Well, here we go again… A couple of months ago I had the pleasure of reviewing the very strange Freeway, a chaotic, riotous movie that ultimately I didn’t quite know how to take in the end. I can’t say I hated it – I gave it 4.5/10 after all, so only just below average – but few movies have left me with quite such confused feelings. And, three years later, we were treated to a sequel – a sequel of sorts, at least. I say that because it has none of the same characters, none of the same locations and is an entirely unconnected story to the first. What it does have in common is firstly its style, which would immediately make you put the two movies together whether you know they were connected or not, and secondly the idea of a grubby, modernised fairy tale – while the initial offering was a take on Little Red Riding Hood, here we have a grimy take on Hansel and Gretel. So that’s about as much as the two have in common.

The story itself follows a similarly delinquent teenager, who goes by ‘White Girl’, and her friend and soon-to-be-lover Cyclona. The two are put into a juvenile detention centre together and decide to make their escape before they are sent to a maximum-security prison, achieving freedom and heading to Mexico to find Sister Gomez, a nun that Cyclona believes can fix the ‘demons’ inside both of them. On the way there’s plenty of murder, bloodshed, robbery and the sort of unpleasantness you probably would be prepared for it you watch the ‘predecessor’ to this film. Nothing here is outrageously graphic, but there’s plenty suggested and intimated that is liable to leave an unpleasant taste in your mouth. Of course, when they get there, Sister Gomez isn’t quite what she’s cracked up to be, and things take an even darker turn…

I can probably best sum up this one by saying if you liked Freeway, then odds are you’ll like this one. The same bad taste, shock value style of filmmaking runs throughout here, and things happen not exactly at random but obviously just to try and discombobulate or upset you as a viewer. Everyone is obviously trying their best, and I commend the actors and actresses involved for clearly putting it all in to try and make this work.  Let’s be honest – I’ve been reviewing extreme horror for six years, and it takes something pretty rough to really disturb me, but a bugbear remains shock for the value of shock. Sadly, that’s mostly what’s on display here – little follows on from the previous in a way that makes sense, and the dialogue especially is clearly designed just to cause offence. For me you can do about anything in context – I’ve given high rating to the likes of American Guinea Pig: Bloodshock and even some of the Vomit Gore movies from Lucifer Valentine – but everything here feels gratuitous and overblown. I know these movies do have a bit of a cult following, but they are simply not for me I’m afraid. I felt more ready for what to expect this time, but that ultimately didn’t improve the experience much.

RATING: 4/10. If you love these films, good on you, and I’d never knowingly denigrate something that someone else got enjoyment out of. I suppose you could argue as absolute and utter schlock trash you could have fun with this one, but even that side of things has been done better elsewhere for me. Everyone here is obviously trying hard with the material they’ve been given, but sadly I don’t feel as though the plot or the script could really have been made any better than this. Director Matthew Bright only directed a couple more films after this before disappearing off the scene in the mid-2000s, and maybe the world just wasn’t quite ready and willing to accept his particular vision of cinema – though a few notable actors were obviously more than willing to get involved. This pair of movies are certainly interesting 90s curios, but they don’t feel satisfying or complete to me and as such don’t reach too high on the scale…

This is a review I’ve been putting off for some time, but when I saw this one pop up on Amazon Prime, I thought it was time to bite the bullet and get stuck in. To provide a little context, this is a book that I’ve always loved – I wrote an essay about this every year without fail at University, and it remains probably the most reread and dogeared book on my shelves. Bret Easton Ellis’s novel was a controversial topic even before it came out and retains a notorious reputation even many years on. For me it’s often misunderstood though – American Psycho is a biting satire on the yuppie culture of the 80s and a look at the cultural emptiness and desensitisation of a broken central character. The whole thing – despite its more disturbing scenes – is blackly funny, and sometimes laugh out loud. The movie is not one I have fond memories of, but not in any specific way – as I came back to it there was just this deep sense of being rather let down on first watch. Maybe my expectations were just too high, so I thought that in the spirit of fairness I should give this one another whirl.

American Psycho follows the story of Patrick Bateman, a wealthy businessman (it’s never eminently clear exactly what he does) who seemingly has everything – a huge, expensive apartment, fancy meals in restaurants every night, a beautiful girlfriend (played by Reese Witherspoon, whom we only occasionally see), a host of lavish clothes and a party lifestyle to boot. But beneath the slick veneer lies a murderer and a sexual deviant, a man looking for more and more twisted thrills in an effort to puncture through the perceived tedium of his life. Surrounded by people as empty and boring as himself, the excitement he seeks takes him down ever more vicious, disturbing and dangerous avenues.

The movie is a strange watch, because for the first hour it was almost pitch perfect – it captured the heart of Bateman’s vacuous lifestyle, including his idolisation of artists like Genesis (although apparently Phil Collins was too artistic?), Huey Lewis and the News and Whitney Houston, the obsession with having the greatest business card among his group of friends and the obsession with elaborate restaurants and a never-ending quest to get a reservation for Dorsia. The grim humour is there, and Christian Bale makes a really good Bateman – he has the look and the fake bravado, the machismo and charisma ultimately backed up by nothing. He even describes himself as ‘the shape of a person’ rather than a person, which says a great deal.

I was actually thinking at that stage – why did I dislike this movie so much initially? Then the last half hour hit, and it was there where it all fell apart. The finale turns into an absolute mess, giving in to a sensationalism that didn’t exist in quite the same way in the book. It also takes the element of doubt that was key to the original conclusion and removes it entirely, for me removing something from its quality. Honestly less would have been more here – it’s the only time the tone really goes awry, and we were ultimately only about thirty minutes from a great adaptation. It maybe pulls punches comparative to the text, but them a full, unflinching version would be a very different thing and I doubt would get any sort of mainstream release.

There’s a lot good in here, including several of the central performances delivered by a fine cast. The dark comedy is largely intact, including some of the interior monologue from Bateman, and the look and feel and soundtrack are all great. But it doesn’t quite land the same message as the original, which is a shame for such excellent source material.

RATING: 5.5/10. I was certainly going to give this some high marks after 60 minutes or so, but it does drop numerous points for a finale that goes pretty quickly off the rails – and not in the way you might have wanted. This one was certainly a troubled production, and maybe some of that shows up in the final piece. The movie adaptation here feels like a missed opportunity, and as much as I’m not a huge fan of remakes this one could maybe do with a retry – it was almost there, and I’d rather see something remade that didn’t quite hit the mark than being a huge success. There probably is a superb adaptation to be made, but this one ultimately isn’t it.

Wait a minute, Alex, what’s this all about? Tro-March was months ago!

Yes, of course, that is true, but taking on a full month of Tro-madness – and we saw the good, the bad and the ugly there! – did make me think that maybe I’ve not really given enough coverage to one of the leading purveyors of cult and often B-movie horror. So I’m going to make a point to stop by Tromaville a little more often as we go forward, without necessarily making it any kind of regular feature. I’m sure there are many fans out there, and maybe some curious to find out more, so I hope you’ll enjoy my occasional dips into this particular pool.

And what better place to possibly begin than with one of the studio’s most popular movies, The Toxic Avenger? I think I saw this in the dim and distant past, but honestly I have very little recollection of it. However, what it did also jolt loose was a memory of the Toxic Crusaders cartoon that I watched as a youngster. Little did I know back then exactly what the source material was, of course, but what a choice as the inspiration for a piece of Saturday morning kids’ entertainment. I’m waiting for the Freddie Kreuger or Michael Myers cartoon in years to come…

Anyway, back to the matter in hand, The Toxic Avenger follows the story of geek Melvin, who works cleaning the local swimming pool and finds himself square in the crosshairs of the local bullies and jocks. But when a prank backfires, Melvin is covered in toxic waste – and lo, The Toxic Avenger is born! Determined to put the wrongs of Tromaville right, Melvin now spends his time catching criminals and taking on the corrupt upper echelons of the town. He also finds himself in the middle of a love story with Sara, a blind woman that he saves from a robbery. But the mayor and the local army don’t want this ‘monster’ around, despite his many good deeds, which leads to an epic final confrontation.

What can I say about this one? It’s Troma, so you sort of know what to expect, and this one has many of the hallmarks of the studio – it’s silly, it’s overblown, there’s a lot of sex and nudity and the characters lean into the stereotypes of the time. I want to say this one is harmless fun, but I don’t think this one has aged terribly well, and some of the language and terminology in here did make me wince. The costume for Toxie himself is pretty laughable, even for early 80s Troma, and while there are a few funny moments some of it just winds up feeling a bit too try-hard to really land as the directors might have pictured.

This one was obviously a success in its own way, spawning no less than three sequels, not to mention the cartoon and even a couple of video games (do I need to do a Game Gutter or something?) but for me it doesn’t rank as my favourite Troma offering. It might be the one that launched the studio into the big time in relative terms – it certainly got a much larger following than any of their late 70s and early 80s titles – but there’s not much here that will live long in the memory for me personally. Suppose that explains why I forgot most of it from the first watch…

RATING: 3/10. To be honest, if you loved lots of other Troma films, it’s going to be good you’ll get something out of this one. But this one never quite clicked with me, and on the rewatch it feels like time has rather moved on past poor old Toxie and the rest of the crew here. Some horror movies (and even horror comedies) can age like a fine wine, but this one feels as though it’s turned a little toxic instead. There’s better Troma out there for me, even though the company might not exist in the form we know it without this one’s success, so I suppose that has to count something towards this one!

I’m sure the title of this one might not ring a bell to many of you, but I’m willing to guess that number might – Unit 731 was of course the infamous covert lab that conducted all sorts of sickening human experiments during the World War II period. Fans of extreme horror may be familiar with a couple of the movies that these horrible acts inspired, namely Philosophy of a Knife and Men Behind the Sun, which also went to spawn a range of low-budget sequels with even worse reputations than the series opener. So, suffice to say this one did pique my interest when it popped up on my YouTube suggestions – it’s free to watch (and above-board, I should swiftly add!) now on the Alter channel if you do feel inclined to watch it after reading my review. So how would it fare given some of the infamous cinematic offerings that it has to live up to?

Room 731 is the confusing story of Wei, a young Chinese girl captured and taken into the Unit 731 base at Manchukuo. There she is ‘treated’ by a doctor and nurse while she drifts in and out of sleep – and experiences in dreams either fantasy or awful recollections of what has come before. I sort of can’t say much more about the plot because A) I don’t want to spoil too much and B) even a few days after watching it I’m not even certain of what happened myself. I could try and tell you and probably be wrong anyway.

I think Room 731 has some good ideas, and a few interesting moments too, but the whole thing cuts and jumps around wildly – not just in time and place but also from reality to fantasy and back again. It’s not always immediately apparent which is which, I just know that some change has happened. Characters speak English some of the time and use their native tongue in others, which doesn’t help clarify anything. Another thing that frustrated me was the leaning on jumpscares – given the real-life material that you’re calling upon, it shouldn’t be hard to serve up a horror offering without having to resort to such a cheap tactic. I’ve never been a fan of the device at the best of times, and in a short film like this it feels even more egregious.

It’s perhaps an unfortunate comparison to have to make, but what I was put most in mind of was Adult Swim’s recent horror series The Shivering Truth – the seemingly random cuts from one thing to another, the never sitting still, the lack of explanation offered for the latest turn of events, the big ‘twist’ at the end of the story that appeared out of nowhere… I say unfortunate not because I don’t like The Shivering Truth – in fact, I’m a fan of basically everything that team has ever done, including in my view the greatest TV show ever made, the remarkable Xavier: Renegade Angel – but I suspect that Room 731 wanted to be taken seriously, so the fact my readiest analogy was a comedy show probably isn’t a great sign…

RATING: 3/10. For a few minutes I was pretty into this one, but it doesn’t take long to rather fall apart and slip into feeling like an absolute quagmire. I’ve mulled and pondered and reflected and reconsidered and I just can’t get to the bottom of Room 731. There’s the odd scene that is pretty effective visually, and a few moments that might even have hit home emotionally in a different context, but it feels like there’s more effort put into trying to constantly make me jump and wrongfoot me as a viewer than there is to tell any kind of coherent story. For all that movies like Men Behind the Sun and Philosophy of a Knife (in particular) make for absolutely grim viewing, they are at least a fairer reflection of the shocking events that took place at Unit 731. This one you could almost have moved anywhere and it wouldn’t have had much impact, which is a final down point on it for me. This one comes in at a clumsy 3/10.

Want to watch it for yourself? Check out Room 731 on Alter at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJJC3S2zgy4