DIRECTED BY MARTYN BURKE
MAGNUM PICTURES
Based around a rather dubious proposition – kidnapping an acquaintance’s wife to prevent him from making a business deal at, uh, the stroke of midnight, or something along those lines – the REAL horror here is in the breakdown of the characters’ shared relationships, man. Oh, and in the revelation of the ugly truths underlying their established personas. Or something along those lines. Only intermittently interesting for some of the glimpses at the dynamics of the power structure within this group of former school chums, events eventually take a dramatic and unexpected turn for the somewhat perverse once the action tips toward and past the climax. (Literally! In at least one sense.) It’s not too hard to figure out the mystery-of-sorts as regards the killer clown(s), but another mystery proves more elusive: what the hell?
WHY DID I WATCH THIS MOVIE?
The title caught my eye, but wouldn’t have convinced me without the summary promise of intrigue, which never developed. A caper undercut by duplicity it did turn out to be, but alas not nearly as interesting as it sounded.
SHOULD YOU WATCH THIS MOVIE?
I’m fairly certain you can find better examples of the basic motifs at work here, albeit probably without the clown costumes.
HIGHLIGHT AND LOW POINT
What really sold me on this flick was that it was one of John Candy’s first major film roles, and not a comedy. Unfortunately, he predictably played a heavier-set gentleman, one of whom’s friends constantly ridicules him about his size; throughout the film, his character is quite often seen eating. Since Candy reputedly had a lifelong struggle with his weight and self-image, and died at 43 because of related health issues, this was kind of a bummer. The turning point in the film, which involves his character, is itself extremely distressing for myriad reasons.
This lousy endeavor became an endurance test of sorts, as I could hardly wait for it to finish taking up my valuable time with its lousy acting, unnatural dialogue, odd tempo and beginner’s camerawork. This 
So close, so very close … Man, this Indonesian remake-of-sorts could have been the stuff of legend, a terrifying spectacle difficult to withstand, but it just can’t pull it off, leaving us with a rather standard malevolent-spirits Asian spookfest. That’s a shame, because al
A frankly bizarre eco-horror experiment, this Indian film contains no dialogue; characters communicate with grunts, howls and ululations, with broad gestures and what is apparently some form of sign language that I do not recognize (and which does not seem as though it could be very effective). On occasion, this choice of the filmmaker’s does interfere with one’s enjoyment of his picture, but it’s not as much of a problem as one may surmise. It remains odd and somewhat off-putting, however. WHY there’s no dialogue is implied by some setup shots: the five main characters are graduates of a special school for people with unspecified disabilities, though in this case they’re deaf-mutes. Now, wouldn’t you just know it, some tomfoolery goes horribly wrong and they must face the consequences. Which in this case are supernatural. And then there’s an extremely ironic twist. To be completely honest, this effort’s not exactly coherent, but its hallucinatory elements and creative craftsmanship combine to produce quite an effect. Slight tension arises here and there, not much in the way of fright.
When was the last time you saw a cinematic character killed by a rampaging elephant? Like, by strangling. Yeah, that’s what I thought. Wild Beasts is the kind of dubbed foreign flick that makes me wonder what the original dialogue was, although I’d be willing to bet not a whole lot of nuance is lost with translation yielding “She’s not crazy, she’s being chased by a cheetah!” and “What the hell is that! Elephants!” The production did a pretty good job with the scenes involving people being mauled by various wildlife, given obvious limitations. I’m glad I watched a murky VHS upload, however. That made the scenes featuring animal cruelty a bit easier to handle. The one in which a cat is ravaged by rats I could even believe was faked. Others, such as when lions and hyenas attack cattle and pigs inside a stockyard? No such luck. The film ends abruptly, without explaining how the zoo animals and a group of children – but apparently no one else – got dosed with PCP, despite wrapping up with a screenful of gibberish.
First off, this picture has the most swingin’ soundtrack you’re likely to hear for some time, vast amounts of fusion-era Miles Davis electrobop courtesy of composer Roberto Nicolosi. It also has pretty great examples of breathless, stentorian dubbing for the dialogue. (The title translates as “Eye in the Labyrinth,” if you’re wondering, but the version I watched didn’t bother with all that.) And I spent the early portion of the movie deciding to describe the heroine as “sylphlike,” before discovering at length that she’s not the heroine. Ergo, as is usual for a giallo, nothing much is coherent for most of this flick. Unusually for this type of film, however, eventually everything is explained, and even makes some sort of sense – at least in terms of the story being presented, that is, not in any identifiable reality. Unfortunately, it mostly translates into a mundane mystery. On occasion, it appears as though the cameraman (Giorgio Aureli? Maurizio Maggi?) loses control of his equipment.
So, when you and your pals have tricked your girlfriends into accompanying you to a spooky abandoned house on All Hallow’s Eve – and boy are they MAD, having expected a “jet set party” – naturally, what you next propose is to bring a dead person back to life. Oh, sure, they’re doubtful, until you reasonably explain that the first step is to acquire a dead body from the morgue, at which point you all pile into the car. Does a downpour stop you from performing the ritual, i.e. reading from “the black book”? Of course it doesn’t. But once you’ve successfully revived Devlon – Devlon! – HE sure stops you, i.e. kills you. Up until this point in this generic Mexican flick, it’s reasonably entertaining, but once its focus switches to a group of children stranded in the graveyard, it becomes reminiscent of any random Scooby-Doo episode – then turns into the most blatant ripoff of the “Thriller” video imaginable, albeit with a much smaller budget. So blatant one of the kids sports a jacket with M. Jackson’s famous visage painted on the back. (Also spotted: “Pepsi Free.”)
Some – okay, most – reviewers are going to tell you this movie is terrible, but I must point out that Macabra: La mano del diablo and its similars just may be the raison d’être of this website (not to mention a significant contributing factor to its proprietor’s joie de vivre). Following a prefatory flashback scene, the story proper begins in an old mine complete with self-propelled skulls and tremulous native workers. Then it’s off to Vegas, baby! Before consulting a priest, of course, which naturally involves the police. Yes, the devil’s (left) hand has many functions, which does not prepare us for when it has been lopped off the arm of the cop whose arm it has commandeered, grabs his gun and shoots a nurse in an extremely tight and low-cut uniform. “The Hand will kill again!” intones our female lead. Can THE HAND be stopped? Will THE HAND be destroyed? Could I not stop giggling while enjoying this presentation? A must-see.
One of the more perverse films you’re ever likely to see outside of niche porn, this notorious Greek exploitation picture revels in sadistic glee – often focusing directly upon said glee on the protagonists’ faces. One can only wonder the distasteful levels director (Nico) Mastorakis could have reached had this film been lensed in modern times. As it is, however, more than a few of the catalogue of murders depicted here may be somewhat difficult to stomach – literally, in the instance of the victim forced to drink paint. Honestly, as the perpetrators’ acts escalate, it sometimes feels as if the director had a list of moral or criminal offenses that he wanted to portray. [Editorial note: I just found this on IoD‘s official website: “After listing the most depraved sexual acts he could conceive, Mastorakis wrote the script in a week.”] The movie does have a working framework, however, along with an admittedly dark sense of humor, and never relents. All told, an accomplished feature debut. (Being reviled internationally IS an accomplishment.)
This title might seem a misnomer, as this mild-mannered British production does not provide its audience much in the way of chills or thrills. For characters in the movie, I suppose the moniker may be more apt, but many of the emotions on display are too restrained for such easy classification. Some anger is displayed, sure, and the young lass played by Susan George spends much of her screen time FREAKING OUT – her mewling, whimpering, sobbing, puling and so forth obscuring her Saxon patois till it’s all but incomprehensible at times – but all this really accomplishes is to annoy the living hell out of certain viewers, such as this one. This film actually is more or less a rumination on various mental states, and does not convey the sensation one reasonably might expect. It does, however, contain a few oddities. The police are depicted as almost comically inutile, seemingly by design, and a thought-provoking sequence involves one of them getting “the gun” out of its secure locked storage. Cultural differences! In addition, one of the characters is a toddler who seems sedated throughout much of his screen time. Overall, the picture feels rather disjointed and haphazard.
SPACE RATS From Outer Space 