GORE IN THE STORE - NEW DVD RELEASES FOR 1st MAY 2007.

Please accept our apologies for the interruption to your regular schedule of empty space.

“Are You Scared”: like another low-budget shocker, the as yet unreleased ‘Sportkill’, this seems worryingly (though not unsurprisingly) analogous to the ‘Saw’ pictures’ arduous parade of ornate torture pranks. It’s not surprising the picture’s marketeers are hooking audiences thus, but one hope there’s at least a semblance of story here under the kind of reality TV-schtick that might have died back with “Series 7: The Contenders” in 2001 had “My Little Eye” not provided one final cold breath of quality before ushering the rapidly dating premise back into the shadows. Pictures like this, coming four years after “Saw” would do well to lose the pretty faces and opt for a bloodier “Running Man” tone (“The Running Man” was released in 1987, proving exactly how far back the odour of this rather ripe innovation extends). Just some conflict would be nice. Or at least a vague alternative to glamorous rabbits finding themselves caught in the headlights of 1001 ways to rend flesh from bone that passes for a narrative in modern shock film.

An aside: watching jovial alleged racist Mel Gibson’s masterful ‘Apocalypto’ recently, there’s a sequence where a half dozen Mayans, captured by a bloodthirsty band of their ‘urbanised’ countrymen await with wild, frightened eyes as each of their number is marched toward a gore-stained block atop a vertiginous temple staircase. There, their heads are lopped from their bodies, one by one careening ignominiously down to the frenzied throng below. To me, this kind of sums up the wavering appeal of that modern schlock -- lambs queuing up for the ever more gruesome slaughter. You can see why any attempt at a story, at a hook to frighten an audience beyond simple provocative upset might become welcomed, no matter how sleight or fumbled. The effort’s always appreciated.

So “Are You Scared”? I guess we’ll find out the answer to the question once it hits shelves. It would make a change though, wouldn’t it?

“Masque Of The Red Death”: in this day and age of instantaneously accessible programming, micro-budgeted DV features and the grindhouse culture permeating the mainstream, it’s easy to become complacent about just what immense beauty and gothic tumult Roger Corman was capable of amid his gleeful Dick Miller cheapies, million-eyed beasts and camp Hell’s Angel theatrics. No doubt buoyed by the decade-long success of Hammer’s Technicolour nightmares, this 1964 production of Edgar Allen Poe’s apocalyptic fever dream set inside a baroque castle as a virulent plague rages outside, is a lavish production against any measure of success, budget big or budget small. Not a masterpiece of shock cinema perhaps, but a benchmark in independent genre filmmaking from which many of today’s enfants terribles could gain some very simple lessons in class and atmosphere.

Corman’s trademark frugality may have been at full-tilt to garner such lavish production values, but you’d never know it. From the swirling, crimson title sequence onward, the picture is effortlessly stylish, laced with the intoxicating luminescence of cinematographer Nicholas Roeg’s images, six years before he became such a vital director himself. Vincent Price, as the insidious Prince Prospero, acquits himself with typical, well, Vincent Price-ness, delivering an as flawlessly eccentric performance as only that voice and stature can muster. This is quietly indispensable in the most elegant tradition.

“Wrestlemaniac”: with the proliferation of an ever-confounding entanglement of slasher-lore in post-“Scream” horror cinema, it seems, now more than ever, that novelty and gimmickry is what sets each new effort apart from the bloated breed. “Cherry Falls” had its anti-virgin stance, “My Little Eye” its reality-TV edge and now “Wrestlemanic” has its Santo-esque brawler as villain. The Mexican wrestler is perhaps tailor-made for the horror genre with his garish costume and hyperbolic performance antics, not to mention an abundance of hotly debated articles in Fangoria magazine during the early 1980s. As last year’s “See No Evil” indicated, the acrobatic lunks of this flamboyantly pugilistic world make for carnivalesque bogeymen -- effective, if not particularly well rounded in any department save the torso.

Here a gaggle of giggling post Gen X-ers make their way over the border to film a softcore porn film in the Mexican desert. Of course, with one of them turning out to be a huge El Mascarado fan, they stumble upon the famed fighter’s god-forsaken refuge ‘La Sangre De Dios’, manage to encounter far more than mere inhospitable locals and ensure that a retroactive splatter of masked mayhem ensues. As the nifty sleeve art shows, with no particular surprises at its disposal, this attempt at some kind of franchise starter has a pace and feel which becomes its own inherent absurdity and possesses a pleasantly grim and stylish sense humour. Approach with cautious enthusiasm.

“White Noise 2: The Light”: conspicuously, this sequel starring the 21st century’s Bruce Campbell -- one Nathan Fillion -- has the most incongruous suffix in recent memory. This is born out by the fact that a) the picture really has nothing to do with the Michael Keaton sleeper hit of 2005 and, b) unless you’re a complete physics nerd, the blinding ‘light’ that near-death-experience Fillion encounters has precious little do with actual ‘white noise’ itself (although, yes, radio/static waves are essentially ‘light’ waves at a different frequency but I’m trying to make a point so keep your academically sound logic to yourself. The title is dumb squared).

Sounding more like an ethereal episode of ‘Final Destination’ without the Rube Goldberg set pieces, it’s certainly more appealing than Geoffrey Sax’s risible original take on paranormal thrillers. Bolstered with a sensational premise ripe with possibility, 2005’s “White Noise” proceeded to pole-dance with coherence before sliding shame-faced to floor, legs akimbo, enabling the entire narrative to disappear up the exposed hole (which, by the way, is as tasteful an analogy as the picture is an enjoyable screening experience). For Fillion, the only way can be up for sure. Not into a shaft of heaven’s light necessarily, but perhaps into an enjoyable hodgepodge of ‘Poltergeist’ clichés and ethereally tinged nonsense that at least appears to look good thanks to b-movie-canny director Patrick Lussier’s adept eye for a polished image.

Incidentally, “White Noise 2“ Patrick Lussier, a rather slick editor for Dimension Films (R.I.P.) recently became attached to an intriguing looking zombie romp called “Condition Dead”. Apropos of nothing, I only mention it because the gentleman who wrote the screenplay for “…Dead” is none other than veteran webscribe Dave Davis, formally of CHUD.com and a rather grand repository of myriad cinematic smarts. Expect some nifty things in the near future.