Review - The Offence (1972)

Although not strictly a horror film, Sidney Lumet’s The Offence is one of the grimmest, most horrific films made in the early part of the 70s. An unflinching study of the thin line between the criminals and those who are paid to think like them (I mean the police), it is a film which takes the viewer on a particularly dark journey.
It is also a film which shows that star Sean Connery could actually act – for a generation brought up on watching him sleepwalk through playing James Bond and portraying grizzled old men from all over Europe (but with a Scottish accent) in big budget cameos, this is an astonishing sight. The nearest I had ever seen to a believable performance from the man before watching this was when he got shot to pieces in the middle of The Untouchables. In fact Connery was the driving force behind The Offence – in order to get him back into the Bond saddle after George “The Big Fry-Up” Lazenby’s attempt at the role, the makers had to green-light a low budget police procedural for him to star in. And given the chance to shine, Connery certainly pulls out all the stops.
The film focuses on the actions of one man – Sergeant Johnson (Connery), a big, bruising, old-school copper. The town where he works is being terrorised by a child murderer – three children have already died and the police have no idea who they are looking for. As the police watch frantic parents picking up their children from outside school, a little girl called Janie ignores the warnings and goes off on her own. A middle aged woman sees her talking to a man in the distance, and the next thing we know, Janie has been reported missing. The police immediately start a torchlight search across the common, and (surprisingly) Janie is found, abused but alive, by Johnson. Now things are personal for the Sergeant, and when a suspect is found and brought in he asks to be in on the interview.
The officer conducting the case, Cameron (Peter Bowles) is a modern (for 1971) policeman, and wants to let the suspect “sweat” for a while. But sensing an opportunity going to waste, Johnson manages to get time on his own with the man he is convinced is a child murderer. The burly policeman snaps and starts laying into the suspect, who, covered in blood, refuses to stop laughing. By the time Johnson has finished, the suspect is nearly dead.
This is the offence that gives the film its title, seen in flash-forward at the beginning of the movie, as in silent slow motion the police officers outside the interview room realise that something is wrong and rush to stop the beating.
Johnson is immediately suspended, and as he drives home, visions of dead people crowd into his vision – a hanging corpse, a naked woman tied to a bed, a child dead in a cot, a woman lying in bed with a gaping gunshot wound. At home he cracks and tells his wife of all the death he has seen during his career, downing scotch after scotch as he does so. There is a knock at the door and Cameron and another officer enter – the suspect has died, and Johnson must come back to the station.
The police officer who has dedicated his life to solving crime is now a murderer, and Detective Superintendent Cartwright (Trevor Howard) arrives to conduct the interview. Cartwright is another old school policeman, well aware of the problems Johnson is operating under. Years of thinking like a killer have taken their toll, and Johnson has even begun to fantasise that it was him who was responsible for the attack on Janie (“What’s happening to me?”). As battle between the two heavyweights ensues, Cartwright tells him: “At the end of the day, shut them away. Lock the drawer. You have to accept that you’re two people.”
But by the end of the interview, the Superintendent, who seemed quite sympathetic to Johnson’s predicament at the beginning, has made his feelings quite clear: “It makes me sick, Johnson, what you did. What you are turns my stomach.”
The Sergeant is led away, and the final piece of the jigsaw falls into place – policeman and suspect were the same, both filled with self loathing over what they were capable of doing. Before administering the final blow, Johnson asked his victim: “What are you frightened of?” to which there was just a one word answer.
“You.”
The Offence is a brilliant, if slightly hysterical, piece of psychological drama. The fractured timeline allows perceptions to change, and then change again as more information is made available to the viewer. But it’s not just about the funky visuals (much of the flashbacks are obscured by a strange white orb, which turns out to be the lightbulb which oversees the whole attack) or the powerhouse performances (Ian Bannen as suspect Kenneth Baxter manages to put in a twitchy, seedy performance which, even in the brief moments he’s allowed on-screen, manages to steal the film from his more heavyweight colleagues). The film is also a pin sharp document of the times – showing the groovy 60s turning into the grim 70s, with Sergeant Johnson an anachronism no longer wanted in the Force, an out-of-date thief taker who looks hopelessly out of place in the gleaming new (half finished) police station where the bulk of the action takes place. He’s an old fashioned policeman who cannot cope with the demands the modern world is putting on him, and for whom time was up a long time before he raised his fists to a suspected paedophile.

Review - Night Must Fall (1964)

The late 60s and early 70s saw the introduction of a new kind of menace to the cinema screen – the pretty-boy psychopath. They were everywhere – Twisted Nerve, Endless Night, The Road Builder, Straight On Til Morning, Blind Terror, you name it, if it had a wide-eyed, long haired, girlish-looking bloke in it, the chances are you’d found your murderer/pervert/murderous pervert. It was as if the sexual revolution had thrown up a new kind of bogeyman – the young lad who can get sex whenever he wants it, so sex has no longer become a goal. He’s looking for a new kind of thrill, and he might be dating your daughter.
Night Must Fall is one of the first examples of such a tale, with Albert Finney taking his disaffected character from Saturday Night And Sunday Morning and tweaking his problems and neuroses up to 11. Without Finney’s astonishing performance, Night Must Fall would be a much duller affair. His character, Danny, is an astonishing example of an eight year old boy trapped in a burly man’s body – all nervous energy and violent mood swings, desperate to be the centre of attention and determined not to let anyone spoil his fun.
But unlike the later films, there’s no ambiguity in this film, no whodunit. In the first few minutes, as we see potential victim Olivia Brunstrom (Susan Hampshire) enjoying her soon-to-be-disrupted idyllic life as she flounces around a sun-drenched garden in a floaty frock, there’s Danny (Finney), busy bludgeoning an unseen someone to death and throwing the body into a nearby pond.
Olivia lives a strange, detached life with her disabled, wheelchair-bound mother – the pair of them looked after by the maid, Dora (another fragile performance by the wonderful Sheila Hancock). Danny is the unsuspecting Dora’s boyfriend, and on a visit to see her he manages to inveigle his way into the Brunstrom’s home, charming the mother (or “Mrs Jam-Spoon”, as he christens her) into giving him a job as a live-in decorator. He arrives the next day on his scooter, the camera lingering on a hatbox he has strapped to the parcel carrier.
Danny, despite all his boasting, is rubbish at decorating, but Mrs Jam-Spoon doesn’t care. She’s fallen for the boy, hook, line, sinker and copy of Angling Times, and he quickly becomes a permanent fixture. Mrs Jam-Spoon may be in love with him (“You could call me mother,” she tells him, her normally strident voice reduced to a simpering, almost orgasmic plea), but young Danny only has eyes for the gorgeous Olivia. Like Danny, Olivia is a child in an adult’s body after a lifetime of being dominated by her mother, and she has watched, powerless to intervene, as the brash, bullying interloper has taken over the house.
But just as Danny seems to have conquered the entire household, the outside world arrives in the form of Olivia’s boyfriend Derek - a four-square, tweed-jacketed, cricket-playing chap of the first order. Danny’s good mood evaporates as he watches through his attic window as Derek arrive in his sports car and instantly becomes the centre of attention for the two Brunstrom women. His composure goes and he flips out, ending up scratching at the walls of his bedroom with his fingernails, over and over again.  He grabs the hat box, opens it, and mouths the word “hello” before retching and throwing it to one side.
But all is not well between Olivia and Derek, and he leaves. Danny begins his seduction of the newly-single girl, as nearby, the police are seen conducting a search of the pond.
Olivia is now falling for Danny’s rough charms, and she wanders up to his bedroom to find out more about him, rifling through his possessions (which include a strangely spooky glovemakers’ dummy hand and little else) to try and find out more about the new object of her affection. He arrives before she has the chance to look in the hat box and reacts angrily to this intrusion (there’s a remarkable ramping up of the tension as she tries to put the jigsaw-like dummy hand back together again), and thinks look like they’re about to turn nasty, but in the next scene the pair of them are laughing and messing about as he teaches her to ride his scooter. Now Olivia, too, is enamoured with the boy (“I just wanted to know you. I love you, Danny.”), putting him at the centre of a bizarre ménage a quatre. And the police have now dragged the pond, and found the body and the murder weapon…
The police come to question Danny (the dead woman used to frequent a bar where he worked) and the scales begin to fall from Olivia’s eyes as she sees that Danny has been playing everyone off against each other. Heartbroken, she tries to speak to Dora about her suspicions, but the maid has had enough and pushes her away.
Back in the house, there is just Danny and Mrs Jam-Spoon left, and they’re having a game of hide-and-seek. But suddenly the game isn’t funny any more.
Night Must Fall was based on a stageplay, and the film occasionally shows its roots (when Derek arrives you can imagine the way it would have played out on-stage – a tape playing of the sound of a car engine, Danny rushing to the window, the sound of voices, but nothing seen by the audience). It’s more melodrama than outright horror, apart from the closing scenes of Mrs Jam-Spoon wheeling her way around the house, the camera close-up on her face as she begins to panic (“Danny, we’re not playing any more”). But there is much to recommend it. The crisp black-and-white photography is wonderful, and the performances are uniformly excellent. The tension is done well and the feeling of powerlessness as Danny ruins everyone’s lives is palpable. Finney is rightly regarded as a film icon, but when talking about his career there is seldom mention of Night Must Fall, which is a shame, as it really is one of his best performances. Much like Oliver Reed’s, his is a genuinely terrifying screen presence, and it is used to perfection here.

Review - Mother Riley Meets The Vampire (1951)

It’s amazing what passed for “comedy” on these islands before the glory days of the 1960s. Cinema audiences looking for something to take their minds off the powdered egg and rampant tuberculosis had a thin choice - Arthur fucking Askey with his irritating bandy-legged shortarse schtick, or this tit gambolling across the screen dressed as an Irish washerwoman. Try as I might, I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of a world would consider a moaning, rubber-faced bloke with a blanket wrapped round his shoulders to be the height of sophisticated humour. They were grim times, alright.
“Old Mother Riley” was actually a music hall comedian by the name of Arthur Lucan, who made a series of terrible films designed to keep the working classes rolling in the aisles during the post war years. Old Mother Riley had a number of adventures, all of them involving “hilarious” misunderstandings in a similar vein to the Arthur Askey and Will Hay vehicles which were doing the rounds at the same time. The 40s and 50s were lean times for British cinema, with most of the output being consigned to the bin marked “best forgotten”. And Mother Riley Meets The Vampire would have gone the same way, if it wasn’t for the inclusion in its cast of a certain turnip headed old smack addict, whose star had faded to the point of obscurity even then. Yes, rather astonishingly the “vampire” in the title was none other than Bela Lugosi. We all know from Tim Burton’s film Ed Wood that towards the end of his career, cinema’s first Dracula had fallen on hard times, but it takes a cursory viewing of this tripe to realise just how hard those times were. Lugosi gives it all he’s got (which was never a lot), but he can’t hide the pain in his eyes as he hammers the last few nails in the coffin of his long-dead career.
In this film he’s Doctor Van Heussen, a mad scientist nicknamed “The Vampire” by the British press, who spends his time kidnapping young girls (30 before the film has started). And absolutely not connected with this plot strand at all, he also plans to take over the world with an army of robots. So far, he has built… one, which is being shipped over from Ireland.
Meanwhile, Old Mother Riley has just discovered that she has been named heiress in her Uncle Jeremiah’s will, and her inheritance is being shipped over from the Emerald Isle. And to the audience’s horror, we’ve just discovered that this film, which is already beginning to wear out its welcome, is a musical. Yes, even as you scramble for the mute button, everyone in Riley’s shop (including the very young Hattie Jacques and Dandi Nicholls) gives us a rendition of a terrible old singalong with the chorus “I lift up my finger and I say ‘tweet tweet, shush shush, now now, come come’…” (you get the picture).
Of course, thanks to some comedy interference by some sailors, the packages destined for Riley and Van Heussen get switched, and much hilarity ensues. Well, some hilarity. Well, okay, no hilarity ensues. “Vot’s the matter vith me?” splutters Lugosi, as he opens his box to find some old tat. “Haff I gone insane? Vere is my robot? My beautiful robot?”
Putting two and two together, the scientist finds out where the other package went and orders his creation to kidnap Riley. After what seems like hours of running about, the robot fails and ends up getting into a car driven by a drunk (ah, drink driving - a rich mine of laughs which seems to have been overlooked by comedy makers during recent years). Finding out that Riley has a rare blood group, Lugosi then decides to employ her as a housekeeper, Riley immediately discovering that he keeps his kidnapped girls mummified in the basement. The whole thing then deteriorates into an interminable big chase and fight, with Riley, who has run off the call the police, arriving late and missing everything before falling into the sea like a twat.
Some people will tell you that the post war years yielded some neglected and misunderstood gems. This is very true, but Mother Riley Meets The Vampire is not one of them. There is absolutely no reason for sane people to watch this film, apart from morbid curiosity to see Lugosi in the fag-end of his career.

Review - Straight On Till Morning (1972)

Hammer’s horror department spent much of the early 70s experimenting with their formats – they tried transplanting gothic horror into the “modern day” (or a kitsch interpretation of it, anyway) in Dracula AD72, ramped up the sex (ie. added more boobs) in films like Lust For A Vampire and The Vampire Lovers, turned Dracula into a Bond villain in Satanic Rites, and dispensed with all sense of decency and plot with To The Devil… A Daughter. None of which had an effect on their ailing fortunes. But it was a nice try, and made for some astonishing films.
Perhaps their biggest gamble was this little oddity, in which they dispensed with all the ingredients moviegoers wanted from a Hammer horror film, and decided to make a character-driven drama.
Having seen the promotional material for Straight On Till Morning you’d be forgiven for expecting a “pretty boy on the prowl” shocker in the same vein as Twisted Nerve or Endless Night, set in a swinging London full of Carnaby Street types wearing big floppy felt hats, mini skirts and enormous thigh length boots. But it’s not like that. Not really.
Yes, there is the obligatory boutique full of “hip young things” wearing a lot of purple and orange shouting over some VERY LOUD  instrumental music with a lot of wah-wah guitar effects, and a sexy party with a lot of bright young things and James Bolam, but the swinging really is kept to a minimum.
You can tell this is going to be nowhere like a traditional Hammer film from the opening scenes, as Rita Tushingham’s childlike character Brenda announces to her mother that she’s pregnant and off to London. It’s like a mid 60s kitchen sink drama , 10 years too late, complete with “grim oop North” terraced streets and rain-slaked slate roofs.
Brenda, a plain mousey creature in a badly fitting dress, finds a rundown flat in the city, gets a job at the aforementioned boutique (who’s that with the Richard Ashcroft hair, Jimmy Saville specs and Jason King suit? Bloody hell, it’s Tom “Prime Suspect” Bell), and finds a much nicer flat with fellow assistant and “man mad” Sally Thomsett lookalike Caroline (Katya Wyeth). Arriving at her new home mid party, Brenda is immediately told to grab a drink and look for someone to hook up with by her new friend. She sets her sights on fellow boutique employee James Bolam, but is left devastated when a bored Caroline grabs n’ shags him while Brenda’s back is turned.
Out getting a bit of fresh air, she chances on Tinker, a scruffy mutt owned by Peter (Shane Briant, in his first performance on screen and perversely one of his better ones). Peter has already been seen by Brenda twatting around the nearby streets in his white E-type Jag, and she decides that, rather than handing the dog back to his owner, the best thing to do would be to take the creature home with her (ie. steal it), give it a bath and take it round the next day, which she does.
Her reasoning is clear – she’s seen Peter, she likes what she sees in his finely chiseled cheekbones and bouffant blonde locks, and she would like him to be the father of her child. She’s not yet pregnant, you see – that was just a ruse to get her out of oop north and into darn sarf.
But what she doesn’t realise is that behind the bone structure and the curls, Peter is a complete nutjob. After a lifetime of being told how pretty he is, he has grown to hate beauty in all its forms (how this equates with him driving a beautiful sports car is never explained) and likes nothing better than destroying beautiful things with his trusty Stanley knife. This includes a succession of women, whose money he keeps in the kitchen drawer to supplement his louche lifestyle.
He immediately takes to Brenda because she’s a bit of a munter, and asks her to move in with him. If she cooks, cleans and looks after him, he might very well do what she asks and give her one (a child, that is). He asks that he can call her Wendy, and just in case we haven’t picked up on the sledgehammer referencing going on, quotes a line from Peter Pan about his bedroom being “straight on till morning” (aha!).
Brenda does what he asks, and the pair (sans dog, which has been butchered by Peter because of Brenda’s sprucing up) start living their blissful, childlike existence. But it isn’t long before the real world begins to intrude – Brenda has been missed by both her mother and Caroline, and the girl, now pregnant and  totally enamoured of Peter but still unaware of his real raison d’etre, has decided to do a bit of sprucing up on herself…
Straight On Till Morning would, with any other name before the credits, be a functional handsome-young-man-is-a-psycho story amongst the many other being farmed out at the time (as well as the already named, there was See No Evil, The Road Builder, and Night Must Fall). With its funky editing, weird voiceovers and flashback overdrive, it’s a nicely put together, if a tad boring, tale of obsession. The inclusion of Rita Tushingham adds a certain amount of class, but because you’re expecting  a Hammer horror, what you see comes as quite an odd experience. Yes, Hammer had experimented with thrillers before, but this is something very different – a strange little genre hybrid that doesn’t quite work on any level. There’s no blood to be seen (which seems very odd, given the times it was made in), no kitsch 70s-sploitation, not even much gratuitous nudity. Very odd.

Review - Revelation (2001)

Filed strictly  under "I didn't know they made 'em like this any more" banner, Revelation is, sadly, not much of a revelation. Apart from the revelation that films like Revelation still get made. Or the revelation that no-one went to see Revelation, and damned what must have been quite an expensive film to the indignities of bargain basement DVD buckets and late-night showings on BBC1.
That must have been a revelation to the makers, at least.Yep, Revelation is a 21st century film made in the style of all those 70s globe-trotting Euro-pudding horror thrillers (Medusa Touch, Holocaust 2000 et al), with an assortment of mismatched Euro stars interacting with the occasional box office tempting Yank to diminishing returns (literally, in this case).
It's also a bit like a horror version of The Da Vinci Code, with lots of running about, clues to be solved and references to Mary Magdalene. And we all know that one film of The Da Vinci Code was one film too many.
This film lays its cards on the table with a quick scene of Christ on the cross, followed by a load of shenanigans with a box. This box keeps cropping up through the ages, being chased by the Knights Templar (oh no, not them again) and appearing to be led by one and the same man - Euro penis-for-hire Udo "Expose" Kier.
As we move to the present day, we are told that the box is "The Loculus" and Terence Stamp is on the verge of discovering its secrets. Stamp's character, one Lord Martell, has a shady past which has resulted in his son Jake (James D’Arcy) ending up in prison.
But now he's out, and is told by his dad: "We need your expertise with codes... this time it's perfectly legal!"
Martell has set up a team of oddballs to investigate all kinds of cosmic junk, and meanwhile a hippy bloke who also works for him has triangulated his way to Greece, where he immediately gets crucified upside-down by Udo Kier. With the hippy dead, Martell entrusts his work to Jake, passing on a CD ROM and instructions to destroy the Loculus.
As this happens, the ghostly Knights Templar attack Martell's castle and murder everyone inside (apart from Jake and his Jenny Agutter-alike love interest, a hippy chick called Myra) by nailing their burning corpses to doors and skinning Martell alive.
Jake and Myra go on the run across Europe, Jake enlisting the help of his old prison padre, Ray, who just happens to also be an ex para with access to an unlimited supply of guns and ammo (every home should have one).
After checking up on the works of Isaac Newton (played in flashback by Ron "gotta pick a pocket or two" Moody) and finding out that the great man failed to find the secret of the Loculus, they are told by Derek Jacobi to go to France. In France the trail leads  to Malta, then Turkey, where the Loculus is found in a church. But it's empty.In a Raiders Of The Lost Ark moment, Jake shoves the box into a slot in the wall and a sunbeam lights up a spot on the floor. For some reason this leads to Jake and Myra having a quick shag on the floor of the church, then they call on Ray for a bit of help (with the Loculus, not the shagging) and he turns up, suspiciously quickly.
It turns out that the Loculus itself is the important thing, not what it might or might not contain. It is held together with the very nails used to pin old Jesus to the cross, and therefore contain his DNA. Yes! It's the second coming! Or, as Ray puts it: "The age of Aquarius? The age of bollocks!"
He then nicks the Loculus and runs off to the Vatican with it, playing right into the hands of old Udo - who's there to receive it. He wants to mix his own cells with those of Jesus, clone them, and raise the resulting child evil (as you do).
There then follows a lot of mucking around and torture, a but more Raiders Of The Lost Ark sand-trap shenanigans, and when the dust clears Udo has got his child and Myra is pregnant and decided that she is actually Mary Magdalene. Then the whole thing just finishes in a hugely unsatisfactory fashion.
It's no real wonder why Revelation failed to set the box office on fire - it's a mish-mash of half-baked religious mumbo-jumbo and conspiracy theories all filmed in a TV movie style with very little sense, which leapfrogs through Europe without pausing to breathe (they literally spend about 10 seconds in Malta before buggering off to Turkey). Imagine an episode of Wish You Were Here in which Judith Chalmers is skinned alive and nailed to a door. Actually, don't imagine that, because it would be far more entertaining than Revelation.

Review - Trog (1970)

To say that Trog is the worst film ever made may seem a tad harsh. But if you, as one of the poor unfortunates to have seen it, think otherwise, I’d ask you this – if it isn’t the worst film ever made, what is? What could be worse than a film in which the leading lady – a faded former Hollywood starlet – seems at times drunk, depressed or in some weird, childlike trance; is obviously reading her lines from “idiot boards” behind the camera or simply making them up? What could be more depressing than knowing that for this woman, Trog marked the end of her movie career?
But it’s not just Joan Crawford’s bizarre antics on-screen that mark Trog out as a truly dreadful film. This is a production that has caves which have never been explored before, but seem remarkably easy to get into by a 70-year-old dressed in a pack-a-mac and a pair of culottes. It has a script in which the fate of a living prehistoric man is decided by a town council meeting, and the killing of a German Shepherd dog overshadows the multiple deaths of assorted potholers, cameramen and onlookers earlier on to such an extent that everyone seems to have forgotten about them. It is a film so lacking in budget that for what seems like aeons, we are treated to the sight of Joan Crawford winding up assorted toys and watching them waddle across the floor, Joan Crawford rolling a ball across the ground, and, most inexplicable of all, a good five minutes of footage from an ancient film showing plasticine dinosaurs scrapping and running away from an erupting “volcano”.
There is no redeeming feature to Trog. No apologists for some films being “so bad they are good” (which includes myself) could possibly think Trog was anything other than bloody awful. It is just so jaw-droppingly painful to watch that it somehow leeches any fun out of the whole shoddy performance. There’s no tongues in cheek here, no nodding post modern irony. Trog is quite simply a bad film, made by people who should have known better for a cinematic audience they obviously considered to be drooling morons. It is a 50s monster movie, 20 years out of time – but if it had been made in black and white with a more with-it Crawford, it would be no better.
However, I would imagine that by decrying Trog so damningly, all I’ve probably done is whet your appetite for more. “What’s it all about, Alfie?” You’re probably asking. Well, what it’s all about follows. And don’t call me “Alfie”.
Three young chaps find an unmapped cave, which has been hidden for millions of years from human view by a tiny gorse bush. After one of them forces his way in through a tiny crevasse, Descent-style, the other two wander in fully upright as if they’ve just sauntered down a flight of prehistoric stairs. After noting that this suspiciously brightly-lit underground cavern is bereft of footprints and must therefore be unexplored, one of them decides to explore further by stripping down to his boxers and jumping into a rock pool. “Ooh, it’s freezing!” He opines, not very convincingly. He wades through a low, water-filled tunnel into another cavern, and is followed by one of his mates. Both are then attacked by a fat bloke wearing a monkey mask and a pair of furry bootees, leaving the third (Emmett from Keeping Up Appearances) to flee and tell the world that he’s found a murderous “Troglodyte”.
Luckily, in a house nearby is Dr Brockton (Crawford), an expert on such things (every small village should have one). She immediately takes charge, much to the consternation of blustering bobby Inspector Greenham (a badly overacting Bernard Kay), who, understandably, wants to conduct a murder trial. Local busybody Sam Murdock (Michael Gough) also puts in his two pence worth, but Brockton is adamant that this is a big scientific discovery which needs handling in a professional and low key manner. Once the television crews have been set up both outside and inside the until-recently-completely-inaccessible cave, the caveman reappears on cue and starts killing everyone in sight. He makes his way up to the surface, kills a couple more unfortunate technicians, and is then stopped in his tracks by Brockton and her highly scientific tranquilliser dart gun.
Despite all these shenanigans being captured on film, the rest of the world seems entirely oblivious to such a monumental event, allowing Brockton to start her highly scientific experiments. This big toothed ape-like killing machine is put in a shaky looking cage and allowed to play with dolls and listen to classical music (rock music makes him angry, of course). She even gives him a scientific nickname, “Trog”, which she then uses to refer to the creature for the rest of the film.
Meanwhile, the local villagers are up in arms. Lead stirrer Murdock reckons that a “demon” has been unleashed and that it should be destroyed (it has to be said that Gough, usually a bit of a ham at the best of times, is on pork overdrive here… it’s like he knows the film is shit so he’s decided not to care). There then follows several excruciating scenes as the whys and wherefores of Trog’s existence are played out before a village meeting presided over by Thorley Walters, who spends most of his time telling Gough to put a sock in it.
Eventually Brockton’s cow eyes and pseudo scientific mumblings win the day, and Murdock is so incensed that he immediately breaks into Dr Brockton’s high security laboratory (apparently killing a guard in the process) and unleashes Trog on an unsuspecting leafy village. Why, I have no idea.
Murdock dies in the process, and he is but the first. In the film’s first (and only) stab at any sort of horror, Trog conducts an early morning reign of terror on the sleepy village, throwing a grocer through his own shop window, spiking a butcher on his own meathook, and tipping a Morris Traveller on its side so gently that it immediately explodes. He then kidnaps a little girl from a playground and carts her back to his cage. Finally, everyone decides that enough is enough and the army is called in. Brockton is convinced she can sort the whole thing out with her dart gun, but the military has other ideas and blows the crap out of the cave, shoots the monster and watches him fall and impale himself on a polystyrene stalagmite.
Trog truly is an awful film, which has no idea which way it wants to go or what it wants to achieve. Just one knowing wink at the camera would have saved it, but the whole thing is played completely and utterly straight faced. From Crawford’s wet-eyed emoting I’d imagine that the idea was that Trog was supposed to be a tragic, misunderstood character, but nothing else in the film suggests this. Every time he sees something he kills it or smashes it up, so when he eventually does the decent thing and pops his clogs, you feel nothing, except a genuine hatred for the makers of the whole crappy farrago.
As an end note I’d like to add that the director of this sorry mess was one Frederick Francis. That’s right, the supposed director genius responsible for classic films like The Creeping Flesh. Freddie, if you were still here, you should be hanging your head in shame.

Review - The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)

There was a running joke in 80s rubber puppet satire Spitting Image which featured Roger Moore’s acting ability, or to be more precise, his lack of it. Called upon by his long-suffering director to be heroic, the latex Moore would stare at the camera and then raise one eyebrow. Told to be scared, he would raise an eyebrow. Informed that the next scene would necessitate passion, he would raise an eyebrow. Given a direction to be angry, he would… well, you get the idea. Subtle it wasn’t.
Roger Moore has never really been taken seriously. Unlike his predecessor in the James Bond role, he’s never really escaped it, and even when he was “it”, supposedly the coolest man on the planet, he was a bit of a joke. His Bond was slightly too old, saddled with some dreadful 70s fashions, and given to spouting lame innuendo rather than savage put-downs. No-one really knows him for anything other than Bond (or the Bond-in-all-but-name Simon Templar) and he didn’t do himself too many favours by playing a variety of similar characters in an assortment of forgettable thrillers through the 70s and 80s.
Which is why The Man Who Haunted Himself comes as a bit of a surprise. In it, Moore is actually called upon to act his socks off – and socks off he does act, in not one, but two roles. He’s almost permanently on-screen during the film’s running time as the harassed Henry Pelham, a man who slowly watches his life fall apart as a stranger who looks and acts just like him begins to pick it apart. Who is this Pelham-alike, and what is he up to? To be frank, after watching the film I was still none too sure, but it’s something to do with Pelham’s other self separating from him during the opening sequence on a motorway. The previously buttoned-up Pelham starts to grin like a nutter, his car changes from a stately Rover to a sporty number, and the next thing you know he’s crashed it. Once recovered, he tries to start up his life as normal, complete with same car, same routine, but there’s something wrong – people keep telling him they’ve already talked to him, girls reckon he’s bedded them, and business decisions are made without his say-so.
It’s all very odd, and Pelham finds himself increasingly at odds with everyone, until he is eventually confronted with the truth… and he doesn’t like what he sees.
Because the film is an exercise of duality and “what ifs”, Moore needs to show two sides of a split(ish) personality – one sensible and staid, the other madcap and totty shagging. And he manages to achieve this with no more props than an assortment of sport jackets, a roll-neck sweater or two and a bowler hat (and, in one memorable scene, a pair of scanty speedos).
Sadly, Moore’s performance is the highlight in an otherwise instantly forgettable film. Falling somewhere between thriller and horror (with a healthy dose of clunk-click seatbelt awareness thrown in for good measure) it succeeds in being neither – a sad state of affairs when you see it was directed by none other than Basil Dearden, the man who brought us Dead Of Night three decades earlier. The Man Who Haunted Himself was based on a short story, and had already been made as a TV thriller, and to fill 90 minutes it has been stretched almost to breaking point.
There’s just not much there to make a film out of – it’s a nice idea but has no real substance, and the only interesting bit comes when Pelham is forced to face his doppelganger and see that all of a sudden, his life is effectively over.
The filming is all very handsome, and there’s much to enjoy if you’re a connoisseur of the 1970s, but the story itself is confused and uninvolving. What a shame that old Moore didn’t choose to do his sock removing in a more worthy project.

Halloween? Bollocks.

Well, it looks like it’s that time again… the leaves are falling from the trees, the Government’s mucking about with the clocks again using those shady Scottish farmers as their scapegoats, and Tesco’s is full of pumpkins. Yup, it’s Halloween, which means I’m getting besieged by researchers from BBC and Five news desperate to interview someone, anyone, yes that geek with the horror films website will do, about horror.

But my problem is that Halloween isn’t really up my alley. It’s just too… well, too American, if I’m honest. And yes, I’m aware that it’s a Celtic tradition which originated in the UK etc. But Halloween as we know it today is all Trick or Treat. It’s something we used to do, forgot about, let the Americans have, then got all excited when they let us have it back. Like Ricky Gervais.

There is also the very simple fact that the stuff I know about – the British Horror Film – doesn’t really have any connection with Halloween. I have racked my brains trying to come up with a name of a British film which features October 31st as its main plot device, and I honestly can’t think of one. So frankly, as an “expert discussing Halloween” I’d be about as much use as Anton DuBecque giving advice on how to keep a career in the media. Or Jordan giving advice on how to live a quiet and dignified life away from the media spotlight. Or (insert hilarious topical reference here). In other words, not much use at all.

My earliest memories of Halloween as a young boy growing up in Staffordshire was that we “didn’t really do it”, but Charlie Brown did, with tales of dressing up as ghosts, bullying people into giving you sweets, and the “Great Pumpkin”. As time has gone on, this part of American culture has inveigled its way into our culture as something we seem to put up with more than actively enjoy, but it has definitely kept its American roots. So when we dress up for Halloween, we dress up as Boris Karloff as (Universal’s) Frankenstein’s Monster, Bela Lugosi as (Universal’s) Dracula, the Scream bloke, Michael Myers, Leatherface, Freddy Kreuger, Jason Vorhees… all those strangely cuddly serial killers American cinema has given us over the years. No-one ever really takes up the British horror baton when working out a Halloween costume… and with good reason. We don’t really “do” family friendly, instantly recognisable, psychotic icons in British cinema. I can only think of two. One is Pinhead from the Anglo-US goreathon Hellraiser (British writer, filmed here, someone re-dubbed everyone with American accents therefore making it quite un-British), and the other is Alex from A Clockwork Orange (which I mention because Bart Simpson once dressed up as this character in a Halloween episode of The Simpsons, but let’s face it, it is still a reference few people would actually get, and who wants to wander around their estate looking like Liza Minelli in Cabaret wearing a white boiler suit and enormous codpiece? Also, Alex in A Clockwork Orange is a devious teenage tramp-beating rapist, and pretending to be that kind of character in today’s “broken Britain” can only really lead to trouble).

Are there any examples we could use from the large pantheon of British horrors? Well, Hammer gave us some iconic monsters, but they had basically nicked them all from American cinema, so they’re out. You could don a big fuzzy wig, mustard roll-neck sweater and tweed jacket and go as Christopher Lee in The Wicker Man, remembering to set fire to a passing policeman as you go from door to door. Or, ladies – why not borrow dad’s chamois leather and go as Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC? Oh, go on. Please. There’s Ingrid Pitt in Countess Dracula (although people might mistake your costume for The Queen Of Hearts from Alice In Wonderland, rather spoiling the idea), or an undead biker from Psychomania (although you really need a bike to pull this one off). Or how about asking your mate who works at Comet if you can borrow his work uniform, carry a cricket bat and pretend to be Shaun from Shaun of the Dead? Actually, that’s not a bad idea. He might be a bit annoyed when he sees the ketchup you’ve splashed all over it though (“You’ve got red on you…”).

Or you could just not turn up at all and pretend to be the terrifying invisible force from The Haunting. But perhaps that’s just the kind of thing I’d do, miserable party-pooper that I am.

As usual, I have digressed. I said at the beginning that there wasn’t really any reference in British horror to Halloween, but I was lying. There has been one genuine example, and it was so terrifying that it was only ever shown once, led to a huge outcry in the media, and even, allegedly, one suicide. And that groundbreaking, pant-pooping televisual experience was something called Ghostwatch.

In these days of Most Haunted taking over the telly for the entire week (week!) before Halloween, you young ‘uns might be surprised to here that it was parodied, surpassed and forever eclipsed years before it actually appeared. Back in 1992, in fact.

Ghostwatch was shown by the BBC on Halloween night as a “live” event, hosted by proper TV personalities. The premise was simple – they would present live from a supposedly haunted house, and record what happened there. But this being a “mockumentary” (as opposed to the grounded scientific fact-based modern example of Most Haunted, ho-ho) what starts off as a simple tale of fake poltergeists and naughty children becomes something much more sinister, as the crew discover there is a genuinely terrifying force at work in the house and surrounding area.

I saw Ghostwatch on its original transmission as a supposedly worldly-wise 22 year old, and even though I knew it was a drama, it absolutely scared the bejesus out of me and has burned images onto my brain I will never completely remove. Unlike 99 per cent of the UK population, I have also seen it since – in 2002 the BFI brought Ghostwatch out on DVD, I got it as a Christmas present that year (cheers, love) and I still find it hard to watch. It is a deeply unsettling experience.

Also, for anyone who enjoys the dubious delights of Most Haunted (and who doesn’t?), there are some interesting parallels between the two shows. Ex Blue Peter presenter doing all the hard work? Check. (Yvette Fielding now, but back then it was the much more attractive proposition of a young Sarah Greene). Ineffectual husband of said star lurking in the background? Check. (Insert tasteless joke about Mike Smith’s helicopter here). Faded chat show host doing all the links? Check. (Michael Parkinson in Ghostwatch, and Paul Ross on Most Haunted. Well, his brother’s a faded chat show host, so that counts). Sadly, Most Haunted doesn’t appear to have room on its cast list for a former Red Dwarf star, but Ghostwatch did – its roving reporter was a far too perky Craig Charles.

Ghostwatch also makes use of all the technology available at the time – CCTV, portable cameras, motion detectors, temperature sensors … erm, that’s it. But you get the idea.

But Ghostwatch is a drama, and Most Haunted (allegedly) isn’t, so where Ghostwatch scores over its successor is that things happen. And those things are terrifying. The children in the house claim to be haunted by a ghost called “Pipes” who lurks behind their bedroom curtains, (so called because he makes a knocking sound on the house’s central heating system), and we do eventually get to see him… in a series of almost subliminal shots. The word “Pipes” still terrifies me to this day.

Scary noises can be heard getting louder and louder, and by the end at least one much-loved children’s television star is brutally killed and it looks like the entire nation is about to be taken over through their TV screens. All very Quatermass, and essential viewing for anyone with a love of genuinely scary TV.

I don’t want to give too much away, but if you do get to see it, keep an eye on the crowd behind Craig Charles, the corner of the bedroom by the curtains, and the understairs cupboard. And try not to kick the cat afterwards.

Now then, I’m off to switch the lights off and hide behind the sofa so the trick-or-treaters can’t see me. We don’t do Halloween. Christmas, that’s when we indulge in scary films in this country!

Colin - what a corker

Here's a review I done for a film wot's good...

In these days of spiralling budgets and ridiculous special effects coming together to produce films which are often much less than the sum of their parts, it’s good to find out about a production making the headlines for exactly the opposite reasons. Colin, the zombie brainchild of director Marc Price, has become a cause celebre recently amongst the national newspapers because of its tiny budget. Did I say tiny? I meant miniscule. Did I say miniscule? I meant… a word that describes something much smaller than “miniscule”.

Colin’s budget was ridiculous – a reported £45, which simply can’t be entirely accurate. Marc reckons that all he bought during the film’s lengthy gestation period was a packet on biscuits and a crowbar – everything else was begged or borrowed – old cameras were used to film it, people worked for free, blood and special effects were concocted in his mum’s kitchen, guerrilla film-making tactics were used to film in locations they probably weren’t supposed to be in.

The usual result of such a cottage industry approach is there for all to see on screen – a shoddy mess of a thing, with bad performances, rotten effects and a “we made it up as we want along” script. But these are usually films which cost thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, more than Colin. So in a way, you come to it prepared to cut it a fair amount of slack. So what if there’s a boom mike visible at the top of the screen? Who cares if the lead stumbled over their lines, or an extra wandered in during a big speech, saw they were filming and backed away again? You’re happy to ignore these little things, cos the entire film cost less to make than a pair of cheap shoes.

However, if you’re expecting a charmingly shoddy production, you’re going to be disappointed. There are no boom mikes in shot, no awkward silences, no unintentional laughs. It is quite simply unbelievable that what you sit and watch cost so little.

Colin shares a certain amount of its look and feel with the much-lauded-but-now-in-danger-of-being-somewhat-over-exposed-on-digital-telly “zombie rom com” Shaun Of The Dead, as Britain wakes up to find out it has been taken over by a bunch of shuffling cadavers seemingly straight from Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead. But that’s about it for the Shaun comparisons, because whereas the bigger budgeted film was a perfectly pitched blend of laughs and chills, the lighter moments in Colin are few and far between. In fact, the only one comes right at the very beginning, when the titular hero is attacked in his kitchen by one of the undead, and tries to beat it off with a wooden spoon, which immediately snaps. That’s it. In a way, it almost wrong-foots you, because on seeing this your mind immediately thinks “recognisable suburban setting, dead bloke with sharp teeth, hopeless hero, comedy implement – it’s a comedy, a-la that thing with that bloke out of Spaced in it! Hurrah!”

But it isn’t. Despite succeeding in stabbing his assailant to double death, Colin realises he now has another bite to add to the nasty gash he has already showed us in his forearm – and as we all know, that means the writing is on the wall. The next minute he’s dead, then he’s up again, complete with puzzled look on his ashen face.

He makes his way out onto the London streets, and the rest of the film follows him as he gets used to his new life. But before you switch off, thinking this is some kind of touchy-feely “it’s a hard life being undead” character study, think again. Yes, our Colin is a sympathetic character in as much as there may be a spark of humanity resting somewhere behind those dead eyes, but this isn’t a film about him as much as about the things he sees on his travels – half-eaten humans watching in helpless agony as they are eaten alive, teenage gangs ignoring the dangers and attacking these new easy to mug targets, families torn in two, people setting up doomed projects to make money from the disaster… even dodgy men using undead women for some decidedly unsavoury activities.

These little vignettes play out as Colin shuffles from place to place, finding out what he must eat to survive and how he must act to get it. On the way we learn more about our hero, who simply wandered onto the screen at the beginning clutching a bloody (as in caked in blood) hammer. How did he get the gash on his arm? Who is that blonde girl who seems intent on saving him? Is he beyond salvation, or can these supposedly mindless creatures remember what it was like to be alive, and re-learn what it is to be human?

As you can probably tell, Colin isn’t just some ham-fisted attempt to remake Dawn Of The Dead on a budget (and believe me, I’ve seen a few of them) – it’s an intelligent, troubling and moving film which genuinely takes the genre and shoves it on a bit.

It’s also nicely made – sometimes to an amazing degree.

Scenes are linked with arty close-ups of flickering lights, for much of the film there is no dialogue, the soundtrack punctuated by distant car alarms and gunfire (apparently created by Marc wandering outside on bonfire night to tape some fireworks – it works brilliantly). And if you’re thinking there won’t be any effects in such a cheap film, you’d be wrong – there’s plenty of horribly realistic gore for those so inclined. Even more astonishingly, there are at least three set-piece zombie attack scenes which wouldn’t look out of place in a film like 28 Days Later. Yes, it really is that good.

Because of its episodic nature, the film never outstays its welcome, and it also means that Marc and his willing army of pretend zombies have the opportunity to experiment a bit. Scenes that stick in the mind long after the film has finished include some cellar-bound zombie sexpots with their eyes gouged out, a student party with some hungry gatecrashers, and, on a quieter note, a simply superb scene which explains the current situation on the streets of London cheaply and effectively as someone uses old newspapers with lurid headlines to cover up the windows of their house.

Everyone will get the chance to see Colin when it opens in UK cinemas in October – and I can’t recommend it highly enough. For anyone who has an interest in horror as a genre, film making on a budget or simply a love of good cinema, it’s a must-see. But take a hanky, cos the ending could have you in tears.

The only other thing I must add is I cannot wait to see what Mr Price can do with a decent budget… say, £450 next time?