Film
Reviews
HORROR
MASTERS OF HORRO
(18) 1684mm
(Anchor Bay UK DVD retail/rental)
R SERIES 1: VOLUME 1
Whenever a compendium of horror films comes along, you know you’re in for a mixed bag. Even the old Amicus portmanteaus tended to contain at least one duff entry. These new one-hour films from some of the supposed greatest directors working in the horror genre were originally shown on US cable television. In the UK they’ll be presented in DVD batches.
In truth, they’re not all household names, yet the producers have brought some pretty auspicious figures to the table. Among the notables are John Landis, who’s not quite in An American Werewolf in London form with Deer Woman (0000 ), but still contrives to constantly amuse with the largely comical tale of a washed-up detective investigating the case of a comely native American woman who seduces the men of a country town. From
John Carpenter, there’s Cigarette Burns (.00
), which does for a horror
film what In the Mouth of Madness did for novels. It’s a semi-fairy tale narrative for film lovers, featuring the mandatory reclusive evil millionaire who employs an art house cinema owner with a bleak past to seek out a rare film that inspires death and destruction in its audiences. Joe Dante’s contribution, Homecoming, (0000 ) is a cartoonish satire which sees Iraq’s war dead, a generally benign regiment of zombies, reanimate to vote out the president. For the scene in which Karl Rove, or at least his obvious cipher, has his brains beaten out, it’s worth the watch alone. A lesser known figure, and producer of the series, Mick Garris, directs a fascinating tale, Chocolate (.000 ), in which a man begins to receive psychic signals from a woman in peril from a violent lover. This latter shows the potential radicalism of horror in its exploration of gender identity, decentring the male sexual psyche to challenging effect. As with all good horror, the better of these tales explore and destabilise our ideological and gender identities. There are also radical intents with
Incident On and Off a Mountain Road, (0
) but the derivative rehashing
of Blair Witch and Texas Chainsaw cliches sinks it. So too, Sick Gifl
(O. ) contains too many hackneyed frights, ultimately inadvertently comparing its two lesbian protagonists with the creepy South American insects they collect to embarrassing effect. Stuart Gordon’s Lovecraft
rehash Dream in the Witch House (00
) also disappoints, given his
pedigree. But they’re worth a watch for genre buffs. Impressive extras include set reports, director interviews, storyboard galleries and much more. Best of all the second volume of this promising series comes out early in 2007. (Steve Cramer)
DOCUMENTARY UNKNOWN WHITE MALE (PG) 88min
(Shooting People DVD retail) 0...
Having lost touch with his pal Douglas Bruce. now a successful New York stockbroker. word came to Rupert Murray that Bruce had woken up one day With his previous (37 years wiped
(A. Loud
0 Clear
from his memory. Having fended Off other interested parties in the story. Murray flew to America. interviewing Bruce's stunned family and close acquaintances and engineering an awkward and painful reunion with Bruce's old mates back in Blighty. The core question seems to be:
how important to you is the past when it‘s been lost? For Bruce. disturbingly. fascinatingly, it seems utterly irrelevant.
At a time when the US was reeling with the stories of JT LeBoy (a fictitious writer) and James Frey (who made up chunks of his dramatic
UNKNOWN WWTEMALE
autobiography). many were sceptical about this 'true story' Of an amnesiac. As part Of the extras package. we catch up with our arnnesiac today and hear the filmmakers tackle the {ICCUSEJIIOIIS of fakery head on. (Brian Donaldson)
SPOOF COMEDY SIR HENRY AT RAWLINSON END
(12) 73min (Digital Classics DVD retail) 0...
Confoundedly eccentric. inordinately sharnbolic and downright hilarious. this one-of-‘a-kind British cinema oddity plays like a collaboration between Luis Bunuel and the Monty Python team. It's actually the fever dream of Vivian Stanshall (of The Bon/o Dog DOO- Dah Band fame). whose portrait of a raving lunatic English lord (blustery Trevor Howard) and his extended demented larnily was Originally written for radio (with the late. great John Peel). The film‘s director Steve Roberts. who contributes a very funny. enlightening commentary to the DVDs interesting extras. helped Stanshall to adapt his absurdist skits from airwaves screened in 1980. They include Sir Henry shooting his
servants and maintaining a POW camp on his estate (Knebworth House in Hertfordshire) long after the end of WWII, younger brother Hubert (Stanshall) fishing for submerged hairdressers in the pond, son Ralph playing billiards mounted on his horse. and the ghost of older brother Humbert (who was mistaken for a duck while absconding from an illicit tryst and accidentally shot) being exercised by a defrocked drunken clergyman (Patrick Magee). Roberts and the excellent cast do a fine job of visualising Stanshall's bonkers creations. but the dialogue. largely Sir Henry's. remains priceless: 'lf a thing‘s werth doing. it's worth forcing someone else tO dO it': ‘lf I want yOur opinion l'lI thrash it out of you': and 'I don't know what I want. but I want it now!‘ (Miles Fielder)
BOX SET
THE INGMAR BERG-MAN COLLECTION (18) 2820min (Tartan Video retail) 0...
For a filmmaker who's recently denounced Godard as a 'desperate' bore. Welles as a 'phoney' and Antonioni as someone who never learned his craft. Bergman wouldn't make much of a critic. But how does he compete with the people he condemns? This thirty- film box set puts Bergman under the harsh spotlight of a pretty hefty retrospective and. of course. while his comments on fellow auteurs don't much hold up. his own films
undeniably do. From the masterly pessimism Of Winter Light. which crams a life of spiritual pain chiefly into an afternoon. tO the essential two-hander. Persona. which no less successfully microcosms the crisis Of self and other. Bergman manages to master his craft and Offer up his own perspective on the world.
Whether working in monochrome (pretty much up to the end of the 603). or vividly. expressionistically in COIOur (The Passion of Anna and Cries and Whispers). Bergman's visual schema suggests an intense preoccupation with his own artistic vision and yet at the same time he clearly possesses a worldview. A film like Autumn Sonata is a character-stripping chamber piece that only Bergman could have made; but it also has much to say about any mother/daughter relationship. And what are we to make of one of the real discoveries on this DVD. FaroDokt/ment’? Here Bergman's documentarin explores the tiny island on which he lived. interviewing numerous locals and fretting about the island lifestyle giving way to the depletion of the seas resources. unthinking tourists and to a sense that life is going on somewhere else This is about Faro. but it could easily encapsulate most northern islands and many a southern one too. Once again Bergman achieves the universal out Of the specific. Extras include a 64 page booklet by David Parkinson.
(Tony McKlbbin)
ALL DVDS WERE REVIEWED ON A SYSTEM SUPPLIED AND INSTALLED BY LOUD 8: CLEAR
. Ax.“ '.*.C.\'.£ C..\E \tA \\\\\\ 1CL”..‘«CLLI.-\l§ Cx. .L’I\ ‘
46 THE LIST 130 Nov 14 Dec 2006