Surviving Evil

Director: Terence Daw
Writer: Terence Daw
Producers: Malcolm Kohll, David Pupkewitz
Cast: Billy Zane, Natalie Mendoza, Christina Cole
Country: UK/South Africa
Year of release: 2009
Reviewed from: screener DVD

Surviving Evil may be the first horror film directed by someone who has previously helmed episodes of Heartbeat. Unfortunately, the result is what you might expect. The first hour or so, which is all lightweight character drama and soap opera relationships, is competently directed and quite interesting - but when it eventually gets round to the horror stuff it just falls apart, losing all the interest it may have built up amongst its audience.

Billy Zane (Titanic, Bloodrayne etc. - you know who Billy Zane is) stars as Seb Beazly, a professional adventurer filming the 183rd edition of his TV series Surviving the Wilderness on a remote island in the Philippines. With him are his producer/director Rachel (Louise Barnes: Borderline), cameraman Dex (Colin Moss: Cryptid) and sound recordist Phoebe (Christina Cole: bus driver Candy in Doghouse). The soap angle is that Dex and Rachel were once an item and she still carries a torch which flares up when she sees him coming on (entirely reasonably) to hot tropical babe Cecilia, one of two Filipinos in the party. (Cecilia is played by Natalie Mendoza, from The Descent, who does actually have Filipino parents.)

The last member of this sextette is Joey (Joel Torre, an honest to God Filipino character actor whose horror credits include Yanggaw, Sapi and Sa Ilalim ng Cogon) who doubles as guide and armed guard and is the only person to have visited this island before. Cecilia fills in as assistant guide and general PA. The boatman who takes them to the island refuses to stay but will return in six days. The group have two satellite phones which allow them intermittent contact with ‘base’.

There is one village on this island which is presumably the one we saw in a prologue being attacked by something savage while a woman gave birth during a thunderstorm. When Joey goes to make contact with the villagers he finds the place deserted, something which he keeps secret from the others although there is no indication of how he explains this lack of communication as presumably they were expecting something to come from his visit.

A few odd things happen. Phoebe thinks she sees a sad old woman standing still near the camp who has disappeared when she looks again. Playing back footage, Dex notices what appears to be a human figure climbing a tree in the background of one shot but dismisses it as it doesn’t spoil the shot. And a blackened skeletal hand falls from a tree onto Rachel while she is trying to take a dump in the woods.

All the rotting remains in this film are black and skeletal, looking like they have been burned rather than rotted away, but still with splashes of unnaturally bright red blood. These include several bodies in the village and a dead baby which lands in Phoebe’s lap.

Anyway, let’s get to the meat. The big selling point of this film, at least as far as I’m concerned. Joey and Cecilia become convinced that the island is home to an aswang.

An aswang, folks! This is an honest-to-God British aswang film! Who would ever have thought such a thing possible?

Actually, it’s not really a British film except for tax purposes. It was shot entirely in Durban - in May 2008 - with some post-production in the USA and the Philippines (which, with the possible exception of some stock jungle footage, is the closest the film ever gets to Manila). But the opening titles proclaim Surviving Evil to be ‘A UK/South Africa co-production’ and so it is. Even though the only recognisable name among 13(!) executive producers is American B-movie legend Chuck Fries.

But it is at least a proper aswang film. Just about.

One of the things that distinguishes the aswang among monsters is that it preys on pregnant woman - and guess who has just missed her period after a one-off drunken fumble with Seb? That’s right, it’s Phoebe.

Meanwhile Joey has his own subplot. He needs money because his wife is gravely ill and he has returned to the island, not just for the job as guide, but because he knows the location of a derelict World War 2 outpost constructed during the Japanese occupation. And what do all stories that touch on the Japanese occupation of the Philippines revolve around? Got it in one!

Joey seems to have no clear evidence that there is gold in the outpost but he also seems fairly sure it is there. He has a hand-drawn cloth map but there’s no indication of where he got it; he may even have drawn it himself on his last visit. But he also tells Cecilia, when she follows him to the outpost, that she can return to camp by just heading due south. So, you know, the map’s not really necessary.

It is while Joey is deep underground, in a cavernous vault beneath this jungle outpost, that we get our first clear look at the aswangs. For there are several. And it honestly is one of the most cack-handed monster reveals I’ve ever seen. A couple of them just appear and start threatening Cecilia but there’s no build-up, no follow-through, no surprise. It looks like it’s been cut together as a best-we-can-do job after a bunch of shots either weren’t filmed or got screwed up.

But we do at last get to see some aswangs - and what a disappointment. Your aswang is a sort of Filipino vampire thing, a mysterious, fantastical creature of the night, it’s super-long tongue ready to suck the life from any unborn foetus. It’s weird and terrifying. These aswangs are basically pitch-black, ferocious, animalistic men, growling and jumping around and holding their clawed hands up in a scary fashion. Grrrr! I’m an aswang! I’m sorry but they’re about as scary as the Pathetic Sharks in Viz. They’re the Pathetic Aswangs.

According to Joey there are three things we must all know about aswangs, apart from them being so scary and dangerous and all. One is the whole pregnant women schtick, one is that they can’t go underground(?) - which leads to Dex suggesting they dig a trench to protect themselves but by that time they’ve got no spade, Phoebe is in hysterics and Seb is incapacitated after one of the aswangs bit him on the arm when he was up a tree trying to photograph a macaque.

The other thing is... they’re shape-shifters.

Which sounds great but, as might be expected by the more cynical viewers, this whole shape-shifting thing is largely irrelevant and not really featured to any great degree. There is one short sequence on the beach when a couple of aswangs are portrayed by a pair of alsatian dogs and there is the climax when a whole bunch of them suddenly sprout bat-wings and soar off like so many flying monkeys to their tree-top eyrie. That’s pretty much your lot.

I won’t spoil the film by describing who survives or how (or why) or the rather curious epilogue which is probably meant to be unsettling and unnerving but just comes across as unclear and undecided. I’ll just observe that the movie takes a very, very long time to get going and, when it does, it falls apart. A big disappointment.

Writer-director Terence Daw has a track record on some of British TV’s blandest and dullest series: Heartbeat, Emmerdale, The Bill. To be fair, the guy’s got to earn a living and not everyone can direct Doctor Who (and until that came back, there simply wasn’t anything interesting or exciting being made in the UK). But this lack of experience in the fantastique shows itself in Surviving Evil where, as mentioned, the character stuff is fine but the action-horror stuff just doesn’t work. Daw has also directed kids shows, arts shows, documentaries and a Ravi Shankar concert film.

His self-penned biography on IMDB mentions a whole bunch of feature scripts that he has written and sold. I actually feel quite sorry for the guy because he clearly had high hopes for Surviving Evil and maybe saw it as a route out of soap opera purgatory. Maybe he can still make it.

Among the small army of executive producer are several who worked on Book of Blood and/or Chemical Wedding. DP Mike Downie is one of South Africa’s most prolific cinematographers with credits ranging from Boer War documentaries to the Johannesburg version of Pop Idol, plus loads of feature films, shorts and TV (including season one of Ed Naha’s series The Adventures of Sinbad).

Tom Kane, who shares music credit with Colin Baldry, has a couple of interesting British horror shorts on his CV include E’gad Zombies! and a version of The Tell Tale Heart. Editor Adam Recht cut that weird 2006 BBC version of Dracula plus episodes of Bonekickers, Primeval, Hex and the Prisoner remake. Brendan Lonergan (Blood + Roses) designed the creatures.

Released theatrically in South Africa, Surviving Evil had a token UK theatrical release in one cinema in Manchester (probably a contractual requirement). It played successfully in the Philipines. But then it would, wouldn’t it.

I really, really wanted to enjoy Surviving Evil more than I did. It’s a British aswang film ferchrissake! But it didn’t grip me, it didn’t scare me and, while the characters are well-rounded and sympathetic, I wanted to come out of the cinema whistling the monsters. And I didn’t.

MJS rating: C

Review originally posted  29th March 2010

Headhunter

Director: Frank Schaeffer
Writer: 'Len Spinelli'
Producer: 'Jay Davidson'
Cast: Wayne Crawford, Kay Lenz, John Fatooh
Country: USA/South Africa
Year of release: 1989
Reviewed from: UK VHS

Headhunter doesn’t have any big name stars, it doesn’t feature an iconic monster, it emerged at the tail-end of the 1980s video boom. No wonder I’ve never heard of it. But that’s what I love - finding an old tape on a market stall and seeing what it’s like.

First off, I must give props (as the young people say) to whoever wrote the sleeve blurb: “Terror slowly grips the city of Boston...” Erm, the entire film is set in Miami, a fact which is mentioned frequently throughout the 90 minutes. Anyway...

What we have here is a police procedural. Detective Pete Giuliani (Jake Speed himself, Wayne Crawford - director of The Evil Below and Snake Island) has been thrown out by his wife (June Chadwick: Jeanine in This is Spinal Tap, Lydia in V, also in Forbidden World) in favour of her lesbian lover (Helen Kriel, who wrote the 1996 movie Kama Sutra!) and takes up residence on the couch of his police partner, Detective Kat Hall (David Cassidy’s ex-wife Kay Lenz: House, Prisoners of the Lost Universe) who is divorced and is currently an item with a tall, handsome cop named Roger (John Fatooh, a former competitive cyclist whose claim to fame is playing a prison guard in a couple of episodes of Days of Our Lives).

Giuliani and Hall are assigned to investigate a series of gruesome murders among the city’s small Nigerian community. “They’re just negroes,” says their racist boss (Steve Kanaly: Pumpkinhead II and a regular on Dallas), “and they’re not even our negroes.” They also get routinely mocked by a snide blonde cop played by Ted Le Platt (Terminator Woman, Project Shadowchaser II, The Mangler, Cyborg Cop II)

The bodies are decapitated, but there’s no sign of a struggle or forced entry. An African Shaman named Samuel Juru (Sam Williams: Shaka Zulu) seems to know what’s going on, but when Giuliani follows him into a meat-packing plant, there’s no sign of him and then something throws the detective out of a window (into a convenient skip). An answerphone message from Giuliani turns out to be a fake when it lures Hall to old railway sidings where she is chased by costumed African dancers chanting and waving flaming torches.

After Juru is also slain, the cops break into his house and find a book by a white academic expert on African mythology, Robert Sinclair (Gordon Mulholland: Cold Harvest) who tells them that dismembering the monster is the only way to defeat it. When Giuliani finds that his wife, seeking reconciliation, is actually a shape-shifting African demon, he races off to the nearest hardware store, gets there moments before the owner locks up and impulse buys the first chainsaw he can find, which conveniently has petrol in it. Then he races back to Hall’s house where she is waiting for Roger to return with a Chinese meal. Except of course it’s not Roger, it’s the demon (which has a name that I couldn’t make out).

I must pause briefly here to applaud one of the most sensible things I have ever seen anyone do with a chainsaw in a horror film. Seeking entry to Hall’s home, Giuliani attacks the locked front door. But rather than just smashing randomly or attempting to cut a hole big enough to climb through, he saws a short diagonal line above the lock, another below it to make a triangle, then kicks the door open. This is the quickest and most efficient way of opening a locked door using only a power tool. Well done sir!

The film climaxes with Hall and Giuliani hacking away at the demon in the back garden, cutting off first one arm, then another arm, resisting the urge to shout “’Tis but a scratch!” and then decapitating the beast. The racist police captain, who has all along poured scorn on the idea that they were dealing with a supernatural killer, arrives and sees precisely what has been doing the killing.

And that, apart from a prologue and brief epilogue set in Africa (without any of the main characters) is pretty much it.

Headhunter isn’t bad, truth be told. It’s different, it’s quite exciting and the central duo make likeable leads, even if there is a little too much of the soap opera stuff, especially at the start. It also scores kudos points for intercutting the final fight with the film that is showing, unwatched, on Hall’s TV: The Hideous Sun Demon. The plot is a tad fuzzy, not least in that although there is some talk of the demon having followed the Nigerian refugees to the USA, there is no indication of how it got there nor of why it was chasing them in the first place. Apart from Sinclair, most of the other victims - and the African villagers in the prologue - seem to have actually summoned the demon, so it’s sort of their own fault. Also, as this was - stock shots of Miami aside - filmed in South Africa, the black folk in the African scenes looked only slightly more Nigerian than me or you. As they carry their cowhide shields and asagais around their kraal, you can’t help adopting a mental voice like Michael Caine and thinking: “Zulus - ’undreds of ’em.”

The whole shapeshifting thing, which in retrospect explains the scene where Giuliani follows Juru into the meat warehouse, is never really explored, and we also have to wonder whether the demon they fight at the end has already killed Roger or was Roger all along. We know he killed the wife and her lover because we saw them dead, but why does the demon remain in the shapely form of June Chadwick, then shortly afterwards decide to abandon John Fatooh’s fizzog for the scary monster face depicted on the video sleeve? To add to the confusion, Fatooh is credited on screen with playing both Roger and the ‘Headhunter’. Sympathetic leads, some nice handheld camera work and a genuine sense of mystery compensate for the vague storyline, although another demerit must be counted for the demon attacks which start with a speeded-up POV rush and then tend to rely on fast cutting between static shots done at odd angles plus discordant stings on the soundtrack.

Swiss-born director Francis Schaeffer is the son of another Francis Schaeffer, who was a well-known evangelist apparently. Schaeffer Jr has written several books, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as plenty of journalism. He is also - or at least has been at one time - an artist and a documentary maker. His other films, all made between 1986 and 1991, are sci-fi actioners Rebel Storm (which also featured Crawford, Chadwick, Kriel and Mulholland) and Wired to Kill/Booby Trap plus, oddly, knockabout comedy Baby on Board.

The Inaccurate Movie Database credits the screenplay to ‘Len Spinell’ who ‘also wrote’ Quiet Thunder (which also starred Crawford and Chadwick!). In fact the credit is ‘Len Spinelli’ but I believe that to be a pseudonym - and here’s why: the credit block on the front of the video sleeve says the screenplay is by Andrew Lane and Wayne Crawford. Granted, this could be written by the same person who wrote the blurb on the back about the film being set in Boston, but I certainly put more store in a video sleeve credit block than the man-in-a-pub vagaries of the IMDB.

The only company logo in the on-screen credits is Gibraltar Releasing Corporation but the credit block reads ‘Crawford/Lane Productions and Gibraltar Releasing Organization (sic) present...’ Lane and Crawford worked together on eleven films in total (twelve if we count this one) including Jake Speed, Night of the Comet and Servants of Twilight.

The credit block lists three producers: Lane, Crawford and William Fay who started off on little indies like The Supernaturals and Hollywood Vice Squad but progressed to executive producing the likes of Independence Day and Superman Returns! The on-screen credits however list only one producer: Jay Davidson (Rebel Storm), possibly another pseudonym. Both sources agree that Joel Levine was executive producer. One thing the credit block doesn’t list, oddly, is a director!

There’s also an associate producer, one Barrie Saint Claire (executive producer of Zulu Dawn) who not only doubles as production supervisor - and makes a cameo appearance as a desk sergeant - but also roped in most of his family: Sheilagh Saint Clair was production co-ordinator and Nick Saint Clair was production accountant.

Cinematographer Hans Kuhle also lit Laser Mission and Gor (and a recent South Africa-set version of Othello). The music is by Julian Laxton (The Evil Below, Quiet Thunder) and the editor is Robert Simpson (no relation) who is assuredly not the same Robert Simpson who cut South Pacific and the 1939 Basil Rathbone Hound of the Baskervilles, despite what the IMDB says. Elaine Alexander and Kevin Brennan receive credit for ‘special effects make-up’; their company is called Max FX and is particularly highly regarded for their realistic ape suits, used in films such as Dunston Checks In.

I quite enjoyed Headhunter (or Head Hunter as a recent UK DVD release with completely misleading cover art incorrectly calls it). Not a classic, but a pleasant way to pass an hour and a half.

MJS rating: B-
review originally posted 6th December 2006

Cyborg Cop III

Director: Yossi Wein
Writers: Jeff Albert, Dennis Dimster Denk
Producer: Danny Lerner
Cast: Frank Zagarino, Bryan Genesse, Jennifer Miller, Ian Roberts
Year of release: 1995
Country: USA/South Africa
Reviewed from: UK video

Released in the States under the gloriously generic title Terminal Impact, this has no connection whatsoever with Cyborg Cop I or II (except that, curiously, films II and III are both set in Iowa - all three were actually filmed in South Africa). There is a genealogy of sorts though as Joseph ‘Yossi’ Wein, cinematographer on the first two movies, steps up to the director’s chair for this one.

In place of David Bradley, we have Frank Zagarino (Project: Shadowchaser; whom I interviewed in 1998) and Bryan Genesse (Project: Shadowchaser II; whom I’ve never met) as Saint and Max, a couple of Federal Marshals. This means that, as with Parts I and II, not only are the cop(s) not cyborg(s), they aren’t even strictly cop(s)! They get mixed up with TV reporter Evelyn (Miller: Shark Attack) who has witnessed the unstoppable terror of the killer cyborgs created by evil businessman Sheen (Roberts: Cry, the Beloved Country) in nefarious experiments on unwitting students - although not as closely as her (late) cameraman.

She has stolen a vital part of the controlling computer, without which the cyborgs will cease to function in 28 hours so Sheen and his cybernetic goons are out to get her. Eschewing the openly robotic limbs of the previous films’ cyborgs, these ones have chips implanted in them and a sort of self-healing skin. It doesn’t actually make any sense whatsoever but it does mean that when our heroes give the bad guys a good kickboxing, they get up for more. And I guess that’s what’s important.

Zagarino and Genesse make a likable couple of heroes - the former plays Sensible Stickler for Rules, the latter is Loose Cannon with Eye for the Ladies. And Roberts steals the movie as the sort of well-bred psycho who was so missing from Part II. Wein’s direction is fine and the script is still a cut above the standard for KCMs (kickboxing cyborg movies). However, it must be said that, for the greater part of this movie, the cyborgs are merely a McGuffin to create a chase scenario. Only in the final battle in a convenient junkyard does their invulnerability become relevant.

MJS rating: C-
review originally posted before November 2010

Cyborg Cop II

Director: Sam Firstenberg
Writer: John Stevens
Producer: Danny Lerner
Cast: David Bradley, Morgan Hunter, Jill Pierce
Year of release: 1994
Country: USA/South Africa
Reviewed from: UK video (Columbia Tristar)

The second adventure for rogue cop Jack Ryan (Bradley) isn’t nearly as satisfying as the first, and the only attempt at continuity is Ryan’s adopted son, Frankie. This time out, the cyborg in question starts as Jesse Starkraven (Hunter), a murderous crime lord who kills Ryan’s partner but is then sprung from Death Row by a covert government organisation, the Anti-Terrorist Group. Starkraven (rechristened ‘Spartacus’) is one of five killers turned into cyborgs for nefarious military purposes, who escape their lab and hole up in a cyborg development facility in Iowa, which is disguised as a power station. Their plan is to increase their number and eventually subjugate humanity - very ambitious. But Jack Ryan is on their trail.

Despite plenty of huge explosions and some well-done fist- and gun-fights, the sequel just doesn’t have the charm of the original. John Stevens’ script (from a story by director Firstenberg) is reasonable and, combined with Bradley’s performance, keeps the character of Ryan consistent. He’s a likable and charismatic action hero. The female lead is the deputy director of the ATG, Liz McDowell (Pierce) but she teams up with Ryan too late for any real chemistry to develop.

Cyborg Cop II misses the exotic locale of the first film (both were shot in South Africa) and it misses the camp villainy of John Rhys-Davies. It’s mainly saved by Bradley - in a subgenre where a World Kickboxing Association belt is often deemed more important than acting ability, he’s a real treasure. Of course, there is no actual cyborg cop in Cyborg Cop II, which in America had the more relevant title Cyborg Soldier. On both sides of the Atlantic, the video sleeve actually showed the cyborg from the first film!

The completely unconnected Cyborg Cop III followed a year later.

MJS rating: C
review originally posted before November 2004

Cyborg Cop

Director: Sam Firstenberg
Writer: Greg Latter
Producer: Danny Lerner
Cast: David Bradley, Todd Jensen, John Rhys-Davies, Alonna Shaw
Year of release: 1993
Country: USA/UK/South Africa
Reviewed from: UK video (Medusa)

Cyborg Cop is one of the all-time great straight to video action flicks. Bradley and Jensen (who I once met on the set of Breeders) are brothers - and DEA partners - Philip and Jack Ryan (no, not that Jack Ryan). When Jack shoots dead the son of a newspaper baron in a hostage situation, he’s pilloried in the press and forced to retire. Then his brother disappears in a botched raid on a drug baron’s Caribbean operation and so Jack goes in to look for him.

Turns out that drug king Kessel (Sliders’ Rhys-Davies, with a bizarre accent that sounds like Daphne’s in Frasier!) is using his profits to develop cyborgs. He already has one prototype (hulking Rufus Swart from the delirious Space Mutiny) which he plans to sell to a revolutionary plot to bring down the country’s President, and is converting Philip into the next version.

Jack teams up with spunky reporter Cathy (Shaw), comes into conflict with the island’s bent cops, and eventually faces off against Kessel having killed enormous numbers of his local goons. Philip, still unfinished according to mad, German-accented scientist Dr Stechman (Robert Whitehead) recognises his brother and fights with, instead of against him.

Unfortunately, despite plenty of gunfire, explosions, punches and kicks, the long-awaited cyborg-vs-cyborg denouement is frustratingly brief and unexciting. But Cyborg Cop is nevertheless great fun for anyone looking for mindless sci-fi action. Production values - including some effects by Steve Painter - are on the whole good, direction is slick, and the script (by actor Greg Latter) is well-written, especially the early confrontational scenes between Jack and Cathy. The ever-reliable Rhys-Davies carries his rather eccentric role off with aplomb, providing a few laughs and even a hint of a gay subtext!

Despite the title, this has no connection with, or aspirations to be, RoboCop: that was a cop, although he wasn’t a robot, he was a cyborg; this is a cyborg but he’s an ex-cop! Cyborg Cop is a very enjoyable way to pass 93 minutes, definitely a cut above most SF action flicks, without straying from the enjoyable cheesy elements that characterise the genre.

In accordance with tradition, the blurb on the video sleeve bears little resemblance to the actual plot and also manages to spell Alonna Shaw’s name wrong. Bradley returned as Jack Ryan in Cyborg Cop II.

MJS rating: B+
review originally posted before November 2004