Review - The Battery (2012 - Dir. Jeremy Gardner)

Here we go then with Part Two of our Celluloid Screams 2013 coverage. The final reviews will be posted tomorrow night. Let's kick off with The Battery.

Being a film named after a baseball term is not good. The UK equivalent of baseball is rounders. And no-one watches or plays rounders once they've left school. Cricket, rugby, football, yes, rounders, no. It gets completely forgotten. Because it's rubbish. This could do with a remake where the main character has a cricket bat and some stumps. After the first innings they could get their wives to knock up a cracking cricket tea with fatty ham and malt loaf. Gorgeous. Then after the match they could leave their wives washing up and get straight down to the club for a few beers, leaving their children outside in the car with a bag of crisps and a glass of orange squash. If they're lucky.

The Battery is actually okay despite the baseball link. Two blokes Ben and Mickey are trying to survive the zombie apocalypse. Their plan is to keep moving. Well, Ben's plan is to keep moving. Mickey, being a bit on the romantic side, would rather bed down in a house for the night with a lovely lady. That's when the problems start.

A lot of people really rated this (it did come second in the audience vote after all). I'm not quite as impressed. It does well in focusing on the drama between the two characters rather than the zombies. I think I've wittered on about this before that zombie films are like Big Brother. They're not about fancy gimmicks and tweaks to the formula. They're about interactions between people. Put an interesting mix of people in the house or in a zombie apocalypse and you've got the basis for something special. Big Brother and a lot of zombie films forget this. The problem for me with The Battery was that the drama didn't interest me enough. It possibly needed editing to tighten things up a bit. One shot near the end when Ben is stuck in the car - and I can understand why they did it - went on a smidgen too long for my liking. Editing wouldn't have helped here though as it's all done in one shot.

It would have also benefitted from finishing a few shots sooner. Once Ben has his plan it would have been interesting to end there and leave it open. More post-film discussion would have been possible. As it is it's still pretty open but less so. 

For me this was an average experience. Admittedly they've done really well with a tiny budget, (it's way better than certain huge budget films like Prometheus and Pacific Rim and many other recent zombie films) but I can't escape the fact that it dragged for me. If they do a sequel get someone in cricket pads and I'm sold.
5/10
evlkeith

If you like this you could also try:
Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead.

Review - Jug Face (2013 - Dir. Chad Crawford Kinkle)

I was hoping that Jug Face would be about someone who has clay-like skin, a handle sticking out the back of their head and their mouth filled with gravy. It's not.

Ada (Lauren Ashley Carter) lives in a small community of shine drinking hillbillies. They worship a pit and regularly give it sacrifices. To find out who the next sacrifice is, the village potter receives a message from the pit and knocks up a jug (and here comes the reason for the title) with the face of the person to be next for the chop. I'd just slip him a tenner and a couple of raccoon hides to keep my face off any jugs. Ada isn't too keen on all of this malarkey, for numerous reasons, so tries to escape.

Despite it being about hillbillies it doesn't have many of the things you'd expect: no cannibalism, no deformed faces, and no making unwary travellers squeal like pigs. You do get moonshine drinking and incest for the entrance fee though. 

The best thing about Jug Face is the touching relationship between Ada and the potter Dawai (Sean Bridgers). It feels incredibly natural due to some cracking performances. I also liked how the killings were slightly surreal and suggested, rather than filmed in a more conventional way. They were still brutal yet different from standard fare.

On the downside, the ending should have been emotionally powerful. It wasn't. There was nothing wrong with the script or the acting, all the ingredients were there for a great finish. Except one. The music. The soundtrack did nothing to enhance the feelings created by the visuals. It just knocked about in the background shiftily trying to look (sound?) unobtrusive. Imagine the end of The Beyond without the music. It would be pretty average. Same with this.

If you fancy something original and a change from zombies, vampires and flesh eating rapist mountain men etc, this could well be up your street.
6/10
evlkeith

If you like this you could also try:
The Wicker Man, Big Jugs Jubilee 10.

Review - Chimeres (2013 - Dir. Olivier Beguin)

It's a bit on the unfair side for me to review this; I don't like vampire films. The closest I get to liking one is probably Near Dark or Dracula (1958) though even then I'm not overly impressed. Vampires hold no interest for me. That's just the way it is. Nevertheless, review it I will.

Alex (Yannick Rosset) is a photographer with an upcoming show at a gallery approaching. Unfortunately he has a minor accident that results in him being given a blood transfusion. From a vampire. Possibly.

That's part of the fun of this film, thinking about whether he is a real vampire or it's all in his head. Once this mystery is solved things take a distinct turn for the worse. It's a shame because the performance from his girlfriend Livia (Jasna Kohoutova) is very watchable. She sells the fact that she'll do anything for Alex very well, apart from when we get to the stupid ending. But that's more the writer's fault than hers. I won't comment on Rossets performance because he's (possibly) a vampire and I don't like vampires. One bit though - and again it's not his fault - is very irritating: the flashes of his supposed vampire face in the mirror. Visually he's just the same as virtually every other vampire and these flashes occur regulary. Very regularly. They somehow don't fit in with the tone of the rest of the film.

There is a nice little twist at the end and the film should have stopped straight after it. Instead we're treated to some bizarre vampire action that isn't in keeping with the overall feel of the proceedings. Kung fu. How comes vampires always know kung fu? (Except Christopher Lee, maybe.) It's rubbish and spoilt it for me. The very final shots pull it round and it finishes on a high note thankfully.

Despite not liking vampire films, this wasn't too painful. As a bonus Catriona MacColl is in it too as Alex's mum which means it can't be all bad.
4/10
evlkeith

If you like this you could also try:
Near Dark, Dracula (1958).

Review - The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears (2013 - Dir. Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani)

Oh dear. Where to start with this one. I'll put off the inevitable by giving you the synopsis first: Dan Kristensen (Klaus Tange) gets home one day to find his wife missing. Inexplicably the chain is still on the door. We then follow his attempts to find his wife, against the backdrop of a murderer on a spree.

The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears is a hard film to watch, gruelling in fact. This isn't due to any scenes of unpleasantness, but to the relentless arty shots that focus on style over any semblance of a story. Just have a look at the screenshots - they're gorgeous - shame it's so difficult to make any sense of them when they're linked together. I could vaguely follow parts of it, though as a whole, I've got no idea what was going on. Gialli aren't known for their logic but at least you can general work out what's happening. There is also a lot of repetition. Admittedly things change very slightly each time certain shots are shown. It's not enough to escape the tedium though.

It's more of a film based on sensation and suggestion. I left with an overall impression of eroticism, fetishism and murder, which in small doses is quite intoxicating. As a whole it's really hard work and for the last half, I just wanted it to stop.

And now, I'm going to stick up for it. In this risk-averse world where blandness is strived for and celebrated purely to maximise profits, filmmakers that go down such an anti-commercial route should be applauded. Supposedly in the audience at Celluloid Screams, one person loved this film and everyone else hated it. But the thing to remember is that one person - it could be you - loved it. Without the directors sticking to their plan of pushing a giallo to its limits, that person would have missed something special to them. When I think of my favourite films, most of them were very risky affairs with little commercial success. So even though I don't like it, I'll give it an extra point or two on the rating for being so uncompromising. (Unlike something that's just rubbish and cynically commercial, like V/H/S.)

On top of that I've got a strange desire to see it again. It was the same with Amer. Didn't like it at the time, but now it's on my Christmas list. I suspect that a similar thing will happen with this. There's something alluring about the atmosphere that will draw me back.

3/10

evlkeith

If you like this you could also try:

Amer, Deep Red, A Bay of Blood.

Review - Frankenhooker (1990 - Dir. Frank Henenlotter)

Never really fancied watching this one. I always imagined that it would be completely unfunny and lacking in gore. Nevertheless, I'll give it a go. Surprisingly, it's not too bad. In true DVD cover, Sun quote style, it's Weird Science meets Re-Animator, but with extra sleaze. 

Jeffrey (James Lorinz) is a medical student who could well have been tutored by Herbert West. One fine day his girlfriend, Elizabeth (former Penthouse Pet Patty Mullen) has a fatal accident that involves a present that she's bought for her dad. Not every day you're killed by a pair of Duff Beer socks. Okay, maybe not. Jeffrey decides he still likes his lovely Elizabeth and so comes up with the slightly deranged plan of rebuilding her with body parts from other women. As luck would have it, he ends up with a load of dead prostitutes on his hands, much to the consternation of their pimp.

Frankenhooker takes about fifteen minutes too long to get going and unleash the titular Frankenhooker on the world. And when she does finally appear, too little time is spent in her company. Admittedly she has some irritating facial ticks that wear thin almost immediately, but it's a shame that her talents aren't explored further.

The standout scene has to be the death scene of the prostitutes. The whole thing is played for its black comedy potential. The effects are not too bad; they certainly do the job, anyway. Plus pimps are always funny so Zorro (Joseph Gonzalez) getting involved is always a welcome sight. 

This was a pleasant surprise and a welcome start to the allnighter. At this point I was still quite awake. I struggled a bit with The Return of the Living Dead (I've reviewed this already this year so just click on the link if you fancy reading it) which came next. I had a few near-sleep experiences. Although once The Beyond got started I was back to wide awakeness. I'd been waiting a long time to see it on a big screen and I wasn't going to let sleep deprivation spoil it. (I'm afraid that you'll have to wait a little while for the review of this, I'm saving it for a special occasion and it needs extra attention.) 
Then, the last film in the allnighter appeared. And it included an even better pimp...
5/10
evlkeith

If you like this you could also try:
Re-Animator, Weird Science.

Review - Demons (1985 - Dir. Lamberto Bava)

This had to be one of my favourite rentals from Creepy's Video Emporium in the late eighties. It was gory and really stupid. What more could a teenage evlkeith want? Since my first viewings, I've bought it on VHS and then upgraded to DVD. It isn't on my list of films to upgrade to Blu-ray though. Watching it again proves that there are some childhood favourites that aren't up there with the best now (unlike The Dark Crystal which is still great).

Cheryl decides to have a night out at the pictures with her buddy Hannah, after receiving some free tickets from a mysterious masked man who she thought was a mad stalker. (In fact, it's that cheeky director Michele Soavi.) When they get into the cinema they meet up with a couple of likely fellows, George (Urbano Barberini - Opera) and Ken. Things all go to pot when the horror film they've gone to see spills out into the cinema. 

Since the late eighties the censors have been a lot more lenient on gore so Demons is pretty tame now. There's still a lot of blood and green slime thrown around and some attempts at gore set pieces. One killing is a direct homage to the eyeball piercing in Zombie Flesh Eaters. It's not exactly edited very well, doesn't really work and shows how good the Fulci scene is.

If it's not gory, is it still stupid? Yep, it's still really stupid. It has got one of the most random deus ex machinas going. Everything seems to have gone severely pear shaped for our two main characters and they have no hope of escape. Then something happens to save them that has only been referenced in the audio. No scene to set it up, nothing. I recall a similar bit in a Dean Koontz book. Can't remember which one, but it was rubbish there too. The dialogue is equally ridiculous. At one point, a character is on her hands and knees, and a demon starts to appear out of a hole in her back. Helpfully George tells us to, "Look at her back!". Thanks for that mate, I'd been looking at her backside up until then.

Some of the dialogue is great. In fact everything that comes out of the pimp Tony's (Bobby Rhodes) mouth is classic. It's possibly helped along by some quality dubbing. I always find myself repeating his lines straight after he's said them. Great costume too.

The end shots showing what's happened to the world outside the cinema are undoubtably my favourites. Bleak and full of atmosphere, just how I like it. Shame they had to tack on a silly ending. I suppose it fits the tone of what's gone before though.

I'm going to use this as my zombie review for the week - hence the multitude of pics at the top - because I was going to get to it soon anyway. (Plus I'm getting a bit tired, writing all of these lovely reviews.) Still a few zombie classics left before we reach the end of the year...
6/10
evlkeith

If you like this you could also try:
The Church, Demons 2.