two high school students find themselves in hospital. The white, female one, Sarah Wexler (Meredith Henderson, who starred in The Adventures of Shirley Holmes ten years ago and recently played Shania Twain(!) in a TV movie) was injured trying to commit suicide by standing in front of traffic; the black, male one, Walter (Nathan Stephenson), has stab wounds which he is keen to point out are not gang-related.

Also in the hospital is Sheriff Berger (horror legend Robert Englund: A Nightmare on Elm Street and, erm, Mind Breakers) who has brought the recently fried body of convicted serial killer Chambers (stuntman John Binkley, who had a bit part in Land of the Dead) for autopsy. But Chambers is not dead; he has supernatural abilities and he is searching for Sarah Wexler. And there ain’t no-one or nothing going to get in his way.

Now, we all have our bugbears when it comes to movie mistakes. For some folks it’s sound in space, for others it’s people holding guns sideways. Here’s one of mine. Local coroner Doctor Hitchens (Michael Cram, who was in two episodes of the 1990s Outer Limits) takes Chambers’ body into a laboratory clearly labelled ‘pathology’ where he lays him out on an autopsy table and proceeds to slice him open - until Chambers, to nobody’s surprise except Doctor Hitchens’, sits up and rips the other man’s heart out.

Folks, I have worked in a hospital pathology lab - four years spent sweating over a hot auto-analyser - and let me assure you that pathology has Nothing At All To Do With Dead People. Pathology is the study of chemical pathways inside living people. The path lab is where your blood, urine and stool samples go to be analysed so the doctors can work out what is wrong with you. If you’re dead, most of those chemical pathways shut down fairly swiftly and it’s extremely bloody obvious what’s wrong with you on account of the lack of heartbeats.

There is something called ‘forensic pathology’, which involves studying the chemical mishmash inside dead folks but that is an entirely different science. Unfortunately, lots of people think that it’s the second word in that phrase which means ‘dead folks’ when in fact it’s the term ‘forensic’ which refers to the deceased. To sum up: medical autopsies are performed in hospital morgues. Anyone lugging a dead body into a path lab and slicing it open would be asked to leave.

That Hitchens is not asked to leave may be due to the fact that there are no pathologists in evidence. In actual fact, this entire hospital seems to survive on a staff of six (or seven if you include Hitchens): two nurses, one doctor, one janitor and a couple of guys who are presumably porters. All of these except for Nurse Grafton (Laura DeCarteret, who had a small role in the Dawn of the Dead remake) are despatched fairly swiftly by the supernatural killer. But there seem to be no other medical staff, no support staff, no admin staff, not even a receptionist. There are also no patients, apparently, apart from Sarah and Walter plus the victims of a traffic accident who also disappear from the story very quickly. Sarah’s mother (Lori Hallier: My Bloody Valentine, Thomas and the Magic Railroad) completes the roster of bodies.

What we end up with, fairly swiftly, is Sarah, Walter and Grafton hiding from Chambers, who has some sort of psychic link to the girl and needs her body to host whatever demonic entity possesses him because she is “the one in a million”. Apparently. A moving scorpion tattoo transferred itself from Chambers’ arm to Sarah’s when they shared an ambulance but this is never explained and barely features.

Disappointingly, there is little of the chase in this film. Chambers seems most concerned with wheeling the bodies of his victims around on a trolley for some reason and the others have only to keep out of his way. Only one sequence generates real tension and thrills, with Sarah purloining plasma from a blood bank (which looks about as realistic as the path lab) only to be cornered by Chambers.

The blood is needed because Walter suddenly, without explanation, starts losing a great deal of blood from his stab wounds. Nurse Grafton, who must have the worst bedside manner in the Northern hemisphere, repeatedly tells the young man that he is going to bleed to death but Sarah saves the day with an impromptu, and remarkably easy, transfusion.

Around this time, I realised what was wrong with Heartstopper. It’s a film set in a hospital written by someone who has only the most rudimentary idea of what goes on in hospitals. If characters didn’t keep using the word ‘hospital’, there would be almost nothing to indicate that this is where the film takes place. It is mentioned at one point that the building is a former insane asylum although this has no bearing on the story whatsoever and seems to be merely some sort of funding requirement for this sort of movie.

There are also no fire exits, so once the front door is locked (presumably by Chambers) there is no way out. A phone rings at one point but we don’t find out if there’s anyone on the line. Nobody attempts to ring out for help and nobody, apparently, has a mobile.

Getting back to lack of medical knowledge (as it were), the film’s title refers to Chambers’ preferred method of killing people: yanking their hearts out. The thing is, he yanks the hearts (or, I suspect, the same heart each time) straight out, in a move which would require him to plunge his hand straight through the other person’s sternum, one of the toughest bones in the human body (for various reasons, not least to stop people yanking your heart straight out). One can be generous and say well, he’s a supernatural demon-thing and so he must be able to punch through a breastbone or perhaps melt it in some way, but realistically this has all the hallmarks of an idea concocted by writers who thought it sounded cool without caring whether it sounded possible.

This is Bob Keen’s first feature as director since The Lost World eight years ago. In the meantime he has provided effects for films such as Wild Country, Dog Soldiers and On Edge as well as lots of videos, ads etc. His previous features include Proteus and To Catch a Yeti and he is currently attached to a remake of The House on Straw Hill aka Exposé. Naturally a gore-heavy film like this is well-suited to Keen and he handles the direction skillfully enough although his tendency to rely on flash cuts wears out its welcome quite rapidly and the endless flashing of lights (which may be lightning or may be electrical problems due to a storm) is a similar pain for the eyes. (At one point a character comments that the back-up generators will come on soon, even though there are clearly working lights in the room.)

But Keen’s direction can’t do anything with the frankly awful script or the sparse budget. Despite the lack of people in the hospital, Heartstopper has a surprisingly long cast list. However, most of those are in a flashback to Sarah being bullied in High School. If only some of that extras budget had been spent on getting people to put on white coats and run around screaming, the film’s main location might have looked at least vaguely like a hospital.

It’s not just the story, it’s the dialogue too. Chambers speaks in silly cod-biblical rhetoric which turns him from a serious danger into a sub-Freddy bogeyman. Freddy himself, Robert Englund, also has some corny lines but he gets away with them because, well, he’s Robert Englund and he’s done this sort of thing a million times before. Englund is always watchable, always fun and one of the best things about this film so it’s a shame that he’s killed off relatively early.

Also in the cast are Ted Ludzik (bit parts for Romero in Bruiser and Land of the Dead), Scott Gibson (The Skulls), John Bayliss (Terminal Justice, The Skulls III - yes, there’s three of ‘em apparently), Wayne Flemming (Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events), Amy Ciupak Lalonde (episodes of Mutant X and Battlestar Galactica) and Christopher Cordell (stunts on Warriors of Terra and Bulletproof Monk). Most of the cast have been in one or more episodes of the US remake of Queer as Folk. Cinematographer David Mitchell directed Nightmare City and The Killing Machine, editor Mitch Lackie was assistant editor on American Psycho and its sequel.

Producers Kate Harrison and Lewin Webb previously collaborated on Five Girls (or 5ive Girls - don’t you just hate titles like that?) which was written and directed by Warren P Sonoda, an established Canadian director of music videos. The other writer here, Vlady Pildysh, is a UCLA graduate who actually won third place in the university’s Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards with the original version of Heartstopper. Maybe that was a great script, but that was way back in 1997. Eight years later Heartstopper finally got made and clearly something went awry in the meantime because this script would be lucky to win third prize in a competition with only three entrants. (This also, of course, explains the lack of mobile phones!)

To be fair, Heartstopper makes no claims to be a masterpiece or even to originality (although it does take itself seriously - there’s precious little light relief) and thus sort of achieves what it sets out to do, I suppose, which is to pass 85 minutes and showcase a bunch of horror effects (including a gruesome electric chair sequence at the start). With a few beers, a pizza and a couple of undemanding mates who don’t mind you shouting at the TV, this could work. But it could have been considerably better with a more focussed and, frankly, better thought out script. Maybe this could pass muster in 1997 but film screenplays, unlike wine and certain women, do not improve with age.

MJS rating: C+
review originally posted 12th October 2006

Ghostkeeper

Director: Jim Makichuk
Writers: Jim Makichuk, Douglas MacLeod
Producer: Harold J Cole
Cast: Riva Spier, Murray Ord, Sherri McFadden
Country: Canada
Year of release: 1980
Reviewed from: UK VHS (Apex)

Good old Apex Video. They could always be relied on to pick some completely cool but utterly arbitrary piece of artwork and slap it on their sleeves. They were the company who released Al Adamson’s Dracula vs Frankenstein behind a painting of banner-waving armies attacking a futuristic superfortress. For Ghostkeeper (or Ghost Keeper as the sleeve has it) they gave us a hideous monster, composed in roughly equal parts of an eagle, a skeleton and a devil, lunging out of a blood-red sky above Aztec pyramids in a South American jungle.

Not bad for a film about a North American ghost monster which is set high in the Rockies.

Marty (Murray Ord), his girlfriend Jenny (Riva Spier: Rabid) and their friend Chrissy (Sherri McFadden) are exploring on a couple of Skidoos on New Year’s Eve, while the rest of their party, back at some rented lodge that we never see, is preparing for, well, a party. Jenny is serious, intense and brunette, dressed in a blue snowsuit with high waist and flared trousers; Chrissy is blonde, a bit more relaxed sexually and dressed in red. Frankly, they look like 50 per cent of an Abba tribute act. Marty, for his part, is a bit of an arse. Their characters are all established in an opening scene when they look round a remote general store, run by an old guy (played by Les Kimber, who is normally found behind the camera as production manager on pictures up to and including Superman).

Marty and Jenny’s relationship is a little tense, not helped by the way that Chrissy is flirting with him and the fact that he doesn’t seem to mind it. Just to add extra spice, Jenny is haunted by the fear that she has inherited her mother’s insanity.

Despite the storekeeper’s suggestion to turn back, they explore past a sign reading ‘Private property - keep out’ and find a huge, utterly remote hotel, the Deer Lodge. It seems to be deserted and the visitors book shows that no-one has stayed there for five years - so why is the heating working?

Bad weather and accidental damage to Chrissy’s Skidoo force them to stay the night and they discover they are not alone when Marty is attacked by an old woman (Georgie Collins) whose character is credited only as ‘Ghostkeeper’. She turns out to be living - and possibly working - in the hotel and strangely circumvents questions as to whether anyone else is around, making a mysterious reference to “my boy.”

She shows them to rooms that they can use, but while Chrissy is having a bath she is attacked by a guy with a beard and a woolly hat who is (we can safely presume) the old woman’s son. He drags her, naked, to a distant part of the hotel where she is thrown into a room with a wild-looking individual who may or may not be entirely human - after having her throat cut. The guy in the woolly hat is credited as ‘Danny’ and played by Billy Grove, the wild-looking guy is played by John MacMillan and credited as ‘Windigo’. Neither is ever referred to as such, although an opening caption has told us: “In the Indian Legends of North America, there exists a creature called Windigo... a ghost who lives on human flesh.”

In the morning, Marty finds Chrissy missing, her Skidoo vanished and his own vehicle deliberately tampered with. While he is busy looking for equipment to repair the machine, Jenny is given a drugged cup of tea by the old woman. She comes to in a different room where, instead of wondering where she is, she browses through a book about Native American legends and finds an old newspaper with the headline ‘Mutilated bodies found’. She then escapes chainsaw-wielding Danny, running up to the top of the hotel from where he falls to his death, impaled on railings below.

Jenny begs Marty to leave (through the waist-deep snow) but he seems to have gone bonkers, painting his face with grease and ranting about crazy stuff while holding her tighter than she would like. He then wanders off into the snow.

Returning to the main hotel, Jenny faces a showdown with the old lady who reveals something which explains why Jenny has been hearing faint voices calling her name since she got there, but which otherwise makes no sense. The ending is very weird, very bleak and yet strangely satisfying.

When I say ‘makes no sense’, in fact there is some sense to it. By the time that the 90-minute picture finishes it is fairly clear that Jenny has in fact gone completely loopy. However, much like the main character in Neil Marshall’s superb The Descent, made 25 years later, we are left wondering precisely when in the story what we were seeing stopped being real and started being the product of Jenny’s deranged mind. The implication is that she will take over from the old woman as the Windigo’s ‘ghostkeeper’ but since no-one ever talks about a Windigo we’re left wondering whether the locked-up hairy guy really is the creature of legend or just some mad bloke. Or does he exist at all?

For such an obscure film, Ghostkeeper is strangely satisfying, even on this barely watchable, full-screen video which is a dark transfer of an already dark film. There is nothing silly here, there are some bits of genuine horror (such as the throat slitting), there are no pat explanations or lame attempts at humour, the three main characters are believable, and the last 15-20 minutes is tense and horrific, treading the middle ground between psychological and supernatural horror. It kept me gripped, although I think the sleeve’s claim of ‘SUSPENSE, HORROR and DRAMA in the true Hitchcockian tradition’ may be pushing it a bit.

Given that this was filmed in Alberta I can only assume that the Inaccurate Movie Database has got its facts right for once and that the actor playing Marty is the same Murray Ord who went on to be President of the Alberta Film Commission, location manager for everything from Airwolf to Shoebox Zoo, and producer of Brokeback Mountain!

Writer/director Jim Makichuk is a former news cameraman whose short films earned him a Genie and an Oscar nomination. His subsequent career has mostly been on the writing side, where his credits include the 1999 sci-fi movie Roswell: The Aliens Attack, episodes of Highlander: The Series and the 2002 Gentle Ben telemovie! Co-writer Douglas MacLeod, who is also associate producer, went on to produce a bunch of stuff for Canadian TV. Someone called David Makichuk (brother? father? son?) gets a ‘story consultant’ credit here.

Cinematographer John Holbrook allegedly directed an ultra-obscure 1970s porn/horror picture with the unpronouncable title Sexcula. Mel Merrells gets the possibly unique credit ‘special effects/generator operator’; the ‘special effects’ amounts to one small Skidoo explosion so he would not have needed to leave the generator unattended for very long. Composer Paul Zaza has by far the longest filmography of anyone here, his credits including Murder By Decree, Porky’s, My Bloody Valentine, The Pink Chiquitas and all four Prom Nights.

Ghostkeeper is a decent little film, dating from the last days of independent 35mm theatrical releases (it was distributed in the States by New World) before the video explosion. It’s probably the lack of star names (and the fact that it’s Canadian) which has kept the film so obscure because there’s nothing really wrong with it. If it has a failing, it’s that the whole Windigo thing is so tangential as to be barely there. It makes one wonder whether that was tacked on after the fact because, apart from the opening caption and the closing credits, there is nothing to suggest any connection with ‘Indian Legends’ whatsoever. This is a Windigo movie which is almost entirely lacking in Windigos.

MJS rating: B

review originally posted 8th January 2006

[Unusually for one of my reviews, this one has a sequel over on the Devil's Porridge blog - MJS]

Famous Monster

Director: Michael MacDonald
Writer: Ian Johnston
Producers: Michael MacDonald, Holly Hedd
Cast: Forry Ackerman, Ray Harryhausen, John Landis
Country: Canada
Year of release: 2007
Reviewed from: screener

Famous Monster: Forrest J Ackerman (to use the full title) is a 48-minute look at the life and work of ‘Mr Sci-Fi’ himself, produced a couple of years before his death in 2009. It features most of the expected talking heads, some rare photos, lots of clips from trailers and PD classics and some newly shot interview footage with Forry himself who looks very weak and frail but clearly still had all his faculties.

Forry had a stock of anecdotes and well-worn gags which he trotted out in interview after interview, column after column, especially in the last decade or two of his life, so it would be very easy for this to turn into a singalongaforry as anyone with even a passing knowledge of the man mouths the stories word for word. It is to the credit of director Michael MacDonald and writer Ian Johnston (who share a curious ‘created by’ credit) that Famous Monster manages to largely avoid this, without leaving any obvious gaps in the story. There is the occasional “little boy, take me home” or “I am your reader, make me laugh” but they provide texture, not tedium, to the story.

Most of the interviewees need no introduction. They are, in order of appearance: Ray Harryhausen, John Landis, Ray Bradbury, Roger Corman, film exhibitor/historian Reg Hartt, Twilight Zone/Star Trek scripter George Clayton Johnson, actress Bobbie Bresee (Evil Spawn etc), actor Dan Roebuck (Matlock, Halloween remake etc), Rue Morgue editrix Jovanka Vuckovic, Joe Dante, David J Schow, director Tim Sullivan (2001 Maniacs etc), Del Howison (owner of LA collectibles store Dark Delicacies), Ib Melchior, Fred Olen Ray and Scott Spiegel.

There are also clips of Ackerman’s cameo roles in Ray’s Scalps and Melchior’s The Time Travellers as well as some archive footage shot inside the original Ackermansion. Forry sits in an armchair in the mini-Ackermansion that he moved into in his later years and is also seen at his favourite restaurant, House of Pies.

Forry looks very small and old in this film - he was 89/90 when it was produced - and his movements are small and slow. But he looks content, thankful for his (amazing) lot in life and comfortable in the knowledge that he is surrounded by friends who will care for him until Prince Sirki finally comes a-knocking. “He’ll probably outlast us all,” says Sullivan, which of course turned out not be true. “When he finally goes, he’s going to go happy,” ventures Dante, which thankfully did prove prophetic.

Although it was produced and broadcast on American and Canadian TV while Ackerman was still alive, the first DVD release of the documentary was this UK disc which hit stores a couple of months after his passing. There is a curious but, I suppose, unavoidable inconsistency in that some of the interviewees talk about Ackerman in the past tense but we can work out that they are talking about Forry as he was when he was still active; he was still with us when these people spoke.

Johnston’s script (narrated by Terry Pulliam) largely avoids any attempt to ape Forry’s punning style and acknowledges the controversy over the reincarnation of Famous Monsters without dwelling unduly on the matter or naming the other party involved. Johnston is also credited with ‘research’ and ‘interviews’ while MacDonald (who had previously interviewed Forry for his 2005 documentary Visions from the Edge: The Art of Science Fiction) shares camera credit with (brother?) Fred MacDonald and editing with James Patriquin. Warren Robert, sometime guitarist with rockers Avacost, provided the score.

Famous Monster strikes just the right balance so that it will appeal to both those who know little about Forrest J Ackerman and those who are completely familiar with the man and his legacy. Although there is, naturally, no reference to his passing, this serves as a generous, affectionate (but not cloying or hagiographic) tribute to a man who, directly or indirectly, touched the lives of millions of people around the world.

The DVD from Spirit Entertainment includes nearly two hours of extras plus a commentary by Johnston and MacDonald which starts fairly blandly but picks up later on. There is a three-minute ‘Blooper Reel’ which has out-takes from the interviews with Landis, Schow, Dante, Roebuck and Corman. Landis observes that there is no irony in Dan Aykroyd’s belief in UFOs, ghosts and conspiracy theories and that the actor really is “insane”. Corman can’t recall which of his films Forry cameoed in but, when told the details of one such appearance, then repeats them for the camera as if the information was plucked from the air. (Film journo secret: this sort of thing happens all the time.)

‘More Forry Memories’ is 27 minutes of additional interview footage, 17 minutes of which is Ackerman himself although this includes a rather pointless sequence in a car during which Forry barely says a word and a House of Pies sequence of Forry singing three songs, which is the sort of indulgence one extends to people of that age (and Forry always loved to sing to people) but is of little actual interest. The remaining ten minutes includes additional interview material with Dante, Bradbury, Roebuck, Sullivan, Spiegel and Landis.

On the commentary track, Johnston and MacDonald explain that they visited a convention where Forry was scheduled to appear but he didn’t show up. Since they were there anyway they grabbed three interviews with other guests but these have been omitted from the main documentary for two obvious reasons. One is sound quality - all three interviews were done on the fly in a noisy dealer’s hall - and the other is that none of the interviewees have anything to say about Ackerman except what a lovely man. Carla Laemmle (niece of the Universal Studios boss, now well into her 90s) is one of the ladies in question and the other two are Grace Lee Whitney (Star Trek’s Yeoman Rand) and Hammer/Bond hottie Caroline Munro. The fourth deleted interview is with a young, aspiring make-up effects artist, Casey Wong, who is seen in his studio and in Forry’s home. This whole ‘Deleted Interviews’ segment runs 22 minutes.

A seven-minute tour of the Mini-Ackermansion is really just long, unedited takes of establishing footage but it gives us a chance to view what remained of Forry’s collection after the great sell-off. On the other hand, ‘Dan Roebuck’s Hall of Horror’ (called ‘Dan Roebuck’s Living(??) Room’ on-screen) is a guided tour around the extensive collection of this likeable actor who turns out to be a massive, massive monster kid. Roebuck, whose many credits include episodes of Lost, Six Feet Under, Freakylinks, The West Wing, Lois and Clark and Star Trek TNG, explains that, unlike Forry, he has very few original items (a couple of Planet of the Apes costumes notwithstanding) but he has vast amounts of toys, action figures, books and other merchandise plus a number of lifesize waxworks, some bought from out-of-business museums and some specially commissioned. Finally there is a gallery of 37 photos of Forry or from his collection, some of which are seen briefly in the main feature.

One day someone may write a definitive biography of Forrest J Ackerman (whose middle name, I learned from this film, was actually Clark). I certainly won’t, but somebody might. It will be a difficult job, even at a remove of several years, because Forry was human and could, I have no doubt, be as cantankerous as any old man. But he is so loved, and is likely to remain so, that objectivity will be difficult and may well end up being condemned - which is one reason why I wouldn’t touch such a job with a barge pole, thank you very much.

In the meantime, this sympathetic, informative, well-crafted documentary serves as a fine record of a person whose historical importance and cultural influence were out of all proportion to his actual level of public awareness.

MJS rating: A-
review originally posted 11th March 2009

Dead Man's Luck

Director: Max Perrier
Writers: James Chancellor, Danek S Kaus
Producers: Max Perrier, Valerie Gagnon
Cast: Paul Burke, Paula Davis, Anastasia Bondarenko
Country: Canada
Year of release: 2006
Reviewed from: screener

Sometimes it’s great to try a lucky dip, a film about which one knows absolutely nothing. I’ve had so many screeners stacking up in what I loosely call “the TBW pile” while finishing this book that I’ve lost track. I moved some papers on my desk - and there was a silver disc labelled Dead Man’s Luck.

Thing is: I don’t remember receiving this. I don’t recall seeing a sleeve or a press release. The title rings no bells with me. I can’t even tell from the screener which company sent it to me. But... I’m feeling lucky. Lucky as a dead man, maybe more so. I don’t know what this is about, or even what sort of film it is. Could be a slasher, a monster movie, a horror comedy. Could be American, Australian, foreign (I at least know it’s not British because I would recognise the title). I’m going to assume it’s about 90 minutes or so, pop it into the DVD player and see what unspools.

And...

Well, that was a very pleasant surprise indeed. Dead Man’s Luck turns out to be a cracking rural thriller from 2006, originally titled The Ante (as in “upping...”). Paul Burke (Dead Lines) stars as Sam, an ordinary bloke who stops at a farm to ask directions and finds himself framed by the (never-named) farmer’s wife (Paula Davis, who was in a six-part anthology I totally need to see: Frankenstein Unlimited) for the murder of her husband. She has evidently been waiting for the right opportunity to come along - and Sam was simply the wrong guy in the wrong place at the right time.

The actual framing is done simply and believably and leaves Sam with blood on his shirt, his bloody fingerprints all over the farmhouse, the murder weapon in his car and the farmer’s wife screaming about murder and kidnap.

So many films are about idiots, or rather about people who do idiotic things for the sake of the plot. So it’s always a joy to watch a movie in which the protagonists make good choices. Sam’s solution is a stroke of genius: he removes the farmer’s body and cleans up the blood: without a body, there’s no murder case.

Then the story ‘ups the ante’ as we meet Sam’s bored, conniving Russian trophy wife Jan (Anastasia Bondarenko) who realises that they have an advantage over the farmer’s wife. She wants the body, not so much to frame Sam but more for insurance purposes, but only Jan and Sam know where it is. Thus begins a brilliant sequence of back and forth manoeuvres which could have been blackly comic - let’s face it, this is hardly the first film with a corpse as the McGuffin - but here are played thrillingly straight.

Adding to the complexity is the antipathy between Jan and Sam, creating a magnificent triangle of distrust and deceit. And I won’t describe any more for fear of spoiling what is an enormously enjoyable - and clearly unjustifiably obscure - film.

This seems to be the only film by Canadian director Max Perrier, the script written by two other fellas from a story by the director’s brother Simon. Cinematographer Maarten Kroonenburg got an early credit back in 1986 as ‘camera trainee’ on Canuck Robocop rip-off The Vindicator and then did various camera crew jobs on the likes of Highlander 3, Witchboard 3, Sci-Fighters, Habitat, Laserhawk and, um, Barney’s Great Adventure.

It transpires that Dead Man’s Luck has just (October 2012) been released in the UK by Left Films, so that’s who sent me the disc. And I’m jolly glad that they did. Intelligent, well-made and gripping, Dead Man’s Luck is wholeheartedly recommended.

MJS rating: A-

review originally posted 25th November 2012