Schmollywood Babylon

Hands of the Ripper (Peter Sasdy, 1971)

I've watched three movies directed by Peter Sasdy today; Countess Dracula, Nothing But the Night and finally my favorite, Hands of the Ripper. The first two are excellent also and I’m surprised how serious both of them are. No tongue in cheek, no cheese. Deadly serious stuff - Countess Dracula is not a horror movie for example, it’s a melodrama with a few splashes of nudity. I totally forgotten that. Still like it a lot. Hands of the Ripper on the other hand (no pun intended) I've returned to many times over the years, from VHS to DVD and now blu-ray. My interest - like many others - in Jack the Ripper might be reason why I hold it close to my heart, but the thing is it’s not really about good ol’ Jack either, it’s about his daughter!

In some kind of alternate universe the identity of Jack the Ripper is known and we follow him during his last trembling minutes, chases by a mob to his house. He kills his wife but spares his daughter. Many years later she’s grown up you a pretty, young woman named Anna (Angharad Rees) who helps a not-so-serious psychic with fooling idiots to think there’s a spirit world. After a seance she’s about to be forced to have sex with a high profile politician, Dysart (Derek Godfrey), but something happens and the medium is found dead, stabbed right through her guts and the door behind her! Brutal! No one knows it’s Anna who’s done it, and one of the visitors to the seance, the kind doctor Pritchard (Eric Porter) takes care of her and wants to study her behavior, because he suspects she is the killer. But soon she feels the blood-thirst again and escapes…

I HATE writing recaps of the story. I really hates it. Not more than racism, famine, war, homophobia etc...but I still HATE doing it. Anyway, fuck it. For every time I see Hands of the Ripper the more impressed I become by it. It’s an odd story, behind the silly premise. It deals with psychoanalysis, which always is interesting, but foremost it’s a fantastic reason to see Angharad Rees doing a wonderful performance as Anna. I totally believe she’s dangerous. What’s even more fascinating is the relationship between Pritchard and Dysart, which at a first glance seems nothing special, until you realizes that the smartest and more complex character is Dysart, a corrupt politician who begins the movie planning to purchase an hour or so with Anna alone. Being an asshole he’s also right about most things that happens in the movie, when the more friendly and sympathetic Pritchard fails totally.

Not sure, but it might be one reason why some people whose reviews I've read dislike it. It’s because they’re forced to stand on the same side as a disgusting, terrible and extremely not-so-friendly man. A politician also, which makes it even worse. It’s an interesting choice and I wonder if that was the screenwriter’s intention or if it was something that evolved during the shooting of the movie? You could sense a dislike for psychoanalysis and instead support for the jolly good British conservative. I’m on the side of psychoanalysis, but watching a movie which takes a stance opposite is actually quite refreshing and edgy.

Another thing edgy is the raw atmosphere of Hands of the Ripper. It never get that shot-in-studio feeling, and the cinematography feels modern and a lot less fog-loving than what usually happens when you make a horror movie based on Jack the Ripper in the UK. Like my other favorite Hammer production, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, this one also have plenty - for the time - of gore and blood, which always feels quite shocking in a Hammer movie. Yeah, I know. Hammer Films where among the first to use graphic violence, but it’s extra nasty in this one. Me like a fucking lot!

Hands of the Ripper is one of Hammer’s finest films and it easily balances between the classic horror style of the 50’s and 60’s with the grittier, gorier and more adult horror of the 70’s. My wish now is that Hammer will revisit the Jack the Ripper mythology and unleash him once again in cinemas. You hear that, Hammer? I’m there for you if you need a hand to hold on to!

The Human Centipod Episode 15: The Possession of Michael Parkinson

Fred and Jason are back, with lame excuses for lack of transmissions, but a great episode diving into a piece of British television history, and the important influence of Ed and Lorraine Warren on Hollywood true-story horror!

Listen on Soundcloud, see below, or wait for it to come up on iTunes and Stitcher! 

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UK TV x 2: The Stone Tape (Peter Sasdy, 1972) / Alternative 3 (Christopher Miles, 1977)

Surprise! I write reviews from time to time, so it’s not only going to be my ramblings at the Schmollywood Babylon YouTube channel. I promise… ;)

Anyway...

It’s been one of those days today - active and busy, but still a typical sunday. And sundays are awesome. Not because a lot of people pilgrims to churches to give money to priests, pastors and whatever’s out there, feeding their life in luxury by thinking it’s for something good. Let me tell ya one thing, it’s nothing good in that, instead it’s just a way for the high and mighty to glorify themselves. But fuck them. It’s sunday and that means I’ve seen several movies, three so far - but I’m just gonna write about two of them now (the third will be the subject of the upcoming episode of The Human Centipod!).

Peter Sasdy’s The Stone Tape, written by the GENIUS Nigel Kneale (even if he hated Halloween 3 - but I forgive him!) is seriously one of the scariest TV-productions ever made. Maybe even it’s one of THE scariest movies ever made, believe me or not. Like almost all these UK productions from the 70’s you just need to accept the style of it: shot on some old-fashioned video system (I guess, I have no other explanation!), sometimes quite cheap sets and excellent actors doing their stuff like it’s on the theatre stage. Nothing wrong that, it’s like accepting the style of actors in Hong Kong or India - there’s storytelling traditions, nothing more than that. The Stone Tape is fronted by the groovy Michael Bryant and the dashing Jane Asher, both working for Ryan - an electronics company who just bought themselves a facility, an old castle/mansion/big stone house, especially to conduct experiments to find the new and cheap storage media - so even here Kneale was so before his time it’s almost silly. One day they experience a haunting, a woman appearing on top of some old stairs screaming like hell! Over and over again, the same scream, the same position. Can this be a recording? A new way of storing media, and not something supernatural?

This sets of one of the spookiest and most original ghost stories ever written and filmed. It’s very british, but that means there’s every little left to chance. It’s a very, very solid movie - as solid as the stones around the cast. There’s a lot of talking, which comes natural with these kind of productions, but what is said is also always there for a reason. Nothing is wasted. The ending a pure shocker, brilliantly directed by Sasdy (one of the finer genre directors in my humble opinions) and leaves you with a very uncomfortable feeling.

We jump a few years into the future, to 1977, when Alternative 3 was aired. It was originally meant as an April Fool’s joke that year, but due to a strike it wasn’t aired until june… which meant that it didn’t longer had a logical use as a joke. Instead it was aired and has since then alone created a conspiracy theory who’s alive and kicking even today. Tim Brinton is our host, a veteran newscaster and TV-man (and later also a member of british fascist party UKIP), which is the production’s biggest strength. Not that he was a asshole who later cuddled up with fascists, but that he was a boring, dry conservative without any sense of humour - at least on the outside. This gives Alternative 3 a shockingly effective realism. It’s not as realistic as, lets say 1992’s Ghostwatch, the acting and script is more forced, but the stiffness, the very serious tone completely lacking any kind of tongue-in-cheek, makes you believe in what you’re watching. The story yeah? It’s simple. It’s an epsiode of Science Report where they bring up the news that the UK is losing it’s greatest minds. Scientists especially are disappearing together with their families. What’s the reason behind this? Brinton and his team investigates, interviews friends and relatives, people in the business, finds some interesting footage which they during the final act manages to safe and air. And it’s out-of-this-world…

It’s fantastic premise and the storytelling is clumsy, but absolutely not bad. This is quality TV! But what’s even more bizarre is what happen the years after the first and (what I know) only airing on TV, a theory came up that what’s shown in this episode of Science Report actually is true. It’s all a cover-up! I’ve read articles on the net where people claim that it’s impossible to find a copy of it (it’s not, it’s out on DVD in the UK) and that the people involved are hard or impossile to find - not true either. People just want to believe in something. Alternative 3 is still very active in the conspiracy world (just try to google it, you will find a lot of very confused people) and it just proves how extremely effective it is as a TV-drama.

Both The Stone Tape and Alternative 3 is brilliant British TV, and a must for fans of well-written genre media. Both is out on DVD and easy to find, and there’s really no excuse for any of you for pass on these. They’re so damn good!

Whore (Ken Russell, 1991)

Many times I’ve been asked who my favorite filmmaker is, and oddly enough I never mentioned Ken Russell. Why is that odd? Because every time I’ve seen one of his films I’ve loved them to the degree I’ve felt they’ve changed my life. The first one was Crimes of Passion, which I actually think my father and his partner rented when it came and I happen to see it with them, later I bought it on tape and then on DVD. Where’s the blu-ray? Come on! Give it to me! And then we have Tommy, The Girlfriend, The Devils, Lair of the White Work, Trapped Ashes and so on… but it wasn’t until the other day I watched Whore for the first time.

We follow Liz (Theresa Russell), a sarcastic and not that stupid prostitute in her daily work as the “employee” under the evil and disgusting pimp Blake (Benjamin Mouton), who consider him to be a protector of his girls...but instead is just another violent, abusive man. During her nights on the streets she befriends the weed smoking Rasta (Antonio Fargas), who doesn’t want to have sex with her, just be her friend. Around this storyline is a series of smaller stories, some just a minute or two, others a bit longer. We meet customers, friends, family and cops - and we get to see another form of prostitution than what we saw the year before in Pretty Woman.

And what I’ve heard Ken Russell did Whore as an answer to Pretty Woman, and to quote The Los Angeles Times, August 19, 1990: “This is not going to be 'Pretty Woman.' It is not glamorized, it is unglamorized. This will be the gritty version of a whore's life.” ... "I think the male ego is going to suffer quite a shock.". And he’s true. This film speaks directly to those who have a glamorized view of prostitution and maybe most of all to the men who buy women for sex. I just need to close my eyes and see the carpet pulled from under the feet of certain men. Many times Liz, and Blake, speaks directly to the camera. In Liz case it’s to say it like it is. She’s not trying to either defend what she’s doing or put the blame on other people. It’s all about society, and what’s wrong with it. Blake on the other hand one time after another tells us what all abusive men think, that these women does it because they can’t do anything else, that they need men to survive, that they are oversexual etc etc. The same nonsense as usual. Rasta comes of as a pretty decent man, even if he’s crazy. He smokes his pot and enjoys life as much as possible.

But don’t worry, as usual there’s a lot of humor here. Whore borders to a black comedy, with some fantastic set pieces providing us with a dry, British sense of humor. Ken Russell himself shows up as a snarky waiter and there’s a lot of interesting cameos along the way, for example Jack Nance and Ginger Lynn. Oh, and an early part by Danny Trejo! Whore is an absurdist comedy mixed some pretty sharp drama. Theresa Russell rules this film, she’s perfect and delivers her monologues with an unique sharpness, often echoing the stuff Kathleen Turner did in Russell’s Crimes of Passion (aka China Blue), but doing it her own way. Their characters could be siblings actually, but in opposite ends of the red light district.

If people now could understand that humans aren’t merchandise this world we live in would be a lot better. But I doubt it will happen any day soon...

Zardoz (John Boorman, 1974)

I love John Boorman’s Zardoz for the same reason I love Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession: I always forget the killer ending. Both movies have a couple of huge twists, or at least twisted turning points, not in the same forced way as the Saw films or any giallo, but something so out of the blue it becomes brilliant. I’m very aware that few people use the word brilliant in the same meaning as Zardoz, but it’s hard to deny it actually works very good. It delivers the magic, the magic of absurdity - and therefore it’s a successful movie. But let me get back to that later.

In the year 2293, a post-apocalyptic future, a god named Zardoz is feeding the people with what he claim they need - in order to make them produce food for the rich. One day an exterminator, one of the soldiers - Zed (Sean Connery) - climbs aboard the floating stone god Zardoz and discovers it’s a ship, and it takes him back to a society which lives in overabundance - but also uses a form av terror to keep their people in control. If you disobey you’re aged and therefore loses your youthful attractiveness, growing slowly senile. Zed wants to change this, and soon the rich and powerful sees their community crumble by the hands of a brute.

Alright, back to the magic of Zardoz. On the surface a childish, strange flick with Connery wandering around in Scotland wearing silly clothes. But what make it work is that it’s constant. Like Logan’s Run it has a constant quality, which might be silly, but the constant silliness makes it very, very even. You know what to expect and it never bores you. Zulawski’s Possession don’t have that silliness, it just makes a sudden turn of events after teasing it for two hours. Zardoz takes the same form of absurdity and twists it a little bit more, referencing one of the most famous children’s stories ever written (which I won’t reveal here, spoilers you know) and that reference is there in front of us all the time, just like the killer in Deep Red. I love stuff like that.

In 1974 Sean Connery found himself in difficulties getting hired. After Bond he just didn’t get the quality parts he wanted, and he had to take on some weirder films. Zardoz is probably the most bizarre film in his filmography, but even odder is the director; John Boorman. Just coming from his biggest success ever, Deliverance, a gritty and modern thriller set in the wilderness of American - and suddenly he’s making a cheesy, wild, slightly pretentious sci-fi fantasy in the north of the British isles.

If it only had been an ounce more subtle, it would have been considered to be a modern classic instead of the mentally unstable cousin from the country, but ignoring that fact it still works very good. The idea of a bunch of unhappy elitists, living in some fucked-up countryside dream home, feeding the wild masses with an imaginary god who gives them food and weapons - and someone discovering this, crawling aboard the giant floating god - is fucking brilliant. The drama that unfolds afterwards is like a kinder version of Saló, but without the teens getting sexually molested and instead Sean Connery fucking his brain out on a Scottish farm.

What’s dated is of course the sets, the clothes, the use of mirrors and sometimes the very British theatrical acting. But because it’s there all the time you accept it. I wish Boorman would use more of the darkness and grittiness he gave us so brilliantly in Deliverance, or maybe the super-stylish beautiful Excalibur some years later. Zardoz is a wicked movie, but also chaotic and never really sure what leg it should stand on. So it’s one of those films that easily could alienate the viewers, and it’s done that a lot.

Maybe we, the viewers, needs to distance ourselves from the age it was made in, see it as a separate entity, a strange being of its own. One thing is for sure, Zardoz will stay with us, to the other side of the rainbow.

Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)

The first movie I saw in the series was Aliens, on a bootleg vhs actually, the longer cut of James Cameron’s beloved sequel. At the time it was among the best movies I ever seen, but when I later rewatched it I kinda felt more cold towards it. It felt way too noisy and empty. Empty barrels, you know. I feel I’ve been a bit too harsh in my opinions about during my life and I will try to watch it again soon, just to try to see it with new eyes. Ridley Scott’s Alien came much later, on a full screen VHS tape (not bootleg this time) - and it’s a radically different film, it’s pure horror set in space.

I didn’t plan to watch it yesterday, but after holding one of the many rip-offs in my hands I decided to go back to the movie that created it all, and therefore put the blu-ray disc into the player and leaned back for two hours of entertainment. The thing is, as you might now, it’s not that original. The storyline is “borrowed” from 1958’s fun monster romp It! The Terror from Beyond Space, directed by the very competent but storytelling conservative Edward L. Cahn. It’s a lot like Alien, some scenes are lifted directly to the 1979 classic. The scenes on the planet are heavily inspired by Mario Bava’s still stunningly beautiful sci-fi classic Planet of the Vampires from 1965, and even here we have some sequences that’s more or less identical to what Dan O’Bannon, Ronald Shusett, Ridley Scott and Walter Hill gave us in Alien.

But I’m not the one to complain! You know the old saying; Amateurs borrow, professionals steal. And what an awesome theft Alien is, not only inspired by the stuff you’ve seen in the two above mentioned sci-fi flicks, but also typical 70’s horror - I mean, the movie is almost slasher-esque at times - including every awesome ghost- and occult movie you might have seen. Without dealing with the supernatural, it just steals the atmosphere, injects some of patented 70’s grittiness into the storyline and voila, heeeeeeeere’s ALIEN!

Ridley Scott mixes two styles: the voyeuristic, distanced camera - capturing every part of the set design in long, wide shots. If Nostromo was up for sale these would be the images uploaded on the broker’s homepage. Then we have the documentarian Scott, carefully capturing the everyday life and talk of the crew, which is so naturalistic it almost makes me confused while watching the film. We’re there, together with Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skeritt (who I met once, very tired and bored man), Yaphet Kotto, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright and Ian Holm (what a cast by the way, it’s friggin’ amazing!). The cast is talking at the same time, moving around like there’s no camera around, no one to block their scenes. No one to control them. It’s not working every time, but in Alien it becomes the definition of perfection.

As a horror movie it’s almost too good. There’s no flaws in the storytelling, which is very rare. Even the works of director slash dictator Stanley Kubrick have flaws, so imagine this little horror movie set in space having nothing to complain about - at least from my point of view. I love how the realism is mixed with a good old monster flick, some blood and goo, an awesome monster and a surprisingly controversial order of deaths. I would dare to say the filmmakers makes a Psycho here, killing off the person you think will be the hero… quite early, eat least considering how that character is written.

Today when watching the movie and looking back at the release, legacy, sequels, spin-offs, games, graphic novels and everything else around it, it’s surprising it got so negative reviews… like "an empty bag of tricks whose production values and expensive trickery cannot disguise imaginative poverty" as Time Out wrote when it came out. That quote is of course pure bollocks, written by a semi-retarded donkey.

Alien IS a perfect horror film, it just doesn’t get much better than this.

Lol. My memory is getting very frail. This is actually the SECOND time I review Alien this fucking year! I realized it after publishing this new text. You can read the old one here, but the one you have in front of you know is the better one! 

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Scintilla (Billy O'Brien, 2014)

Have you seen Marvin Krenäs Blood Glacier? The similarity between that one and Billy O’Brien’s Scintilla is that you expect something and get something else. Not in a bad way, by no means, but for an unprepared viewer or just wants 90 minutes of simple entertainment this might be too much. Blood Glacier for example is on the surface a rip-off of The Thing, when in reality it actually is a relationship-drama about a man and his former girlfriend and their mutual love for a dog. Scintilla might seem like the normal “let’s go down in a bunker and get attacked by monster”-storyline, but its quite far from it. It’s more a… no, I won’t say anything. But it’s an oddity, in a good way.

The great John Lynch is the tough mercenary Powell who together with his team and the woman who hired them in the first place infiltrates a rebel base somewhere up in the former Soviet Union, to find “something” and bring it back to civilisation. At first everything goes well, one team goes undercover as computer experts, taking over the control room, and the rest goes down in the underground facility hidden under the base. But they’re not alone… Soon they find themselves fighting a very, very special enemy with an eye for killing!

It’s tricky to describe Scintilla, which is a mix of… horror, thriller, some drama, and a little bit of something else. The style is raw and dirty, with gritty and not especially pleasant locations - all shot in the north of England, West Yorkshire. The first half is quite normal, a typical team-on-a-mission movie, one those we’ve seen hundreds of times since the dawn of time. Maybe an exaggeration, but it’s a pretty common setup for a genre movie. The feeling of dread, shit and depression is high and just when it becomes a little bit annoying the movie takes another turn, slightly cheesy, but cool and that leads us into the rest of the story.

There’s a nice touch of retro design, a character who might been have stuck there since the early eighties or seventies, and that whole storyline changes the style completely. It’s still a rough and angry movie, but somehow gives it a magical injection of imagination - still very British, of course, but at least it triggers my mind. Not every question is answered, which is good, and and instead we’re almost left alone there with the other characters, trying to understand what the hell is going on and what we’re fighting against.

There’s gore also. No in any copious amounts, but there’s a couple of exploding heads and bodies, impalings, squibs and random bloodshed - all to keep the horror fans awake between the more serious strangeness. I admire Scintilla for not going totally commercial, to not be yet another SyFy movie (and I love SyFy movies!) - it’s a risk, of course, but hopefully it will find an audience who wants something else than the usual corridor/underground/catacombs-horror.

I wish I could tell you more about the plot and the cool effects, but I refuse to! This is something for you to discover yourself.

Raise the Titanic (Jerry Jameson, 1980)

I saw Raise the Titanic yesterday, the movie Clive Cussler hated so much he forbid anyone to make a movie based on his books up until Sahara in 2005, which he hated so much he once again forbid anyone to make more movies. I haven’t read any of his books, but either they’re perfect masterpieces that can’t be tainted by the cheap movie producers or Cussler just is a grumpy old bastard. Sir Lew Grade financed Raise the Titanic, which was meant to be a big budget, but not absurdly budgeted, adventure movie - but the production spiraled out of control and he ended up investing 40 million dollars into it… and when it finally was released it earned close to seven million. And that’s it. Rumour say it was a pretty big success in Japan, but obviously not enough to recoup the money. Sir Lew Grade (or Sir Low Grade as some of his critics called him) pulled out from the movie industry and we never saw anything like him again.

But is the movie any good?

You know, this is the first time I’ve seen it and I can’t understand the hate I’ve seen. Sure, it’s not a masterpiece, a hidden diamond among cinematic turds, but it’s hardly a bad movie either. I’ll admit I, and I’m sure many others, are skeptical about the storyline. How much fun could it be to see a movie about a bunch of stiff actors finding Titanic and then raise it from the depths? It’s like the antithesis of the then so popular disaster film, why not at least give us a flashback to when it went down? Surprisingly enough it turned out to be a cozy, not-that-awfully-acted adventure flick - if adventure mean serious men looking at maps, monitors and something out of frame which obviously amazes them (clue: a big ship). David Shelby is the hero Dirk Pitt, a rough not that fun guy Sir Lew Grade hoped would be a new James Bond or something. I think Shelby is pretty decent, better than what the rumour says, and around him is a good bunch of character actors.

What’s missing, as usual in these films, are women. There’s one, but I’ve already forgotten her purpose. She’s just there to lend some glamour to this show of grey, middle-aged men. Oh,it’s Anne Archer - I had to check IMDB to remember. It’s not her fault, she’s just a victim of the lavett-loving patriarchal movie makers of the time - and I guess, grumpy old Cussler. Raise the Titanic is also packed with quite nice underwater footage and a sense of mystery, a low-key form of adventure which doesn’t involve action - it’s like All the President’s Men, a thriller who mostly deals with paperwork and telephone calls. Not comparing them in any other way, but there’s different kinds of genres within genres. What really impresses me is the miniature works and the scene where Titanic finally shows her ugly face above the surface is very impressive and super-detailed. A fantastic “miniature” (which I heard was quite big) in beautiful slow-motion for several minutes to the great score by John Barry.

That alone makes the whole movie worth watching. Also look carefully for the little joke the special effects people included on the boat, just when it’s totally above the water and we see the whole glory: one little (miniature) man frantically handling a pump up on the deck. Absurd, just like the flying cow in Speed 2, but a creative way of showing us that they had some fun on this production also.

But is it any good? Yeah, it’s a good movie. It won’t change your world, but for those of us who appreciates the seriousness of silly movies, this is a fine film. The actors are good, the special effects looks fantastic and the score is among John Barry’s best. The new blu-ray from Shout Factory looks fantastic and really brings forth the beautiful grittiness of it. A recommended buy for aficionados of big flops and underrated films.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (Tony Randel, 1988)

I’ve seen Hellbound: Hellraiser II so many times over the years now, from tape to blu-ray...and I’ve come to the conclusions it’s not the best in the franchise. Oh, don’t worry, I fucking love it. It’s an amazing piece of cinema; original, dark, adult - everything I want from a horror film, but the thing is that it also have some obvious problems with the budget, making more than a few scenes distractingly cheesy - from special effects and to just the execution of them. But hear me out, girls and boys: I don’t hate it and it’s close to my heart, but after seeing it so many times the technical problems with it is getting more and more obvious.

Yeah, you know me: I’m not the one to whine over bad special effects, I have imagination compared to those who constantly whine over even perfect digital effects where there’s no chance in hell they’re bad. I like the story, and maybe that’s what the problem lies. The story just doesn’t hold up well enough to make me ignore the budgetary problems. Lets take a look at it… Kirsty Cotton is back, as usual played by the great Ashley Laurence, this ends just hours after the first movie ends and Kirsty is locked up at a psychiatric clinic under the supervision by the sinister doctor Channard (Kenneth Cranham). This is not a big surprise, considering the stuff she experienced in her first adventure with the cenobites! Anyway, after a while Channards true plans are revealed - he wants to experience the power of the lamet box, and actually owns several of them, and by getting his hands on the mattress from Kirstys house he can evoke her evil stepmother, who joins him in getting in opening the portals to Cenobite hell!

There’s also a young girl who’s an expert on puzzles and a young doctor that falls in love with Kirsty, but both of them feels more like baggage to the story, and distracts the story from what’s interesting: Channards obsession with the box and Kirsty’s fight to get away from yet another meeting with the Cenobites. Those two stories are the key to the story, and the rest is just fillers. You never really feel the young girl is in danger and the good doctor feels like something they put in the movie to attract a female audience, even if he actually looks pretty strange. There’s sequences of pure BRILLIANCE in Hellraiser 2, for example when Channard first tries out the mattress, or a couple of scenes down in “hell” (or what it’s suppose to be). The Leviathan is a brilliant invention and even if the special effects never is 100% successful those scenes a fantastic, a trigger of imagination like never before or after.

I really like the twist with Kirsty’s father, something that wasn’t planned from the beginning and actually is part of a rewrite, which both made it less connected to the first film, but in a creative way found a new path to follow. Except this the story just goes on without much trouble, there’s rarely a sense of danger or dread - something the first film had, but it also felt more like an extremely dark relationship drama, just with a very macabre gory twist. In Hellraiser 2 it was already part of a high concept mythology, which the producers came back to in movie after movie - some good, some bad, but most of the times better than people say. I don’t see either this one or the first movie as holy grails, but instead highly original and sometimes intelligent horror films - always ready to let us expand the universe of Pinhead and friends.

Ghost Son (Lamberto Bava, 2007)

You gotta give it to the Italians, no matter when or how or who… they all seem to want to create WTF moments to taint your mind with. I didn’t expect much from Ghost Son, a movie I’ve stayed away from - even if I own the DVD - for some time now. I thought it would be the ordinary Sixth Sense/The Others etc-style ghost film, which I’m kinda bored with nowadays, but instead I got a decent piece of cinematic trash - not fantastic in any way, but more fun than I ever could imagine. Lamberto Bava have mostly been involved in TV since the late eighties, but in 2005 he released the extremely trashy and silly The Torturer and somehow someone decided to give him a lot of money to shoot this film in South Africa with a great cast and an absurd premise.

Laura Harring and John Hannah is Stacy and Mark, a VERY happy couple living on a ranch in Africa. Not sure what they’re doing there, but they’re in love and laughs and makes love a lot. Just like happy couple do in movies. One day Mark has some pointless mission to do and takes his jeep… and crashes it! He’s trapped under it and dies in front of Stacy’s empty eyes. After the usual movie-mourning (stand looking at a grave, hugging the older dear friend - here, as usual, played by Pete Postlethwaite) she’s starts to feel depressed...and soon finds out she’s pregnant! Everything is fine… except that Mark, for some never-explained reason, takes over the body of the little boy and tries to kill Stacy! Scary!

Sorry for the sarcasms, but it’s hard to take Ghost Son serious. It just takes itself way too serious for a movie about a possessed killer-baby. But don’t worry, I wasn’t bored - which is the most important thing for me. The only bad movies are the boring ones, you know. This obviously have a decent budget, a quite competent cast (which also includes the always reliable Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni) and fun and cheesy effects by Sergio Stivaletti. It never becomes scary, not even when Bava REALLY tries. It’s something with a ranch in South Africa that’s not scary at all...but I guess the biggest fault is in the script, which just goes on and on with platitudes and clichés. The cast fights with their lines and somehow carries it to the end, but this is not much different from the happy seventies or eighties where imported international stars slummed in Italian co-productions for an okay-ish paycheck.

But there’s fun stuff here, just wait! The film itself looks gorgeous and professional and is packed with stuff you never seen before, for example an infant fondling his mothers breast in a sexual way...or the same infant, in a very extended scene, trying to bite off his mother’s nipple! When the baby starts talking with John Hannah’s voice it’s more hilarious than scary! This goes on and well, it’s more silly than anything else. My favorite scene is without a doubt the vomit-scene, which is so unexpected it's like from a Monty Python skit! Check out my Instagram for a visual representation of this or just check the video down below.

Ghost Son is not a good movie in the traditional sense, but it’s a lot of fun in a slow-moving boring way. The way I like movies. Not too exciting, not too fun, but still with a touch of exploitative entertainment.