DVD Review: Road Games (1981)

The Hitchcockian thriller Road Games won Australian filmmaker Richard Franklin (a lifelong Hitch devotee) his chance to direct, the surprisingly good, Psycho II (1983).  Hitchcock's influence is apparent right from the opening scene: a sinister motel, a naked girl and a psycho-killer who murders her and dismembers her body off screen.  His shadowy activities arouse the suspicion of American truck driver, Quid (Stacy Keach), whose phone calls to the police are ignored.  Quid soon finds himself being tailed by the killer in his grimy van.  He picks up gutsy runaway Hitch (Jamie Lee Curtis) and they play guessing games with the psycho's modus operandi, culminating in a taut scene where Quid confronts what he thinks is the killer in a toilet cubicle while Hitch investigates his van.  When Quid returns, Hitch and the van have disappeared, leaving him the police's prime suspect. 

Franklin provides some nicely tense moments and a handful of shocks, but one hesitates to call this an unsung classic.  The story (co-devised by Franklin and screenwriter Everett De Roche) meanders with characters talking an awful lot, but revealing very little, as the tension dissipates.  Keach makes for an affable, articulate hero ("Just because I drive a truck doesn't make me a truck driver") - though Quid remains something of an enigma.  Jamie Lee Curtis is strong throughout her few, brief scenes, but Hitch's back-story (the runaway daughter of an American diplomat) is too slight to be anything more than a plot wrinkle. 

DVD Review: Bride of Re-Animator (1990)

After a 5-year hiatus, those mischievous abominators-of-nature Drs. Herbert West and Dan Cain are back, this time under the direction of shock godfather Brian Yuzna. Sadly, though the grungy production values, hammy acting and gleefully silly prosthetic FX will appeal to genre fans, this is a disimprovement from Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985).

After a pointless prologue set in wartorn Peru, West (the always watchable Jeffrey Combs) and Cain (Bruce Abbott, sporting an unspeakable mullet and all the charisma of an office partition) are back in good old Miskatonic University Hospital, Massachusetts. Far from discouraged by the massacre precipitated in the first film by his ‘research’ into reanimating dead tissue, West has redoubled his efforts to prove that consciousness pervades all flesh by reanimating individual body parts.

Meanwhile Police Lieutenant Chapham (Claude Earl Jones), whose wife was killed in the original Miskatonic Massacre, doggedly continues his investigation into West’s macabre practices. Irritated by his attentions, West kills and subsequently reanimates him. The crazed doctor then reveals to Cain his plans to create a whole organism from disparate body parts. Initially Cain is horrified, but relents when West suggests including the preserved heart of Cain’s dead sweetheart Megan.

Coming Soon: Grindhouse Trailer Classics

Grindhouse seems to be a word to  drop for just about everyone operating on the shock/horror genres thse days, but if you want to know the real meaning of the term, you might want to check out Grindhouse Trailer Classics.

Essentially, it's a two hour collection of promo, trailers and clips from movies operating outside the mainstream in the 60s 70s - so expect sex, drugs, violence, destruction, monsters and freaks, all compiled by an expert of the genre - Marc Morris (co-author of Shock! Horror! Astounding Artwork from the Video Nasty Era).

With titles like They Call Her One Eye, The Thing With Two Heads, Three On A Meathook, Ilsa: She Wolf Of The SS, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Blood Sucking Freaks, The Corpse Grinders and Wham Bam Thank You Spaceman, you should know what to expect. And if that's not enough, there's also a feature on the history of grindhouse, along with  sleeve by horror artist Graham Humphreys, the artist behind the theatrical poster campaigns for The Evil Dead and A Nightmare On Elm Street, and whose artwork has graced the album sleeves of bands such as The Cramps and The Lords Of The New Church.

Grindhouse Trailer Classics will be released on DVD by Nucleus Films on 24th September 2007. Expect to pay around £14.99.

More about the DVD at Amazon.co.uk

DVD Review: Naked You Die (1968)

Naked You Die (a.k.a. The Miniskirt Murders or Nude... si muore, 1968) is an entertaining Italian thriller recently released by Dark Sky Films on NTSC Region-1 DVD. The film's script was co-written by horror legend Mario Bava and directed by the talented Antonio Margheriti, who made lots of great gothic horror films during the sixties and seventies such as La Vergine di Norimberga (a.k.a. The Virgin of Nuremberg, 1963), Danza Macabra (a.k.a. Castle of Blood, 1964) and La Morte Negli Occhi Del Gatto (a.k.a Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye, 1973).

The story takes place at an elite boarding school for girls that's hidden away in the hills. The isolated school becomes the perfect hunting ground for a cold-blooded killer who goes on a deadly murder spree. As the corpses of the pretty young students begin to pile up, the police are brought in to investigate and the school supervisors become suspect.

Naked You Die has lots of interesting twists and turns to keep audiences guessing. Margheriti's stylish directing adds to the suspenseful mood of the film and the catchy theme song Nightmare by composer's Carlo Savina & Don Powell gives the movie a groovy edge.

DVD Review: The Comeback (1977)

The Comeback (1977) is an entertaining slasher movie made by the British exploitation filmmaker Pete Walker (I previously reviewed his film Cool it, Carol! here). The Comeback is not as popular as some of Walker’s other horror films such as Frightmare and The House of Whipcord, but I think it’s worth a look if you enjoy late seventies thrillers. The movie clearly shows it’s age and has plenty of kitsch value, but it also has a certain vintage charm that might appeal to retro movie fans.

The movie stars the American jazz vocalist Jack Jones as a recently divorced and aging pop star named Nick Cooper, who’s desperate to make a “comeback” after a long hiatus from the music business. Nick’s manager Webster (David Doyle, or better known as John Bosley from the Charlie’s Angels television show) rents him an old British country estate with a recording studio and sets him up with two devoted servants that tend to his every need, but Nick finds the place rather spooky and soon after he arrives he begins hearing frightening screams in the night and seeing grizzly visions of a decomposing corpse. In the meantime, visitors to his abandoned penthouse are being brutally murdered by a creepy masked killer.

The rest of the cast includes Pamela Stephenson as Nick’s love interest Linda and a few regulars from director Pete Walker’s other films including Bill Owen & Sheila Keith as the old servants Mr. & Mrs. B.