Damned by Dawn - review

2009 (Australia)

2009 Momentum Pictures DVD R(2)

Contains spoilers.

It would feel a bit mean to be too critical of this earnest, atmospheric horror indie. The build-up is strong, the acting half decent, especially the girls, and the narrative interesting and reasonably coherent if one doesn't think too hard about it. All in all, writer and director Brett Anstey has fashioned a competent little horror story with an original hook and has demonstrated enough talent in his directorial abilities, to warrant future larger budgets. Unfortunately where it does kind of fall apart is exactly due to said lack of experience, finance and perhaps lack of confidence in the good old low budget mantra, to keep things tight and that less is sometimes more. There's a little too much forced exposition at times, the story is strong but does end up rambling, losing its plausibility, and the brilliantly built up, evocative and subtle atmosphere and effects does head a bit too much into b-movie territory where ambition should have been tempered.

Claire (Renee Willner) with her boyfriend Paul (Danny Alder) has returned to the old family farmstead after receiving a mysterious old urn through the post and has learnt from her old da' (Peter Stratford) and younger sister Jen (Taryn Eva) that Nana's not well. Now, it's hard to pick who's most to blame for the events that unfold that evening as Nana (Dawn Klingberg) takes her final breath. On the one hand Claire does push the Banshee that appears, to herald her passing, off the balcony impaling her and thus committing her family to death and eternal damnation. But on the other hand Nana has had nearly seventy years to prepare for the events that would unfold and has done a damn fine job of not getting everyone up to speed. Either way; a curse on the O'Neills line means that on their passing, a Banshee will appear, wail quite a bit and everyone should leave her alone. What they shouldn't do, under any circumstances, at all, absolutely not, is interfere, accost her, or say, push her off a balcony. Ooops.

The Banshee, or "woman of the sídhe" or "woman of the fairy mounds", is a female spirit seen as an omen of death and a messenger from the underworld (thanks wiki). With bloodshot eyes from crying out for centuries the 'keener' or fairy woman, according to Irish legend, appears in a white gown to lament (Irish: to wail) the passing of one the six great Gaelic families, of which the O'Neills is one. Played by Bridget Neval she's mysterious and frightening, her wail unearthly and harrowing and her appearance is haunting and coherent. Like many films that begin with an old legend the writer / director soon decides to deviate from folklore however, and that's probably where the film starts to also deviate from plausibility and starts trying a tad too hard.

I've now read quite a bit about Banshee's (at least two articles) and everything so far fits. The thing is, and I do understand the need for artistic embellishment in film making, I've not really found much reference to an army of the undead being awoken and her going on a blood fuelled rampage should her wail be disturbed. After being re-killed the undead spirits she summons from the ground are skeletal which is ok, as I can go with the fact they've been buried a long time. They all also seem to have scythes to wield which again I guess is fair enough, as they were probably farm hands. The thing I couldn't really get behind though, was the fact they were flying. It's jarring, a bit daft looking, and it's made considerably worse with the poor CG and effects that make them about as coherent and cohesive as a brick in a yogurt. Admittedly they're not that much more artificial looking than the bonies in Warm Bodies or even the zompires in I Am Legend but they're so jarring in a film full of subtlety and nuance that they come very close to breaking the whole illusion on their own.

Zombies? They're reanimated skeletal remains under the control of the Banshee so probably not in any strict sense. Paul however, back as a staggering cockroach infested corpse out for revenge most definitely is, in a revenant kind of way anyway. The sister too makes a return, albeit extremely briefly, gurgling blood in a zombie way and even the grandmother makes a reappearance as a possessed Evil Dead / Exorcist potty-mouthed cantankerous old hag (though she may have been like this before she was damned). There's lots of ideas and it all looks good and helps the film entertain but if I'm honest it feels a bit thrown together as if with twenty minutes to fill they weren't quite sure how to deliver the shocks they'd been building towards.

I liked Damned by Dawn. I actually watched it twice, and even enjoyed it more the second time. It's competent, has some great build up and scares and an interesting premise that's well played around well with. The plot does meander and lose its way somewhat, but the central story arch does get back on point and it does hold interest. Anstey certainly has an eye for suspense and build up if not necessarily the ability to deliver on it. Constant corner of the eye, shadow, snapshot imagery and the subtle and clever use of sound deliver a truly spooky experience and I found myself often cowering behind a cushion or momentarily bereft of skin, and if he could have kept to what he undoubtedly does best all would have been well. The thing is, ultimately when it comes to delivering on all evocative teasing, the big action scenes feel tragically forced, immodest and even a little incongruous. They never not deliver; it's just things never feel quite right. Would I recommend it? Sure, why not? You'll be promoting low budget horror production and you'll be in for a well-produced jumpy hour and a half's fun; just brace yourself for hover-zombies, 5/10.

Steven@WTD.

Shivers (Orgy of the Blood Parasites / They Came from Within) - review

1975 (Canada)

2003 Prism DVD R(2)

Contains spoilers.

If you'd asked me whether this film would have made my zombie blog a couple of years ago I'd emphatically responded with a no. I'd feasted on the diet of rotting flesh supplied in abundance by Romero then maintained as a familiar western trope and was fully invested that dead meant dead. Today? I've come to embrace the notion that deadness is so much more than not having a pulse and being a great home for maggots; that the fundamental attribute of zombie is loss of will, of self, of control. That the concept is fluid and necessarily ambiguous and can be reasonably applied to all manner of people and situations where a new almost external hunger drives the host to behave in a way that's less than who they authentically are.

In 1975 a young Canadian film maker with a penchant for body dysfunction, infection, parasites and the blurring of psychological with physical released his first feature film with partial funding from the Canadian Government. David Cronenberg's Shivers (aka Orgy of the Blood Parasites, aka They Came from Within, aka Frissons) was met with a mixed reception but also announced to the world the arrival of a daring and exciting young film making talent who wasn't afraid to challenge taboos or court the controversial.

Shivers is an exciting film full of avant-garde ideas, striking and disturbing images and real depth, yet the premise on the surface sounds simple and almost laughably b-movie. The brilliant yet disturbed Dr. Emil Hobbes (Fred Doederlin), has had an epiphany or total psychotic break down, depending on how you look at it, and has utilised his years researching parasites to cure mankind of its swing from flesh and instinct to rationality by introducing a cleverly engineered foreign organism into the wild.

The film begins with the brutal and disturbing scene of Dr. Hobbes attacking and overpowering his teenage concubine, stripping her, then slicing her open to pour (Hollywood) acid on her internals before taking his own life. The act seems malicious yet we learn it's the actions of a desperate man who has come to realise the parasite he has let loose actually does it's job too well turning them into sex crazed monsters and he needs to kill it before it spreads. This is cinema though, so of course he's too late.

Despite no corpses pulling themselves from the earth Shivers has all the hall marks of a zombie film. There's ground zero, there's the slow but exponential spread; there's confusion, screaming, violence and in the end total pandemonium and inescapable hopelessness. The parasite, a combination of venereal disease and aphrodisiac, on symbiotic infection consumes the host with an insatiable psychosis to procreate so that it can itself procreate. Those infected lose that which made them who they are, and are now for all intents and purposes mindless zombies driven by forces not of their own will. They retain their memories and knowledge, but that which stops from them acting against increasing physical and moral degeneration has gone. Sexual coercion turns into rape, rape turns into attacks, attacks turn into murder and cannibalism as the new hosts give in to deeper and darker primal desire, free from all conscience and societal consequence. Under Cronenberg's control the journey is dark, disturbing and utterly compelling. Never is it farce or amateurish but always tight, tense and intelligent.

Stylish, sumptuously crafted and always provocative and interesting. Characters have depth, relationships are complicated and dialogue is well crafted. There isn't a central story as such; Roger St. Luc (Paul Hampton), the tower block's locum, his work colleague and lover Nurse Forsythe ( Lynn Lowry) and the accompanying ensemble are there to ensure the story is told and things are revealed at the right pace. There's no real heroes or villains and it doesn't matter. The narrative is the degeneration of the people of the tower and it's brilliantly realised. For a first time director with no real insight into how films were made Shivers is full of iconic imagery (the bath scene alone is timeless) and expertly crafted nuance and subtlety. Gritty, sophisticated, compelling and a triumphant début, 8/10.

Steven@WTD.

(Stephen King's) Pet Sematary - review

1989 (USA)

2013 Paramount Catalog Blu-ray R(All)

Contains spoilers.

Picture yourself: the pragmatic rational doctor, trained in science to deal with fact and quantifiable truth. There's a chance your darling daughter's little fuzzball won't wake up from being anaesthetised? She needs to know. Now, picture you've brought your young family from Chicago to live next to the world's most dangerous un-family friendly road, complete with nearby cemetery chock full of all of the loyal waggy-tailed, whisp-whiskered and bushy-eyed companions that'd even dared to recognise its existence.

Stay with me. A short while later, your young daughters most favourite little fur ball is smashed and crushed by the side of the road. Not a stretch I'll grant you, as what with the road, the cemetery; little Church's (short for Winston Churchill) road-kill ticket was assured from the start, but what would you do as said pragmatic father if you were feeling sad and guilty? I'd probably say agreeing to follow your crazy old neighbour (Fred Gwynne as Jud Crandall) to an ancient native Indian (Micmac - though King made this up) burial ground in the hope it'll be resurrected isn't the first thing that would come to mind, but that's exactly what Dr Louis Creed (Dale Midkiff) decides to do.

I want to get one thing clear, I did like Pet Sematary; it's just that for the great yarn Stephen King has undoubtedly weaved, there's just too many decisions like this that stand out as bafflingly naive and implausible, and too many events, mostly unfortunate, that stand out as excruciatingly easy to avoid. I mean, we all want the best for our children and would do anything to not see tear soaked little faces gazing back up at us, but it's one thing to make a bit of a fuss at the passing of the family moggy with an impromptu ceremony at the bottom ofthe garden followed by lemonade, and another to take a long trek in to the back of beyond with the hope ancient magic and superstition can perform a miracle.

On the one hand director Mary Lambert's adaptation of Stephen King's 1983 fantasy / horror novel played out pretty much as I expected. With the look and feel of a direct to TV dark drama that almost, other than for a long gratuitous shot of the head wound of a young student who gets hit by truck, felt tame and moderate enough to be pitched at the family audience. There's a dark secret path, mystical lights, the pet cemetery replete with bad spelling, a crazy old man with crazy tales and a family cat returned but not entirely 'right' with the hint of darkness and evil. It could easily have meandered a bit like this then ended with the cat asleep and at peace and the family taking on board the moral lesson that the natural cycle of life and death should be respected. I was, I'll admit, slightly bemused by the R rating at this point, but I really needn't have been.

Pet Sematary becomes a very dark and disturbing film very quickly. Despite the emphasis on the pets in the cemetery, Church's return is really just the warm up act for the turn of events that transpires when, despite the myriad of warning that the road IS REALLY FUCKING DANGEROUS, their young son manages for a second time to wander right into the path of a 60mph death truck that never for one second considers slowing despite the houses and people present.

As I've said, that Dr Creed yet again decides to ignore all the warnings is really a bit of an insult to the intelligence of the viewer but doesn't half make for a tense finale full of murder, bloodshed and genuine jumps. Gage, the returning spirit is a revenant with a capital V for vengeance. Despite being so young his return is accompanied by new found strength, knowledge, magic (for want of a better word), and a strong desire to sadistically murder and play with those he knew. The sweet little boy is gone, instead in full Evil Dead / Exorcist style we have a seeming insatiable demonic force, though it's never explicitly said, interested in using Gage's body to perform all manner of evil and the effect is stark and genuinely uncomfortable. They're resurrected and not reanimated as we get to see both cat and boy re-killed but they're definitely not back to full health either as they come back with the full appearance and odour they were buried with.

I'll mention a flashback to the previous person resurrected at the burial ground, where a young Timmy Baterman (Peter Stader) a returning veteran gets to stagger around extremely zombie like, striking, eating and groaning at neighbour and family alike; there's an insinuation this relative coherence could be down to how long they were dead before reburial but it's not explicit. I'll also mention Brad Greenquist as Victor Pascow the friendly ghost. Because Dr Creed tried to save him early in the film Pascow has taken himself to visiting the family to try and save them from their fate. It doesn't detract from proceedings and it's all acted well allowing for some memorable scenes and sequences; it's just I'm not really sure it adds much either. For all his screen time his actions are ultimately redundant and one can't help feeling slightly bemused by his whole inclusion as the credits roll.

Taken with a huge spoon of unquestioning acceptance Stephen King's Pet Sematary is a good horror tale in the best traditions of Tales from the Crypt or even Goosebumps. It's incongruous and divergent narrative is distracting but does play with some deeply disturbing ideas and some genuinely gruesome and gratuitous slashing and killing that while not quite up there with the surreal exploitative zombie nonsense coming out of Italy the decade before, still stands out. With a touch of The Exorcist, a touch of Evil Dead, and a touch of kids Saturday night horror it's a bit of a mixed bag but one with solid acting, solid production and one I actually rather enjoyed, probably more than I feel I should have done.

While it is quite hard to take something that seriously when you feel it could all have been easily avoided by merely putting up a fence, watching your kids when they're playing next to a road and choosing not to resurrected loved ones in ground deemed cursed and evil. Still, I'm well used to watching films firmly tongue in cheek these days, and definitely more lenient when there's undead death munchers involved. So let off the hook somewhat I'll recommended it, 7/10. 

Steven@WTD.

Dawn of the Living Dead (Evil Grave: Curse of the Maya) - review

2004 (USA)

2005 Lighthouse DVD R(2)

Contains spoilers.

Writer / Director / Producer David Heavener's Evil Grave: Curse of the Maya aka Dawn of the Living Dead is not a good film. Let's not mince words; it's god awful and I could easily concentrate the review on tearing it a new one, but maybe I'm mellowing as I get older as I'm instead going to focus on the few interesting things Heavener does bring to the undead party. For all the woeful acting, turgid dialogue, incoherent, laughable narrative and technically poor film making I'll concede the zombies themselves are actually ok, and the hokey mysticism that lies at the heart of the story is actually curious and almost refreshingly original.

The most ill suited couple I think I've ever witnessed on screen, ageing Dr Jeffrey Morgan (Joe Estevez, the poor man's Martin Sheen), and his much younger fiancée Renee Summers (Amanda Bauman, who must have been the best actress they could find that could both semi-act and semi-take her clothes off) have purchased a dilapidated murder house (off eBay) on the California / Mexico border. The peace and solitude of the desert, Dr. Morgan believes will help Renee recover from her various mental illnesses brought on by the death of her daughter who had been taken off her because of her various other addictions. No sooner have they started to make home though, Renee meets Michael (David Heavener), a local wind turbine engineer, and sleaze, who she immediately strikes a rapport with, and she starts having dark visions and dreams about the family that used to occupy the house before, and how they were killed.

I'm going to spoil the story not in so much as it's rambling, full of cliché and badly presented but I don't think anyone would really care, and I kind of need to, to look at the Mayan zombie family in any detail. We learn through flashback, they were murdered and not given the proper burial their Belize traditions dictated. So as is the South American way, ahem, the idea is they've risen from the dead with an insatiable hunger for five suns, before the Mayan death gods get to suck them through a cosmic tornado to Xibalba, the Mayan underworld. Their only hope is that Renee can utilise her visionary 'gifts' to understand what's going on and perform the relevant ritual to get them into the cosmic cornfield and heaven first. It's a bold idea and certainly adds some colour to the normally drab b-movie zombie narrative (looking at you The Asylum) but unfortunately it's all bit too much hokum and laughably far fetched, than dark, sinister and supernatural.

Now I've read a little about Xibalba and it wouldn't be a stretch to believe the Mayan people had sophisticated death rituals especially for those who had been unjustly slain, but in my admitted frugal research I've not seen any reference to men, women and children pulling themselves out the earth to chase, play with, and ultimately gorge themselves on any and everyone in the vicinity. I'm guessing Heavener had a semi traditional idea based on Mayan folklore and granted himself some pretty broad licence to play. The Vasquez zombie family are a motley group, well presented with a primal, demonic and down right nasty appearance and set of behaviours. They're arrival is almost always met with Renee hearing the voice of the young daughter cry out 'momma, help me' and the camera panning Sam Raimi style to a first person perspective and all the guttural grunting you'd find in Evil Dead and the effect still works. I'd also go as far as saying other than the comically bad zombie grunt conversation between daughter and family near the end their arrival is always a highlight and one area Heavener clearly has a film making understanding of.

Until some of the final exposition I was starting to see the little critters as revenants back from the dead to wreak vengeance on the living but as the hunger was explained more as a passive act I'm not so sure. The unborn embryo brought back as a baby zombie by the lords of death to bring final vengeance at the end might well classify as revenant but by this point the whole film had degenerated to such a total and utter farce I didn't know what to think.

Despite laughing uncontrollably on more than one occasion and quite frankly in awe at the awfulness at what I was watching, in no way could this be classified as a comedy. Even during the ridiculous fifteen minutes too long finale I couldn't help but think Heavener's decision to play this whole film mostly dry was a little ambitious given the obvious finite resources and talent. The baffling inclusion of a wandering posse, half way through, just to provide a half hearted striptease and then have an opportunity to have a few zombie killings demonstrates the struggle Heavener was undoubtedly having with the films identity and its lack of content. It is dry but at times farce and the forced topless scenes were included no doubt at a moment of crisis when all involved realised just how bad things were going and were desperate to add something that might sell a few copies. I'm in no way going to recommend this even as something to drink too and laugh at for it's failings. It's as I've said a bad film, that outstays its welcome even with the main story finishing at the hour mark and little to no redeeming qualities. There's plenty of better awful b-movie zombie films out there so don't be tempted by the cosmic corn, 2/10.

Steven@WTD. 

Nightmare City (City of the Walking Dead) - review

1980 (Italy / Mexico / Spain)

2008 Blue Underground DVD R(All)

Contains mild spoilers.

One thing Umberto Lenzi's silly little sordid orgy of gore is not, is dull. Now I've watched all manner of continental eighties zombie madness but nothing had quite prepared me the no nonsense, frenzy of violence that spilled so quickly out of the unannounced Hercules military aircraft, and marked the start of a good hour or so of audaciously unapologetic in your face bloody fun. Where was the good hour of faintly trite and badly acted build up? The slow belief / disbelief back and forth and small scale micro control of the situation so that it only effected a small band in an isolated setting?  They land a plane in broad daylight at the main airport, they spill out with camera's rolling and a full military presence and not a single fuck is given. It's as full on as it sounds, it's Nightmare City; and one has to applaud Lenzi for it.

Don't get me wrong. It's still a low budget bastard horror of the eighties with a mixed bag of acting, effects and dialogue. For every brilliantly staged and shot axe to the head or naked boob sliced off (yes really) there's all manner of quite frankly half hearted amateur knife attacks or neck sucks. Also for every semi-coherent, semi-well-delivered reaction to the unfolding carnage there's an excruciating over worked line about radiation and hyper tissue regeneration.

Television news anchor Dean Miller (Hugo Stiglitz) just happens to be at the airport when it all kicks off. He's there to meet a professor who can shed light on a recent nuclear accident (hence the radiation) and when the airport alarms go off he can't help but stick his reporter's nose. There really isn't much more to the narrative. He has a wife Dr. Anna Miller (Laura Trotter) who works at the hospital that soon joins in the tsunami of destruction, and there's a military presence which whilst keen to contain the situation are just as interested in avoiding a more national panic, and that's it. The narrative, such as it is, is the vehicle to allow the irradiated sick and depraved zombie like blood suckers to reek havoc on all and sundry, and for Lenzi to fashion a competent video nasty for a market that couldn't get enough.

I should mention the faint esoteric pseudo implied clairvoyance ramblings from Sheila Holmes (Maria Rosaria Omaggio), the wife of one of the Majors, and the equally daft and confusing existential ending but I didn't take any of this too seriously and suggest it was added more as an after thought than as a central idea. Dellamorte Dellamore or The Beyond this is not.

It's also worth mentioning despite all the unsavoury blood shed and dark themes it never really comes across a horror film but more of a disaster one, and the zombies reflect this. Their first appearance is sudden and all consuming. They stream from the plane like deranged mad-men throat slitting, stabbing, shrugging off shots to the body and clearing the soldiers and airport staff like a tidal wave of death. What's also clear is we're not in Romero's world. There's no slow gait, no shuffling and groaning and no 'walking dead' approach. They're fast, they're seemingly intelligent, if now entirely lacking a moral or sympathetic compass and they also appear to react to physical pain. It was during this initial attack, watching one of the attackers pull away from biting his victim only to wipe the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand I realised all was not straight forward.

Fortunately for us, all is actually revealed during a scene of such unashamed, unnecessary and over complicated explanation to become laughably brilliant. High levels of radiation have caused hyper-tissue regeneration to render the victim's indestructible and "abnormal strengthening of the cells vital qualities has increased their direct genetic capacity" granting increased physical capabilities, with a caveat that this is all at the expense of the efficiency of their red blood. It's a load of old tosh but it's good earnest tosh. Basically, they're alive, indestructible apart from the old noggin, they're strong, fast, they retain the memories to shoot guns, cut phone lines and they're singularly driven to replace the red blood cells they're rapidly losing. Lenzi himself didn't necessarily see them as traditional zombies, but with the loss of conscious will, the lack of 'self awareness' and they're unquenchable hunger they're zombie and a dangerous one to boot in my book. Add their faster turn of pace, their influence on the genre shouldn't be dismissed either, and it's hard not to see their impact in zombie's that came much later, with Boyles' infected top of the list.

In your face carnage and bloodshed from the get go, unwavering pace, gratuitous gore and unnecessary nudity; it has everything one would want or expect from an eighties video nasty. Lenzi's zombie opus is unapologetically rough and obnoxious but it's a delight to get swept away in. Big scale with limited resources undoubtedly brings with it problems, but if one is able to ignore all the background faux pas, the occasional excruciating exposition (the anti-nuclear monologue near the end is especially bad) and wooden acting there's a corking good b-movie here to whoop along to. A surprising gem, 7/10.

Steven@WTD.

(Zombie) Death House - review

1987 (USA)

2010 Excalibur DVD R(2)

Contains mild spoilers.

Death House or Zombie Death House as it was renamed when given a new cover when it came to VHS is an overly complicated, confusing, exploitative, low budget, badly acted shambles of a film. Put together in the US and starring and directed by John Saxon, it's an Italian 80s gore laden gratuitous pile of nonsense yet not actually Italian, but American, and missing that special European surrealist something that somehow lets the likes of Zombie Flesh Eaters, Hell of the Living Dead etc. get away with it. It's not a bad-bad film, and it's hard to list exactly what it's not doing in comparison, but it just doesn't really ever light much of a fire.

Dennis Cole is Derek Keillor, a purple heart Vietnam veteran who desperate for work has agreed to work as chauffeur to mob boss Vic Moretti (Anthony Franciosa). In a convoluted and quite frankly unnecessary preamble to get Derek incarcerated on death row (the death house) there's a long winded tale of treachery, murder and infidelity, and there's car chases, shooting, fights and boobies. It's not that bad, but it does drag on far too long detracting somewhat from the main reason one would watch such a film: slobbering death munchers and total carnage.

Being on death row, it turns out, is not the worst thing in store for Derek. The heart of the film is about a highly experimental and morally dubious behavioural modification program being run at the prison where inmates act as guinea pigs for special privileges, namely, and I quote, booze and pussy. Wanting to try something a bit more risky, strong, but extremely misguided patriot Colonel Gordon Burgess (John Saxon) convinces the prison warden to inject one of the inmates with the highly dangerous and untested HV-8b which, you guessed right, has some quite severe and unexpected consequences.

It's all a bit of a slow ride to be honest. By the time Adams (Earl Johnson), the second inmate injected (yes, the first thing one would think to do after a person's skin starts falling off and they need to be double sedated and double straight-jacketed to stop them wanting to kill everyone is inject a second person) starts his rampage we're nearly half way through the film. It doesn't stop there either. For every head crush, arm severing, throat slashing, decapitation and pick axe through the chest there's a tedious amount of fannying about from characters you never find yourself invested in. The gore is good, don't get me wrong, it's strong, unashamedly over the top and in keeping with the Fulci and Italian shock tradition. It's also well presented and every bit as uncomfortably funny as you'd want, it's just surrounded by too much mediocrity to hold the film up on its own.

Now we come to the big one. Up until the last ten minutes I'd written the inmates off as deranged but alive and not actually that zombie-ish in any traditional manner. Yes they're skin's peeling off and they've taken leave of their senses to become homicidal manic killing machines but they're still very much alive; also remember the word zombie was only added to the title of the film on its VHS release. Yet, ten minutes to go without previous suggestion, the super-soldiers on mass decide they are in fact interested in eating one people, hunting in packs and shuffling about with Saxon suddenly fully invested in full on traditional iconic (albeit a bit too iconic at times) zombie imagery. It's good stuff, if a little late and a little incongruous with what we've had to put up with for an hour and twenty.

(Zombie) Death House is as bad as it sounds, yet has a bizarre kind of charm that those who are drawn to off the beaten track quirky low budget gratuitous cinema will somehow get some joy from it. A zombie / gangster / prison / government-conspiracy narrative mash-up makes watching it for story reasons hard work, yet it's too invested in said narrative for the shock-horror to take the focus and make up for it. What we're left with is something that rarely works as horror or a drama; an acquired Italian delicacy with Monterey Jack instead of Parmesan. It's hard to recommend yet I feel it's one, should you get the chance, you ought to indulge in, 4/10.

Steven @ WTD.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl - review

2003 (USA)

2011 Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment 1-4 Box Set Blu-ray R(A/1 B/2)

Contains spoilers.

I was in two minds as to whether to review this film in full or not. One, it has that unfortunate quality of being so damn popular and so damn old everyone who was ever going to see it has done so and already made their mind up as to whether it's a bit of harmless swashbuckling family fun or tepid piratey flotsam and an insult to ol' Edward Thatch. And, two, strictly speaking the cursed zombie-like crew of the Black Pearl captained by Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) aren't actually zombies or even really that dead. Still, there is a little ambiguity and I have gone to the trouble of watching it so I might as well throw my thoughts out.

I'm on the side that the film itself is actually quite good, and arguably the best of the series. Sumptuously shot by director Gore Verbinski with great stunts and effects it flows effortlessly with an interesting albeit not particularly taxing narrative and is everything you'd really want from a big budget family blockbuster. It was far better than I remembered it and I would certainly recommend it to those on the fence on whether it's worth going back to.

The story? You'll remember all this when I tell you. There's some Aztec gold and Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) of the Black Pearl as a scruffy unscrupulous villainous pirate, decided he wanted it. However on the way, his equally scruffy villainous etc, first mate Barbossa and crew decided to mutiny, leave him marooned him on a small desert island and take it for themselves. This wouldn't have been such bad plan if the gold wasn't cursed.

It's Tales of Monkey Island, high jinx on the high seas, a traditional pirate story if you like, yet with a supernatural twist and a highly eccentric screen stealing performance by Johnny Depp. It's great, honest, and I'm not going to spend any more time on the film. You've seen it anyway. What interests me is the cursed not-zombie kind-of-undead crew.

Positives? The curse made Barbossa and the crew immortal. Negatives? They're now in an undead stasis appearing as ghastly skeletons under moon light. To be honest I'm not so sure it's such a bad trade off. I mean, if they just showed a bit of imagination I'm sure they could come up with a plan that balanced looking a bit macabre and sinister after hours, against the benefits of being impervious to injury and living forever.  Anyway, it seems their loved ones weren't too taken with the whole thing so they've decided they're now on an eternal quest to return all the 882 gold coins of Cortés in Isla de Muerta's treasure and make the blood sacrifice necessary to rid themselves of it. How they knew what to do to rid themselves of the curse is never explained and the whole thing is all a bit convoluted and contrived, but it does provide a semi-coherent narrative to drive the action and mayhem and it does provide a great excuse for brilliant and provocative edgy family horror-lite shenanigans.

They're not zombies in that they're not really dead, they're more cursed to appear dead, but just at night. They're still fully in possession of their souls, their personalities, dreams and desires. They can eat, drink, sing and rape and pillage to their hearts content and there's no revenant drive to seek vengeance; they are evil little oiks, but then they were before. There's no deadness, no loss other than probably being sexually shunned by everyone other than most dedicated Goth; also there's absolutely no eating anyone. There is a bit of The Blind Dead to proceedings, in the skeletal appearance, not strictly being zombies, and all the ships, but I don't feel it's especially intentional. 

With the curse lifted (sorry spoiler) they revert back to being fully alive, mortal and vulnerable once again to being killed. They're undead state was just that, a temporary state, a minor inconvenience.

So, not a zombie film but great family entertainment with a good bit of supernatural and some interesting playing with the alive/dead barrier. Set in the Caribbean it's easy to think Z, and later in the series with On Stranger Tides, which is also a highly recommended book by Tim Powers, we do get see some traditional voodoo walking dead but they're not here just yet. Great effects, great acting, there's nothing here to really complain about, though nothing that really sets the world on fire. Nonetheless it's nigh on perfect, well crafted Disney family fun, like I said, you've already made mind up about, 8/10.

Steven@WTD.