Update

I’ll just come right out and say it.. I’ve been too drunk to write any reviews since Doomsday. For any kiddies reading, this is NOT as cool as it sounds.

However, I do have plenty of half finished ramblings pending completion. Namely for Brain Damage, Teeth, Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes, Chinese Torture Chamber Story, Evil Aliens, Five Across The Eyes, Insecticidal and Bikini Bloodbath.

So there’s a lot of content to come, if I can detox the fuzz from my brain and sit still for long enough to type anything longer than this post right here..

Doomsday

I honestly can’t decide where to start summing up my feelings on Doomsday, it left me THAT confused :/

In theory I should have spazzed out over the film; its helmed by homegrown Horror genius Neil Marshall, it has the B-grade quality of an early John Carpenter flick, it drops shameless references to Aliens, has the cast of The Road Warrior as baddies, and the plot is torn straight out of one of my all time favourites, Escape From New York (It even uses the same font for the credits).

So what the hell went wrong?

The main problem is, I’m sure, that Marshall fails entirely at putting his own mark on his film. I can handle blatant plagiarism if the director presents it with the right feeling of excitement and flair, neither of which Doomsday has.

It’s action scenes are bland, thumb-twiddling affairs. There’s none of the explosive joy someone like Michael Bay brings to the screen, none of the balletic operatics of John Woo, nor is there anything as over the top and stylised as the average Luc Besson produced actioner.

In fact most of the so-called action comes in the form of lazily choreographed fights between the heroine (Rhona Mitra’s cardboard cut-out commando) and various uninteresting foes. All of which feel like scenes that were left on the cutting room floor of the Resident Evil: Apocalypse set, picked up by Marshall and re-shot, badly, with someone who was afraid of doing their own stunt work.

Equally frustrating is Malcom McDowell. Considering the main plot motivation is finding his character, it makes little sense to have him come and go within 10 minutes of screentime. Even less sense when the film spends this screentime trying to change itself into Army Of Darkness minus Deadites.

That said, the worst thing about Doomsday, the thing that really upsets me, is that you can tell Marshall is really trying his hardest to make a British action-trash cult classic. His heart is in the right place but he’s definitely picked the wrong genre to attack with his much anticipated third feature.

I’ll now be kind enough to end this section on a positive note, that being the soundtrack; If there’s one truly favourable thing I can say about Doomsday, its that it’s probably the only action flick you’ll ever see with both Siouxsie And The Banshees and Frankie Goes To Hollywood accompanying important scenes!

Yes yes! If Marshall has anything over the glossy US crowd its the balls to not water his films violence down. Doomsday is mercifully free of the PG13/12A curse, as exampled by exploding heads, various hacked off limbs, and a few gallons of freely spraying crimson. And if you’re an animal lover then beware, for not even cute fluffy bunnies are safe from hideous deaths..

Only a chainsaw cameo, but a cameo is better than nothing. There’s swords, longbows and flying death discs (They probably have a more technical name than that..) aplenty to make up for it.

The Signal

"Anna, I need a couple things that Ken borrowed, namely my hatchet... and some garbage bags."

No matter how many times I see it on screen, there will always be something immensely satisfying in watching a big city tear itself apart. The apocalypse, be it caused by zombies or plague ridden vampires, is big horror business, so its both admirable and impressive that The Signal succeeds in telling its story in a way completely unlike any of the works it’s immediately comparable to (28 Days Later and Stephen Kings Cell for example).

Perhaps its because The Signal focuses on its well rounded cast of characters rather than the end of the world itself. Keeping the chaos in the background, at most using it as a device to spark off each of its three interlinked acts.. or perhaps its just because its incredible fun!

One thing for sure it that this is no anthology film, even with each act helmed by its own director and carrying a distinctly standalone feel.

The story that ties the three acts together is a simple one; a mysterious signal broadcast simultaneously through televisions, radios and phones causes the population of the fictional city of Terminus to become at best delusional, and at worst (more often it’s the worst) psycho killers.

In the midst of the carnage that ensues, Maya attempts to reach Terminal 13 to meet her illicit lover Ben and flee the city. Unfortunately her husband Lewis, most definitely affected by the craze inducing signal, is hot on her tail.

Beginning with an attention grabbing and grindhouse worthy pre-credits sequence, The Signal quickly moves into its first act. A solid and chaotic horror documenting the first day and night of Terminus under the looming shadow of mass psychosis.

When the second act begins some 35 minutes later, it changes the tone entirely.. this act plays out like a bizarre late night sitcom, as the jealous Lewis takes ‘refuge’ at the apartment of a couple planning a New Years party. As guests bizarrely begin showing up with no knowledge of the wider events in the city, Lewis, Clark and Anna are forced to try and cover up their mounting pile of bodies.

The humour here is offbeat and genuinely funny. The cast of unknowns miraculously carry it off just as well, if not better, than the full on horror before it.

Soon the self-parodying humour dissipates though, until all that’s left is Lewis’s insane delusions. Which cues the third act in nicely. Upping the gore and mixing up the elements of the first two acts, this part of the film builds into a flurry of bloody gags, bleakly perfect dark comic timing and a surprisingly effective ending.

It’s rare for me to find a modern Horror film that I feel gets everything right, yet The Signal accomplishes that feat with aplomb. No element is pushed aside in favour of another, with equally detailed measures given to the script, effects, sound design etc. In fact the most impressive thing is how its myriad of opposing elements pull together to create a whole.

The Signal is a dangerous gamble that really shouldn’t work and yet somehow does.. I enthusiastically applaud everyone involved!

While you won’t find anything extreme here there’s certainly no lack of the red stuff spraying about the place. With some decapitations, holes drilled through arms and legs and a truckload of faces beaten to a pulp. Hurrah!

YES! Its only on screen for a split second though, so its more of a chainsaw cameo. The rest of the action is split between knives, power drills, baseball bats, sledgehammers and a canister of bug spray (apparently a LOT of death can be caused by a canister of bug spray!).

[Rec]

"We have to tape everything, Pablo. For fuck's sake."

While Cloverfield and Diary Of The Dead are busy sparring for recognition as the years best Cannibal Holocaust/Blair Witch knock off, a much lower budget contender has sneaked up behind them and threatened to snatch the crown away.

That contender is [Rec], a slice of faux-documentary zombie horror served Spanish style that manages to out nerve jangle its better known brethren at nearly every turn. [Rec] takes its action out of the streets and into the confines of a quarantined apartment block, where it plays out its story with far more conviction to its acting, script and shooting methods than most.

Whether going for franticly sweaty action or close-quarters terror, everything in [Rec] feels organic and punchy. Its as if you were watching it unfold live, rather than sitting down in the comfort of a staged series of events.. a world apart from the disastrously forced ham of The Zombie Diaries.

The story itself is fairly typical, regardless of how well its handled. Playing out like a mix of Right At Your Door and recent After Dark release Mulberry Street, via the claustrophobia of The Thing.

For just over an hour this combination works fine, then events begin to hurtle towards their inevitable climax. I’ve often said that an average film can be lifted to greatness by its closing act, a trick that [Rec] pulls off admirably.

No sooner has a brief tumble into X-Files territory (Exposition time! In the classic form of newspaper articles pinned to the wall and a reel to reel tape recorder..) threatened to sink the ship than directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza are nailing you to your seat with a night-vision sequence that easily tops the shredding terror of Clarice Starlings Silence Of The Lambs ordeal.

My advice is to catch this as soon as you can, preferably before the seemingly shot for shot US remake gets its release later in the year (Surely this must be a record for shortest time elapsed between original and remake? ..this review is certainly a record for name-dropping..)

If you found the sloth victim from Seven arousing then there’s some definite action to be found here. Otherwise don’t get your hopes up, perve.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say [Rec] ever gets bloody, it boasts some VERY sturdy make-up and doesn’t shy away from getting in close to the gritty flesh eating action.

No, AGAIN! If this keeps up I’m gonna start having withdrawal symptoms.. anyone want to let me know of a film with some heavy chainsaw action that I can check out? Pretty please :P

Diary Of The Dead

"Are we really worth saving? You tell me."

For me, a new Romero film is a lot like the common cold; there’s nothing I can do to stop it manifesting itself and my God how I wish it would just go away.

In my not so humble opinion Night Of The Living Dead is the only work in his zombie canon that deserves anything but bargain bin recognition; I’ll die happily if I never have to sit through the atrocities that are Dawn, Day and Land ever again.

That said, I STILL went to see Diary Of The Dead, didn’t I.. *sighs*

For this fifth instalment Romero delivers both his weakest film and one of the most unconvincing takes on the shaky-cam directing method yet. Presented as a documentary edited together by the films survivors (From sources including CCTV footage and professional equipment) Diary comes out too sleek and glossy, too well staged, and most distractingly, too obviously acted to prove effective.

At no point did I feel I was immersed in either the setting or the blander than bland characters (Only Jason, the director, manages to offset being bland.. mainly by being an unlikable cunt who’d rather watch his friends mangled than put his camera down to help), none of whom once display a half-convincing emotion or deliver a line that doesn’t sound like its being read from a cue card.

Other than the undead, a common presence in Romero’s works has been his social commentaries, of which Diary represents something of a crescendo. Romero has never been a subtle director, choosing to take the most obvious of current issues and hammer them into the audience with all the subtlety of a bulldozer ploughing through a greenhouse.

Diary sets its sights on our information addicted MySpace culture, a world where blogs are like smack, and instead of shooting things with guns we shoot them with cameras.. or something equally as wanky and pretentious.

The problem is that Diary, more so than any of his previous films, treats its audience like idiots. It’s like listening to 90 minutes of the narration from the theatrical issue of Blade Runner, spelling everything out vocally just to MAKE SURE we’re getting it.

Compare this to Cloverfield which convincingly portrayed normal people in incredible circumstances whilst seamlessly tackling the media whoring YouTubers, and Diary begins to look even more stale.

Not a flash to be seen. This is a deep film here folks, no room for nudity...

Unimaginative at best, where as Land was almost salvaged by some incredible gore work, Diary seems to be shit out of ideas. Maybe that’s why it resorted to using such cheap computer graphics for its kills?

No, but a defibrillator gets used to blow a zombies eyes out of its head, which is gallows humour funny. There’s also a bow and arrow, my personal favourite piece of headshot weaponry (maybe its my English heritage showing through? :P). Shame about the CG arrows though..

The Cottage

The last few years have seen something of a renewed interest in British horror, with releases like Shaun Of The Dead and The Descent almost single handedly clawing us back international respect.

Where as Shaun was a successful attempt at mixing a typical Channel 4 show with the gore and archetypes of a genre pic, Paul Andrew Williams kidnapping gone wrong pic The Cottage is the very worst abnormality that partnership could ever hope to conceive.

A film with so few redeeming features it actually makes you sad to be alive. The Cottage exists solely to cash in on the current trends for both Brit and Comedy Horror, though its attempts at either are numbingly piss poor. Its even desperate enough to use the stepping on a rake gag for fuck sake! Something that’s only got less funny since the days of silent cinema.

In a more ‘modern homage’ (read; lack of original material) it cheaply restages the bear trap scene from Christopher Smiths Severence. Isn’t there a law stating you have to wait at least half a decade before stealing shot by shot material? Because there should be.

Uh-uh. Not only did I have to put up with listening to that scouse harpy Jennifer Ellison run her mouth off in a parody of acting, she never had the decency to lose even one layer of clothing.. major fail.

Demises are few and far between, with too many handled off camera. What we do see is about on par gore wise with the aforementioned Severence; its not gratuitous but its well done with practical effects.

You do also get to bask in the glory that is Ellison getting her face sliced in two with a shovel, which nearly makes the film worth seeing alone.. in fact go rent it out and watch that scene on repeat for 90minutes.

Shovels, moths and assorted farming equipment are all that’s in this films tool shed. Villainously deformed killers have no sense of style these days *sighs*

Zombie Strippers

"Death is good."

Okay I’ll admit it, as hyped as I was to see it, a film called Zombie Strippers isn’t ever going to arouse much anticipation or interest among the regular movie going public. And that’s a terrible shame, because those box office blinkered cinema patrons are missing out on what is easily the most enjoyable experience I’ve had with a new release since the campy splatter of Rodriguez’s Planet Terror.

In fact, after finally watching Zombie Strippers, I find myself wishing that director Jay Lee had been given Tarantino’s Death Proof budget back in 2006 and told to make that second Grindhouse feature in his place.

The very best thing I can say about Jay Lee’s follow up to what I personally thought was a promising debut (The Slaughter) is that it delivers tenfold on the promise of its title. You want zombies? You want strippers? You’ll get them both in quantity (and considering the recent disappointment I had with Bikini Bloodbath and Ninja Cheerleaders, actually delivering on the films title is a big plus).

Not content with only delivering exploitative gore and nudity, Jay Lee hones his script (in a way far improved from his debut) to include jokes about Nietzsche and various other philisophical and political figures. Hell, even the films base plot is a take on Eugène Ionesco's absurdist work Rhinoceros!

That’s really just icing on a cake though, an extra layer of referential humour that’s welcome but not entirely necessary. Much in the same way as Shaun Of The Dead appealed to non-Spaced fans, you don’t HAVE to be self-important and pretentious to enjoy what Zombie Strippers offers.

And what it offers is 90 minutes of high camp courtesy of ham Horror king Robert Englund, porn Queen supreme Jenna Jameson (whose non-stripping performance is, surprisingly, pretty good), and a bevy of assorted decomposing beauties that would’ve made Ed Wood (see his thankfully overlooked 1965 film Orgy Of The Dead) cream his shorts.

Oh golly gee, where to start!? The film takes about 15minutes to get to the Englund owned strip joint Rhinos, after which you can expect a gratuitous display of flesh every other second as the still warm girls declare war on their increasingly popular and rotting rivals.

In true reanimated nature, the zombie strippers themselves get a little more ‘dead’ looking with each performance, so if you’re into clammy broken skin and sullen eyes then this is SO the picture for you!

A bit of a mixed bag really. While there’s definitely no shortage of gore, the quality varies between sturdy make-up work (there’s a brilliantly Hatchet-esque head ripping scene) and decidedly unimpressive CG. It’s easier to endure the less quality shots than it is in most pictures (Day Of The Dead 2008 anyone?) because of the general atmosphere of cheese though.. and hey this IS a film where Jenna Jameson blows a guys head off by firing a pool ball from her vagina, so literally ANYTHING else can be forgiven. Fact.