Sex, Leins & Videotape #10: Halloween Horror Special! With Halloween fast-approaching Paignton film critic Tom Leins casts a critical eye over this week’s most demented horror DVDs!
If reports are to be believed, Drag Me To Hell (Lionsgate) heralds a return to the ruthless 1970s horror aesthetic favoured by the genre’s staunchest fans. But does Sam Raimi’s new movie cut the mustard?
The narrative concerns Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), an ambitious loan officer who tries to impress her boss by denying an elderly gypsy woman an extension on her home loan. This move backfires when Mrs Ganush puts a curse on the unfortunate Christine, setting into motion a succession of gory events. As you might expect, Raimi’s tongue is wedged firmly in-cheek throughout, and his lightness of touch ensures that laughs and shocks mingle amiably throughout. As cartoon-ish and over-the-top as any of Raimi’s Spiderman movies, Drag Me To Hell is an enjoyably odd excursion into the depths of one of horror’s most vivid imaginations. Its raw power may have been overstated by jaded horror fans keen to sample some fresh entertainment, but Drag Me To Hell is an imaginative slice of contemporary horror unlike anything else on the market. In lesser hands this story may well have been a disaster, but Raimi pulls it off effortlessly. Good fun.
Horror remakes are still big business in Hollywood, but with many of the key titles of yesteryear already used up and spat out, movie moguls desperately need a new source of inspiration. Strangely enough, censor-baiting ‘Video Nasties’ are next on their list, and the latest offering to slide off the conveyor belt is a remake of Wes Craven’s notorious The Last House On The Left (Universal) 
. After being rescued from a pair of cops transporting him to prison, notorious convict Krug takes refuge in an archetypal fugitive motel. Out of his depth, Krug’s good-natured son Justin befriends a pair of girls and brings them back to the motel to smoke dope.
Unfortunately for them, Krug senses an opportunity for mischief and drives the girls into the woods for all manner of unpleasantness. After raping one of the girls and leaving her for dead, Krug and his unhinged cohorts opt to take shelter from the storm at a secluded woodland holiday home. In a sick coincidence, this residence actually belongs to the parents of their last victim! A blood-soaked Mari manages to crawl home later that night, and it isn’t long before the penny drops with her increasingly uneasy parents. They realise that their only option is to turn the tables on their psychotic house guests and take them apart, piece by piece… It may be gratuitous in the extreme, but the whole movie is infused with a grubby reality that gives the gleefully nasty scenes a visceral edge. Not a classic, but a queasily effective depiction of a truly savage night.
Horsemen (Icon) is a hellish serial killer thriller about a vicious group of degenerates who are enacting a series of gruesome murders inspired by the prophecies of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Famine, Pestilence and Death. Aidan Breslin (Dennis Quaid) is the tormented cop charged with stopping their heinous activities. An embittered widower who ignores his troubled children, Breslin immerses himself in his increasingly grisly case-load, before realising that his involvement is no mere coincidence, and that the Horsemen have an axe to grind with him personally.
Serial killer flicks are nothing new, and Horsemen is essentially a slick, stylish mash-up of Saw-style ‘Torture Porn’ and Se7en-style mind games. Fine influences, admittedly, but Horsemen never really emerges from the respective shadows of its forebears. Former music video director Jonas Akerlund delivers the goods with a vividly-realised picture that makes good use of his flashy skills, but at best Horsemen is merely a triumph of style over substance. World-weary Quaid is great as the emotionally-ravaged cop, and he deserves special kudos for managing to keep a straight face as the movie edges towards its ridiculous conclusion! It may be far better than Akerlund’s dreadful debut movie Spun, but Horsemen never quite elevates itself above passable B-movie status.
A recognisable surname can be a blessing or a curse in the movie industry, but when your father is a living legend you have to be a brave man to follow in his footsteps… Staunton Hill (Anchor Bay) is the second feature from Cameron Romero (son of zombie kingpin George). Mercifully Romero Jr. steers clear of the zombie nation, instead concentrating on that other horror stock-in-trade: backwoods brutality.
The year is 1969, and a group of young idealists are hitchhiking their way across Virginia on their way to a political rally in Washington DC. Tired of trudging through the forest, the group accept a lift from a friendly truck driver. However, his temperamental vehicle breaks down shortly afterwards and the posse are forced to take shelter in a seemingly deserted farm-house. Suffice to say, the farm isn’t deserted: it is actually home to a man-child named Buddy, his morbidly obese mother Louise and maniacal grandmother Geraldine.
After a warm welcome, things soon turn ugly, and the family’s deranged ulterior motives quickly become apparent. What it lacks in originality Staunton Hill makes up for in queasy atmospherics, but the well-worn plot carries few surprises. Although the sluggish flow is tempered by some enjoyably grisly theatrics, the dubious sub-plot is badly handled and reduces the film’s impact. Indeed, as the film enters its final third, Romero’s inexperience becomes painfully obvious, and the movie ends up resembling a particularly gloopy mess. Back to the drawing board?
