Wait, wait, let me get this straight… there’s a Frank Henenlotter movie I’ve never seen? How can this be! Thankfully, Brain Damage will complete the set of features from this particular director – barring some latter documentary work – who would surely be one my all-time favourites. While many people do try and deliver the mix of creature feature and horror-comedy that Henenlotter has delivered so well since 1982’s Basket Case, few have ultimately achieved it with this success in my opinion. I’m a hard man to please where it comes to this sort of thing – it can really leave me cold at times, so to have produced this many entertaining films that I’ve consistently enjoyed is no small feat. So, let’s complete the sextet with our look at Brain Damage, shall we…

Brain Damage is the story of Brian (Brian Damage, perhaps?), a young man who one night finds himself visited by a strange little creature called Elmer, or officially Aylmer as we come to discover later. Elmer is best described as a sort of intergalactic worm creature, and while he might not be much to look at, he does have one special skill – attaching himself to a host and giving them incredible, euphoric visions of the world with enhanced sensations of pleasure. Of course, there has to be a catch, and sadly it’s that Elmer requires plenty of human brains to feast upon – which he can happily get while living symbiotically off Brian…

It’s fair to say that Henenlotter has always had a certain style, a definitive approach to his movies, and Brain Damage follows much of the same. There’s plenty of scenes that are pretty shocking and surprising, and our lead character is very much led around by his addiction to the ‘juice’ that Elmer can provide. There’s even a phase where he tries to go without, but sadly the addiction is just too much for him to handle. The lead performance from Rick Hearst is really likeable, and the over-the-top voice acting for Elmer is often a stitch. The visions of an overbright world presented are fun to look at, and there’s enough of a subplot with Brian’s relationship with Barbara to keep it sufficiently grounded to enjoy. The ending was… weird, in a word, and I’m still not totally sure what to make of it. But it didn’t jar or really put a dent in my enjoyment, so I guess weird is OK in this instance.

Henenlotter is a director who probably never set out to expand your mind or see the world in a different light (although out lead character certainly does here). But I’d certainly suggest any avid horror fan – especially those who like things a touch silly and a little excessive – should go and check his work out. To my mind he’s an underrated figure in the genre – many directors have a hit or two and fade away, or have a distinctly hit and miss career, but every film of the six from these quarters has made me laugh, made me smile and kept my attention all the way through despite me sometimes having a natural aversion to this approach to horror. Honestly, this might not be a bad place to start with Henenlotter – it’s a nice little standalone, and if you’re into this one then the other five will be worth your time. If this isn’t your bag, then odds are the remainder won’t be either – it’s about as simple as that.

RATING: 8/10. Well, there’s no more Henenlotters after this one, which makes it a sad day. Brain Damage shares much in common with the director’s other work, in that I had a blast watching it and feel like I’ll always have a positive feeling towards it. I can see this (and some of the others) being rewatched in time as they were just a lot of fun, and a bit of familiarity with them won’t do anything to hinder that at all. This one has some solid special effects, a share of funny moments and just about enough of a plot to keep the whole things sustained for its 84 minute runtime. And it’s available to watch on Shudder if you fancied checking it out for yourself!

Blimey, what is it with big-time actors appearing in these pages lately? After two appearances from none other than Reese Witherspoon, as well as films with Christian Bale and Kiefer Sutherland, the dark thriller Anamorph sees a second visit from the legendary Willem Dafoe this month alone (after his relatively small role in that adaptation of American Psycho). This was a movie I watched some time ago, and had fairly fond memories of, so I was looking forward to getting stuck into a revisit. It’s not a terribly well-known movie, but if you fancied a watch this is currently free to view on Amazon Prime…

Dafoe plays semi-retired detective Stan Aubray, whom we first encounter teaching, but it’s not long before he’s called back to the force when a killer appears that seems to follow the same methodology as Uncle Eddie, a case Aubray worked on many years before. The murderer’s technique is anamorphosis, and he elaborately breaks his victims’ bodies down into spectacular pieces of art that appear to be one thing from one angle but something entirely different from another. And in this tangled web of clues, Aubray finds himself deep into the manhunt once again…

That may not quite do Anamorph justice, as I have to give this movie credit for being a unique idea I’ve never seen the likes of before. On top of that, some of the visuals are incredible, and must have really exercised the imaginations of the team involved and indeed the skills of the cinematographer. Much as it is grim and dark and grimy, but it’s hard not to admire some of the artistry on display.  With that said, this one is ultimately kind of slow and plodding, and it’s hard to say that Dafoe is an absolute top form here – he’s good as always, but the whole role is a bit buttoned down and maybe doesn’t show him off to his best capacity. Apparently, he took a bit of talking into the role, and as such maybe he’s not absolutely committed to this one. The side cast are generally solid, and there are some fun cameos, including Mick Foley and Debbie Harry both popping up at pretty random moments.

But with all that said, the whole thing is just dry and slow – it’s a movie that probably would have benefitted from a shorter runtime, and while the central conceit is certainly an interesting one it feels stretched pretty thin here. It lacks the tautness of similar sorts of movies, and you couldn’t really call it a classic horror-thriller despite some good elements. I didn’t feel the sort of emotional connection that I would have liked to either, which made things feel hollow for me. The overall colour scheme is generally unappealing, which I assume is to make the artistry of our killer stand out, but it does make the whole thing feel drab. This one did some to come and go with very little notice, and it’s not utterly surprising. I feel as though a movie like Waz would probably be a better bet if this sort of thing is your bag, or maybe even a revisit to something like Saw. In fact, I keep thinking to myself that feels like something I should revisit myself but bearing in mind there are eight of those that could wind up being a big job…

RATING: 5.5/10. It’d be unfair to say there’s anything egregiously wrong with Anamorph, but equally there’s no great amount to really make it stand out from the crowd – and it didn’t hold up well on a second viewing, withering under the lights somewhat. Despite a potentially interesting premise which did send me scurrying to the internet to find out more about it, this one never really captures the imagination and I found myself a little bored at certain junctures throughout. Cutting fifteen to twenty minutes off would have been a help, and maybe you could have made things a little bit livelier, both visually and in terms of the acting performances. It’s very cerebral, but sadly doesn’t really hit all its marks. I’m happy to go just a scooch above average at 5.5/10.

Anyone out there seen Turbo Kid? Or indeed Summer of 84? Maybe those films are not what you’d call vastly well-known, but each made a reasonable impact on the cult movie scene and are out there to stream without any great difficulty (Summer of 84 is on my personal watchlist on Shudder as we speak). The reason I ask is because this particular short film is one of the very first offerings from the team behind those movies, and indeed sees them all playing a role in front of the camera as well as behind. Total Fury perhaps didn’t make a huge impression, and didn’t go down as a classic horror short, but personally I thought this one was a lot of fun – and that is not a phrase too well-used around these parts.

The story begins with an apparently romantic liaison between an unnamed man and woman, but this tone doesn’t last long at all our ‘boyfriend’ punches her in the face and knocks her unconscious. She wakes up tied to a chair and surrounded by a gang of masked men, holding various weapons and clearly out to hurt her. It’s all very stylised and overblown, and I don’t think even in this moment is meant to be taken terribly seriously. However, as our intrepid female protagonist looks for the strength to escape, she calls up a remarkable source of courage – the movies of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I suppose that’s the point where things get distinctly silly, including an (ahem) ‘cameo’ from Arnie himself, or at least it looks like him from the neck down. In the second half of the movie, she escapes her captors and takes them down one by one with the awesome power of 80s action movies behind her, with more blood and guts than you could possibly shake a stick at.

While there’s enough of the claret here to keep most gorehounds satisfied, this one is more horror-comedy than it is flat-out horror, and it generally does a good job in that field. It made me smile more than laugh out loud, but it had plenty of energy and some great shots that capture the carnage in the finale. The practical effects are generally decent, and the whole thing just feels like everyone on board was having a blast – something I’ve often found translates to an entertaining viewer experience as well. It’s one of those movies that’s not liable to change your worldview on anything, or leave you with any long-lasting feelings of shock or disgust (often our speed at Film Gutter), it’s just something to enjoy and forget about before too long.

The team behind this one would go on to make a number of further short films before moving onto the aforementioned features, and with titles like Ninja Eliminator 3: Guardian of the Dragon Medallion and Demonitron: The Sixth Dimension, further silliness seems sure to ensue in those. Based on my experience of Total Fury alone, I could be drawn into checking those out in the future, if I can find them of course…

RATING: 7/10. I don’t want to go completely overboard on this one, but this one put a grin on my face a few times and was generally an entertaining enough bit of gory horror absurdity. There’s plenty of blood here, and some brutal and imaginative kills to boot, so if that sounds like your cup of tea then this one could be a perfectly fine way for you to spend a quarter of an hour. Mind you, it’d sure be interesting to know how a true Arnold Schwarzenegger fan would feel about this one…

REVENGE (2017: A Film Gutter Review by Alex Davis 
​Dir. Coralie Fargeat, 108 mins

Revenge is a movie that hit a few years back and made a fair noise on the festival circuit – on its emergence it seems to receive extremely positive reviews, and it’s one of those that has been on the ‘back burner’ of my list of movies to watch for some time. And with this one being live on Shudder, I figured that it was about time I got round to it. It’s hard to know exactly what put me off, although I do have mixed feelings about the rape-revenge milieu on the whole – it can feel very exploitative, but then again there have been a few good ones in recent years, including the likes of American Mary and Julia. So, would this one fall on the good side or the bad side of the subgenre?

It was interesting looking into the reviews of this movie after the fact, because nobody seemed to fall in the middle – some really liked it as a savage, action-packed revenge thriller, while others found the whole premise and concept awfully hard to believe. Sadly, I fell into that second camp…

So, Revenge follows Jen and her already-married douchebag boyfriend Richard. They’re in a fancy house in the middle of the desert when his two friends arrive for an annual hunting trip, and the part of them take an immediate interest in Jen, leading to an unpleasant rape scene. It’s not as graphic as some, but certainly does make an impact in the way it’s presented. The visuals were one of the strong points of this movie on the whole, in fact, and worthy of note here. When Jen tries to run away she gets shoved off a cliff and impaled on a low tree, only to free herself from that and set out to get revenge on her abusers.

The issue for me is that I simply couldn’t suspend my disbelief sufficiently to enjoy this one – there were numerous moments where the whole thing just felt preposterous, and even if you’re willing to accept that Jen didn’t really feel the pain of the fall or being literally run through by a sharp branch because she’s had some peyote, how she could possibly lose so much blood and continue to live in an unforgiving desert with no medical attention at all? There must be a hole in her stomach at least a couple of inches wide, which seems to be presented as little more than a flesh wound. It was maddening, and honestly as a viewer I checked out from that point – there’s just no way I could take it seriously from then on, which obviously for a movie in this subgenre is a real problem. I should be invested in the quest for vengeance and some form of justice being served, but personally that just wasn’t the case. It really did degenerate into complete nonsense for more that half the runtime, which is a shame as the lead actress is clearly giving it everything. Unfortunately, she just doesn’t have the strong material to back her up, and this one goes down as one of the worse rape-revenge movies of recent times…

RATING: 3/10. I really don’t want to put any of this rating at the feet of its star Matilda Lutz (although the guys in the movie don’t really excel at all), and there are without a doubt some strong visuals. But the whole thing just comes across as so hard to believe, which is a serious problem for a film like this. Some horror can stretch credibility if it is down the road of the monstrous or the supernatural, but a sense of realism is central to the rape-revenge movie, and the minute you stop feeling it could potentially be real it’s gone. This one was basically gone for me at about the halfway mark, and there’s nothing you can do to recover once you tell me so clearly this one it just a film and couldn’t possibly be something that could happen in real life. There might have been something good here without a few extremely poor decisions in the storyline and script, but unfortunately I can’t go any higher than 3/10 with what is presented here.