Film junkie Giles Edwards gives you the low down on DVD releases, hidden treasures and personal indulgences you simply can't get along without.
 

7th January 2008

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End’: an unquestionable hit at the this year’s Frightfest, Joe Lynch’s unashamed quest to relive the former glories of the video nasty era proved a welcome love letter to the kind of films you loved at just the age you weren’t allowed to see them. Deftly poking fun at the current trend for reality thrills without labouring the joke, the set up lends a pleasantly well thought out logic to the device of getting a bunch of horny geeks and freaks alone in the great wild unknown of rural West Virginia. And then Lynch sets about destroying them with grotesque, colourfully sanguinary invention. Hallelujah.

With its anarchic, freewheeling narrative never really (thankfully) latching onto any specific damsel-with-father-issues or wimp-stuck-in-perpetual-adolescence to guilelessly guide us to the next set piece, it’s less formally paced than its predecessor. This, it should be said straight away is very much to its advantage: out of the gate with its superlatively grisly opening kill, it’s unnervingly chaotic and the violence feels as if it leaps out at you rather than creeping up like some kind of demure tease. And in co-star Henry Rollins, the film finds its spiritual centre -- mostly straight-faced, just this side of irony but with a hint of true madness in its soul. Perhaps more ‘Bride Of Reanimator’ than ‘Reanimator’, it’s still a hell of a ride and the advent of a surprising and ferociously committed new talent in genre filmmaking. GITS has a new favourite Mr Lynch. So, 2008 is in full effect. I trust the holidays were filled with Jack Skellington-issued fun? And what's to look forward to? Well, quite a bunch, if the sprightly posters on our boards are to be believed (and what's not believe -- they're an impassioned and knowledgeable bunch of slavishly devoted, devastatingly handsome gorehounds and houndettes).

2007 saw a fitful array of horrific delights unspool across our screens both at home and the contraption they call the multiplex (and a few arthouse theatres as well). Time and my ever-increasing tardiness don’t permit a grand roundup of all the sundry delights. But if you head on over to the recently launched UK-imprint of stalwart website IGN you’ll find a cracking new column from ace horror journalist Axelle Carolyn Marshall which delves into the great and the not-so-great of the last year’s offerings. Also, IGN’s just a great, much-needed bit of cinematic web-muscle for the UK. Time Out’s Chris Tilly presides and does a rather delicious job.

But to the year ahead. As board lurkers will gather, there’s already been a fulsome spurt of enthusiasm for a glut of yet-to-be-judged projects. Hopefully, geekish goodwill will maintain enough excitement so as to outweigh any trepidation born of too much recent disillusionment. At least there are precious few threequels this year (quadrels and quintrels, yes, but they’ve, for the most part, yet to rear their heads and disappoint so numbingly).

On my Lovecraftian-digited hand I can count each of the following as worthy of at least passing interest, if not full-blown hope. Incidentally, my new year’s resolution was to be less brazenly cynical and I like to think I’m doing my bit by looking forward to the new M Night Shyamalan picture. So there.

Cloverfield’: well (over?) hyped low-budgeter that hopes to defy the blight of ‘Snakes On A Plane’-style over-saturation on the ‘net in the weeks leading up to its release.

’Rambo’: the bloodiest action picture of the decade? Or history.

’Hellboy 2‘: a decent teaser has hit already and portends an astonishing return for everyone’s favourite doom-handed curmudgeon.

’Hellraiser remake’: from the deviants that brought you ‘Inside’. One of the year’s perfect fits.

‘Iron Man‘: human-centred comic book anarchy from the always surprising Jon Favreau.

’Diary Of The Dead’: which as many know by now is typically solid Romero.

‘The Ruins’ that it’s from the acclaimed novel by “A Simple Plan’ writer, Scott B. Smith, is enough to sate the appetite for stark, grim thrills.

’Be Kind Rewind’: a cute premise, a great trailer for what will hopefully be a feature able to support such wonderfully audacious nonsense for the entire running time.

’The Eye’ pan-Asian-horror remake, with a supporting role for the money shot from ‘Them’.

’Vinyan: the latest from Fabrice Du Welz who saw fit to give the world the rather amazing ‘Calvaire’, this looks a darkly enrapturing leap into a ‘Heart Of Darkness’-style landscape as a couple frantically search for what may be their missing child.

’Doomsday’: Neil Marshall, the UK’s great white hope, aims to make all our most outrageous 80s-infused action dreams come true.

’The Dark Knight’: rumours abound at just how good this actually is. “Very”, according to ‘sources’.

’Matyrs’: the latest endurance test from ‘Them’ and ‘Irreversible’ producer Richard Grandpierre, with one hell of a trailer.

’The Incredible Hulk’: ‘Danny The Dog’ meets Edward Norton, with the intense thespian “retouching” the screenplay for director Louis Letterier and their relaunch of the verdant franchise. I feel I need to interject that Ang Lee’s version is pretty wonderful as it is.

’Rec’: so good it’s already being remade.

’One Missed Call’: friend of Frighfest (and one of the lucky few to ever have had their film released on the ultra-are Frightfest DVD label!) Eric Valette, remakes Takeshi Miike’s very long J-horror entry. Good trailer, weird poster.

M. Night Shyamalan’s allegedly rather adult ’The Happening’.

A pair of action/horror pictures, both with a military bent -- ’Stone's War’ dealing with demonic goings on in a vast, petrifying forest and ’Outpost’ sending its band of mercenaries deep underground to uncover the secret of a diabolical bunker, sealed since WWII.

Robert Kutzman’s ultra-gory ‘The Rage starring a typically gregarious Reggie Bannister.

‘Mulberry Street’: this intense and bloody chamber piece minimizes the ‘28 Days Later’ template even further in a powerful tale set over 24 hours around a disease-ridden Hell’s Kitchen block.

‘Wizard Of Gore’: a reimagining of the HG Lewis picture from the equally deranged minds of ‘The Attic Expeditions’'s Jeremy Kasten and renowned ‘eccentric’ Crispin Glover.

Kevin S. Tenney’s ‘Brain Dead’: a trip back to retro-80s-ville from the low-budget showman behind ‘Night Of The Demons’, ‘Witchtrap’, ‘Peacemaker’ and Witchboard’ all of which are genuine favourites at GITS.

‘Eden Log’: disorienting mystery/horror from Franck Vestiel, former assistant director to Marc Caro, Jan Kounen, Florent Emilio Siri and the boys behind ‘Them’.

‘Eden Lake’ from the genuinely very pleasant James Watkins, the otherwise diabolically-minded writer of the gruelling ‘My Little Eye’.

‘Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer’: this year’s ‘Behind The Mask’ recasts a traditional Van Helsing as a beleaguered 20-something with some real issues. Tipped to be the surprise genre hit of the year.

’ The Mist’: criminally under seen in the US and said to be the best King picture since the last Frank Darabont adaptation.

’My Name Is Bruce’: ‘Being Bruce Campbell’ by any other name. Destined to be an utter, complete and incomparable enigma to anyone hasn’t at least heard of Fangoria, this may be the best thing since fried gold or a crushingly obvious and very long single joke at the expense of how Campbell’s rather bizarrely celebrated career rests on a handful of films amongst some real will-work-for-food roles.

’Son of Rambow’: if the copyright issues get sorted out we could be looking at the best coming-of-age comedy since ‘Stand By Me’. Here’s hoping.

In addition, Adam Green's been away shooting in the last part of 2007, which means whatever genre he's tackling this time, there's going to be some cinematic juice on the loose very soon. Jake West has ‘Doghouse’ upcoming and the sooner Joe Lynch gets back in that director’s chair, the sooner we’ll be delivered another dose of much desired, horrifically deranged lunacy which he and his headband simply must come and introduced to a braying London crowd some hot summer’s weekend.

What hath the New Year wrought in the meanwhile apart form the afore mentioned Wrong Turn 2?

‘Accion Mutante’: Alex De La Iglesia’s insane debut comes to DVD during a period of vigorous fascination with Latin genre filmmaking. With Guillermo Del Toro leading the pack, it’s easy to overlook a decades old (well, since General Franco lost a grip) industry previously known for Paul Naschy and Jess Franco, now pregnant with talent and projects yet to be fully appreciated in the genre mainstream. Paco Plaza’s and Juame Balaguero’s ‘Rec’ is already a multi-festival hit, Alfonso Cuaron is taking English-language cinema by storm and Nacho Cerda has made a promising feature debut following some of cinema’s most devastating short films: the world is taking note. There is much to find and to revel in.

Like Del Toro, De La Iglesia himself revels in the esoteric and the unhinged. Lacking Del Toro’s humane, tragic edge, Del La Iglesia’s films feel a little more mean-spirited. But that’s only because he’s so willingly subscribes to Hitchcock’s jaundiced view of human foibles over Del Toro’s more Powell/Pressberger-like belief that perhaps there’s something better beyond, to stretch a rather flimsy and possibly specious analogy. But that’s how I see it – they are filmmakers crafting undeniably within that grandly classic mould.

With it tale of handicapped terrorists fighting an economically fascist Spain/planet, ‘Accion Mutante’ heralded De La Iglesia’s talent in its nascent form. It was also hugely indebted to the film’s producer, Pedro Almodovar: it’s brash, loud and apologetically crude: the kind of declaration of creativity that’s all too rare these days. It also played its part in shaking up the rather staid European genre film landscape in the early 90s, one which was traipsing along in the wake of Argento and Fulci’s relative (I the case of Argento, very relative) artistic demise: instead of ‘Tenebre’, we were being delivered ‘Body Puzzle’; instead of ‘The Beyond’, Fulci’s own lacklustre ‘The Curse’ and ‘Aenigma’.

Alongside Jeunet/Caro, Richard Stanley, Mariano Baino and Del Toro himself (and to a very arguable extent the likes of Jorge Buttgereit), De La Iglesia was part of a group of margin-culturally defined Euro-moviebrats about to take cinema by storm, just as another infamous brand of low budget filmmakers would do in North America throughout the late 80s/early 90s. These were pictures made by film lovers for lovers of all film. But mostly these pictures were a maelstrom of extravagantly ghoulish, razor-witted and densely designed fantasy.

De La Iglesia’s masterpiece might well be 1995’s ‘Day Of The Beast’ and his mainstream break may be yet to come with the upcoming ‘Oxford Murders’ starring Elijah Wood and John Hurt later this year, but ‘Accion Mutante’ is a manic, endearing, frustrating, and thoroughly impudent calling card.

‘Big Bad Wolf’: David Naughton drags his shabby carcass back to well of former glories by cameoing in this DTV lycanthrope yarn alongside ‘Two Moon Junction’s Richard Tyson as The titular Beast. If ‘Dog Soldiers’, ‘Wild Country’ and the ‘Ginger Snaps’ sequels have shown us anything in the last few years it’s that audiences will always respond well to ferocious fur. Bereft of any great above the line talent, this at least boasts some innovative gore and a smattering of entertainment must surely be gained from watching David Naughton amble through the film, deftly avoiding any eye-rolling puns about his own previous transmogrified state.

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