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

We have previously looked at this one’s predecessor, The Collector, which to me remains a fairly sub-par attempt at a successor to the Saw movies. Given the propensity for traps within that movie, not to mention how many of the team behind those latter entries in the Saw series are involved here, I suppose that’s a comparison that feels almost inevitable. And with whispers of a third film in this series starting to solidify and take shape, I figured this would probably be a good point to look at The Collection, a sequel that emerged three years after its predecessor and offers something distinctly different to boot. I was pretty pleased with that, as the first one didn’t exactly get a glowing review on these pages, so let’s see how the sequel fares…

The masked Collector of the first movie is still very much at large, breaking into houses or places of work seemingly at random and kidnapping people of all background and ages. With the police struggling to track him, when The Collector commits a massacre at an underground night club they find an invaluable clue – the escaped Arkin, a survivor of his kidnapping ordeal and the star of the preceding movie. With his help, a group of mercenaries track down The Collector to his lair to rescue young Elena – but little do they know exactly what sort of nightmare awaits them there…

Say what you will about the Saw series, but they rarely stood still and often introduced different elements, even when overall quality was declining. Even Saw 3D: The Final Chapter had a fine premise of a fake Jigsaw survivor making a fortune with a bestselling book. And The Collection follows that trend of trying something different to what has come before by making it another sort of home invasion – with the home of our masked antagonist being the subject of the siege. It does have some great visuals to it, which I must credit, and a strong soundtrack courtesy of Charlie Clouser – I was thinking to myself it sounded a bit like Nine Inch Nails, which of course made sense when I saw that name attached. The performances are passable enough, although the macho bravado of our tough guy mercenaries does rankle a bit – they’re not terribly well developed, and I don’t feel like the film has all the emotional impact it is angling for.

I’d also take issue with some of the traps involved here – they stretched credibility slightly in the first part of this series, but to me the believability really goes way past breaking point. It seems like The Collector almost has some sort of sixth sense or prognostication as to where people are going to step, with traps in just the right places, then when our main protagonists run off they somehow seem to escape into an area where there are no traps at all. It suffers from problems with internal logic, for all the traps are as interesting and innovative as you might expect.

Still, all things considered, for me this is better than the movie before by a reasonable margin – there were a lot of intriguing ideas here, and while they may not be delivered to absolute perfection, I do very much appreciate the efforts at originality here. It may not be exactly ground-breaking, but it’s evident the team involved have certainly reached for something fresher here than their first take.

RATING: 4.5/10. While this one was entertaining enough, and I can’t really say I was ever that bored, when you look at this one in the cold light of day there are plenty of problems to be found. There were concepts and plenty of visuals that I liked, but the whole thing just doesn’t feel quite as well thought through as it might be. Traps seem to be ideally placed, and the cast of characters have that ‘horror curse’ of being pretty thin and one-dimensional. I suspect that there is a better film lurking beneath the surface of this one somewhere, but it doesn’t quite all click into place. I’m sure I’ll probably complete the trilogy – certainly to review the finale if nothing else – but I can’t say I’m absolutely buzzing to get onto it. Hopefully it can continue on the upward curve anyway…

Suffice to say, I was a big fan of Tetsuo: The Iron Man. While it was far from director Shin’ya Tsukamoto’s debut – he has directing credits all the way back into the mid-1970s – it was a landmark movie for the director, a startling cyberpunk nightmare presented in cold black and white, and a film quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It landed a very close third in my top movies of 2020 list (movies watched in 2020, that is) and it was a close call among that top three. As such, it’s fair to say that the sequel has a good bit to live up to.

Sadly, I can’t say this one hit the mark quite as successfully, despite following at least some of the same formula. In many ways it’s a more ambitious movie, with the cast of characters headed up by Tanaguchi Tomoo, his wife Kana and his son Minori. When his son is kidnapped, Tanaguchi is determined to get him back, but finds that his kidnappers are a group of metal-worshipping cultists. They proceed to capture Tanaguchi and give him an injection, with leads to a shocking cybernetic transformation for him. But the battle is far from over, and it’s not long before Kana is taken too and a climactic final struggle ensues…

That might not sound too painful, of course, but somehow this one just lacked the curious charm of its predecessor for me. Maybe the black and white made the effects hold up that bit better, because while they are ambitious for the early 90s, for me they don’t look a patch on the first installment. Some of them end up looking genuinely hokey, and that rather jolted me out of things. The story was a little too busy and seemed to sort of recapitulate, and I honestly just found the whole thing too noisy and over the top and frustrating.

I think this is trying to be more of an action film at times, whereas the original was far more of a body horror with less of that sort of shoot-em-up feel (though admittedly there was a little of that). For me there are too many characters involved in the story too, with the pared down cast of the first working far better. Maybe I shouldn’t keep making these kinds of comparisons, but when the same director comes back to the same universe you almost can’t help yourself. I also think the longer runtime doesn’t really help – the whole thing feels a bit spun out, whereas the bare hour of The Iron Man feels significantly tighter. Admittedly an hour and twenty minutes isn’t exactly long, it still felt like a bit of a drag.

I suppose I should caveat the above by saying I don’t think this movie is terrible, but more average when you take everything into account. Of course, there is a third installment to this series, which we had to wait an awful lot longer for (The Bullet Man landed in 2010), and I will be checking that out in due course to see is Tsukamoto can recapture that absolute magic of the original.

RATING: 5.5/10. I was excited for this one – the poster is absolutely great too, and that had me buzzing even more – but it didn’t land anywhere near the first for me. If you enjoyed part one it’s probably worth a look, but I would suggest tempering your expectations. It feels like a hollow imitation in many ways, and in trying to expand in runtime and develop some of the ideas from The Iron Man it ends up rather losing something. The whole metal cultists idea never really lands in my opinion, and with that being such a central part of things that’s a big stumbling block. The switch to colour for me is not a benefit, and actually harms this one. It’s all just rather messy and I couldn’t help but feel a little deflated in the end – it’s not a bad film, but it ain’t great, and sadly I was expecting it to be great…

It was a while back that we looked at one of the early works of Japanese director Shozin Fukui in the shape of Gerorisuto, a pretty discombobulating, unsettling and ultimately inconclusive short film seemingly shot guerrilla-style. And while I know that the director is better known for his features, I felt like it made more sense to tick off more of the short works that came first before coming to the likes of 964 Pinocchio and Rubber’s Lover. So, in that spirit, here’s a swift look at 1988’s Caterpillar…

In many ways this one reminds me of Gerorisuto, in that it tends to follow characters around the streets of a Japanese city with a whole host of different camera effects. We have a businessman at a train station, a young lady lunching in a park, a girl walking in the suburbs, a techno-goth (I think) having a hard time holding himself upright and more besides. And on top of that we have a very strange creature that we see in intermittent flashes, an insectoid creature that looks like it’s made at least in part out of tin foil (it’s hard to shake that impression once you clock it) and possessing a near-human face. As I type that I know it might sound like that’s a criticism of the effects, but it does look weird and come over pretty well, and there’s something in the way it moves that makes me distinctly uneasy to watch, especially when accompanied by the sound effect that goes with it. In fact, the sound is one of the better features of this one, with that element always seeming to hit home. Each of the characters goes through some strong emotion, with it being intimated rather than shown that the creature is having some sort of effect on them – nothing is ever made crystal clear on that front, and it’s hard to know if that would add to the short film or detract from it.

Sadly, what this also shares with Gerorisuto is a sense that I don’t honestly know why I watched it, or what I was really meant to take away. There are some interesting visuals, but the idea feels delivered so lightly and uncertainly that it doesn’t really leave a lasting impression. I’ve got no particular problem with doing some of the work with my imagination, but Caterpillar feels like it is asking me to just do too much of the heavy lifting. If you can come up with a firm interpretation here, you’re a better man than me, and maybe you’ll get more out of it as a result, but in the end it’s more guesswork than really feels comfortable. There is something I liked about the essence of Fukui’s work, and I really hope that when he has that scope and space of a longer runtime he can deliver something ultimately more satisfying. Just because it’s a short film doesn’t mean you have to leave everything unfinished, after all…

RATING: 4.5/10. There are some flashes of promise in here, with some intriguing visuals as well as some great sound effects and music used to good effect. But in the end what could have been a fine idea to develop feels completely undercooked, and just left me feeling a little deflated. A better ending to this one would certainly have carried this one to another level, but sadly it just wasn’t there. The director certainly has a cult following, but I suspect that’s more based on other offerings than this one…

Wait, wait, let me get this straight. This movie stars Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Sutherland, has a soundtrack from none other than Danny Elfman, and I get to review it for Film Gutter? What in the hell can this one be about to get onto this particular piece of webspace? Well, I very much imagine Freeway would be about the strangest film that either of those two notable actors have appeared in, a movie that screams 90s at every whilst also treading down some pretty disturbing roads. And funnily enough, this one is a road movie of sorts.

The story follows 15-year-old Vanessa Lutz, played by Witherspoon, who lives in a rough neighbourhood with her prostitute mother and her stepfather, who takes too much interest in young Vanessa for comfort. When her mother is arrested, Vanessa decides the time has come to get away from it all and head to her grandma’s, so she steals a car and hits the road, only to break down before long. However she is soon ‘rescued’ at the roadside by child therapist Bob Wolverton, who hides a distinctly dark secret that puts Vanessa into the path of danger. After that, every begins to spiral completely out of control and takes you places you might never have expected.

That’s some of the plot, and I don’t really want to ruin the whole thing for you – there’s almost too much happens here in an hour and forty minutes to really take in. Suffice to say (and the blurb will tell you this, so it’s no real spoiler) the idea is that it’s a spin on Little Red Riding Hood, with Witherspoon as a vulnerable Little Red trying to get to grandma’s and Sutherland as a predatory big bad wolf. But it does go off in directions the fairy tale never did…

I have thought long and hard about what to say in this review, because this movie is just so difficult to interpret. The above sounds absolutely horrible, and in many places it is, with plenty of scenes of violence and more than hints of paedophilia. Our protagonist Lutz goes through the ringer brutally in this movie, and it can be an uneasy watch. But with that said, there’s also a sense that the movie is sometimes going for laughs, or maybe inadvertently trying to push the envelope so far that we slip into unintentional comedy. The end result is a movie that probably would have been be great if it were simpler – given the cast and some of that dark core concept – but simply ends up just feeling a sensationalised clusterf**k. The only thing I can adequately compare it to is Asia Argento’s The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things – it’s got that some off-kilter tone that I still don’t really know how to compute. Am I meant to be laughing, or crying, or a little of both? And are those things you can achieve in one movie? Have you pushed the extremes so far that you’ve somehow managed to lapse into self-parody, leaving me utterly baffled?

Like last week’s movie The Evil Within, this one almost deserves to be witnessed despite my own mixed feelings on it. Freeway seems to have built up a bit of a cult following over time, which I can understand given its unique nature, and also spawned a sequel in Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trickbaby. Do I want to check that one out as well for the column? I really don’t know – I might do it at some point out of grim curiosity, just to see if it keeps on down that same path. It is a totally different cast, so I can only assume that what links them together is the name and maybe the style of the two films…

RATING: 4.5/10. I have been up and down the grades for this one, though honestly it was never looking at a 9 or 10 even on those befuddled first impressions. This one for me has wilted a bit under the lights while I’ve considered it. It all just made me feel really uneasy – not in the way that some of the more confronting extreme horror might, but in terms of not knowing who this was for and what the director was trying to say to me. I don’t think it was anything positive, mind, and ultimately large parts of this are pretty much – to paraphrase the bard - just sound and fury signifying nothing. As such, I’m going to come in slightly under average at 4.5/10 – this might appeal to some of you, although I’d probably only recommend it if you’re into really odd film curiosities in this vein.

Before we start, no, this is not a movie based on the horror video game of the same name. That question seems to come up a lot whenever this movie gets discussed, so let’s just put that to bed right now. In fact, I’d argue that The Evil Within is a movie far more worth of mention than its console counterpart, in no small part for the remarkable backstory behind it.

For those of you who have never heard of it, The Evil Within is director Andrew Getty’s only film. A grandson of the incredibly wealthy (and often controversial) J Paul Getty, this was a passion project borne out of Getty’s own disturbing nightmares, which are represented here in some disturbing sequences. This was a movie that was shooting for nearly a decade, with work beginning on in 2002. Yes, that’s not a misprint – this one took fifteen years to see the light of day. Getty was meticulous and specific in how his vision should come to life, shooting most of the movie in his own mansion which he effectively transformed into a horror movie set, complete with a freshly built production studio. Even after shooting was complete, Getty spent many years editing the piece, striving for perfection before his death in 2015 from internal bleeding, allegedly exacerbated by an extensive methamphetamine habit. Work on the film was completed by producer Michael Luceri in order that a decade and a half of endeavour could finally be seen on screen.

All that alone makes this a fascinating offering, which even days after watching I still feel in two minds about. The story itself follows Dennis and his brother John, with Dennis being our lead, a young man with a learning disability struggling to make sense of his horrific nightmares. This is soon followed by a mirror version of himself, a darker version that promises it can help him if he follows its instructions. The first instruction is to kill the neighbours’ cat, but much worse is still to come. Meanwhile John faces a battle to keep his relationship together while ensuring he can care for Dennis well enough to avoid the intervention of Social Services.

On the plus side, there are distinctly chilling visuals in here, and what is widely considered an excellent lead performance from Fred Koehler, and there are bits of this that are liable to stay with me for a long time. The style is distinctive, and I’d struggle to draw an exact comparison to anything else. Michael Berryman’s limited time on screen is also very well spent, and he’s a fine antagonist when he’s present as ‘The Cadaver’.

But with all that said, there are elements in here that show this was created by a novice filmmaker. At times the script is clunky, with some logic holes clearly visible, and there are certain scenes that are hard to explain, not least an utterly bizarre ending that looks like a circus from Hell. Some things feel like they’re not quite happening in the real world, even though they are meant to be, and there are several story threads that ultimately wind up going nowhere. It would probably have been fascinating had Getty ever turned his attention to a second movie, but sadly that was not meant to be.

How to conclude this one? The Evil Within is an experience, and if you place it within the context of its creation then it certainly takes on an added significance, obviously being a deeply personal work that was the obsession of someone who ultimately never had to turn his hand to filmmaking at all. The movie cost Getty an estimated $6 million dollars of his own money, at least some of which was raised by selling his belongings, so this was certainly a labour of love. I can’t say everything hits the mark, but this one is worth seeking out as a curio if it won’t necessarily be the best movie you’re ever liable to see.

RATING: 6/10. Is The Evil Within a mess? Sort of, but part of me think that gives its origin story it was always going to be. Are there good ideas and strong visuals as part of it? Yes, they are there. Are there some fine acting performances? I’d say yes again. Does it make any great deal of sense? Often not. Should you watch it? If you find yourself drawn to the strange and the out-there tales behind the film, then you absolutely should. If none of the above background to the film interests you, then you might not get so much out of it. 6/10 feels fair all told, though I am glad that I’ve watched this one and found out that bit more about it.

Hmmm... is this as mainstream as Film Gutter has ever gone? Maybe, maybe... but to be fair there are probably a handful of mainstream or near-mainstream movies that do deserve the Film Gutter treatment. I've got a few in that sort of ballpark, the likes of Freeway and Requiem for a Dream lined up for the gutter treatment this year, but to get the ball rolling is a real cult favourite in the form of Event Horizon. Paul W.S. Anderson's bleak slice of horror sci-fi certainly has a devoted fan base, but how does it stand nearly 25 years on – and how on earth can a film released in 1997 nearly be 25 years old? That time sure shot by…

For those of you not already familiar with it – and I appreciate many of you might be – I'll give a brief precis. Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) leads a group of swarthy spacegoers pulled from leave for a mysterious mission. They're joined by Dr William Weir (Sam Neill), who reveals they're out to recover the lost ship Event Horizon, which was attempting to open a wormhole in space but went missing. But as soon as they get on board the seemingly abandoned ship, they find a series of strange visions and dark events waiting for them – and the steady realisation that the ship has been somewhere far beyond the realms of known space...

There are a lot of iconic moments within this movie, and I must admit that this was a rewatch that I enjoyed immensely – especially bearing in mind how many Film Gutter offerings I would shudder at the thought of coming back to. There's much to like here, with some enjoyable performances – even though some seem to be almost deliberately overdone – and an engagingly dark storyline with some great visuals. The scene in the vents where the lights go out (you'll know the one if you've seen it) remains among my favourite scenes in all of horror. The plot moves along at a good pace, and certainly keeps you on your toes as each character faces their own personal nightmares.

However, even though this is a movie I have a soft spot for, if I'm going to really look myself in the eyes, I can't say that it's a stone-cold classic of the genre. Some of that is arguably down to the fact that there is a far more unpleasant director's cut that was deeply unpopular with the company's execs, and that remains lost today – many people still hope some day to see a completely uncut version of this one, although that still seems unlikely. The CGI is the thing that has dated most horribly, and there are moments of this that are silly and over the top when watched back. The ending is a little unsatisfying, and there is at times that Hollywood horror habit to fall back on things like jumpscares and fakeouts that to me feel a little beneath a movie that has this good a concept. Everything looks decent, but Anderson is no master filmmaker – a look at his directing back catalogue will confirm that, though hats off that he's always found work and made money with his films – so there are some shots that might have been done better. There are little flashes of gory and bloody moments, but those are not as much as they might have been, so you dyed-in-the-wool gorehounds might feel this one isn't for you.

In conclusion this is a movie I do like immensely, but it's only fair to recognise its shortcomings – and if that uncut version does ever see the light of day, that will probably be even more down Film Gutter's alley...

RATING: 7.5/10. Is it a move I like a lot? Yes, yes it is. But I think some of that is more emotional and connected to the memories of it, and if I'm going to properly put on my reviewer's hat and look critically this is a movie that does have some flaws and could ultimately have been done better. It's one I'll likely come back to again, and if you like sci-fi horror this is definitely worth watching. It's not as extreme as some we've watched, but it's certainly a fun concept and could work better for a few of our more squeamish readers...

It's the time of the week again, and for this one it's a trip to South Korea. Not somewhere we've often touched down in our nearly six years of reviewing, but I've seen a whole host of very good non-extreme horror out of the country, so despite knowing precious little about Moebius I came in here with high expectations.

And I'm pleased to say Moebius went and shattered them anyway. This was not simply good – this was superb, and in no time has thrown in a claim to be one of my favourite horror films ever as well as being a top-five contender in the all-time Film Gutter list. Not something I say lightly, so let’s explore just what makes this film so great….

This is not an easy film to latch onto, and I expect there's only a limited amount I can do to truly get this one over. The story basically follows just four unnamed characters – a father and son who are the main focus of the piece, a mother who features but is slightly more transient, and a young lady who works at a convenience store close to their home who goes on to be a love interest (of sorts?) for the son. The reason no-one has a name is that the movie has no dialogue whatsoever, so there's never an opportunity to name anyone. The most we ever get are laughter, or gasps, or noises, and the odd scene of someone talking on the phone – from a distance, though, so we can't hear the conversation. Some might argue this is gimmicky, but I'd heartily defend it – an argument I'll come back to shortly.

The story begins at full throttle, with mother and father having a falling out before the mum goes and removes her son's... well... member. Ouch. This hangs over much of the movie, as the son tries and largely fails to adjust to this new life while the father tries to find some way to fix it, spending a lot of time looking at penis transplant surgery. The mother drifts off with a stranger for some of the story, only returning for a truly bizarre finale. The story switches focus for much of its runtime to the equally strange relationship between the son and the shop girl (desperately looking for shorthands for characters in lieu of actual names here!) who is raped by his new friends before forging a sort of semi-sexual relationship with the son of the family, where she can bring him to orgasm by cutting or scraping his skin.

That probably all sound batshit crazy – mostly because it is. But the whole thing is artfully done, and for me was more a modern take at a Greek tragedy than anything, a totally weird and dark tale barely rooted in the real world despite ostensibly taking place within it. The runtime shot by as the story took one unexpected turn after the other, and I think all the actors involved deserve massive credit for pulling this off without one of them ever speaking. There's never a moment of doubt what anyone is feeling, and to deliver that with only facial expression and body language is really something.

This one was certainly a fascinating offering, and I couldn't think of much to compare it to apart from those old tales of Zeus and the gods of Olympus I just mentioned, with all their taboo and boundary breaking. Many have put the spin on the film that this is also a sort of Buddhist fable – and there are allusions to it in the film itself – and while I couldn't strongly disagree, I don't really know enough about the subject matter to tell you for sure.

What I can tell you is if you like your movies surreal, bleak and uneasy then this could be one for you to check out – it's certainly my favourite of 2021 so far, and it wouldn't be any surprise at all if it kept that status intact until December.

RATING: 10/10. What else were you expecting from my effusive stylings here? A really refreshing movie that kept me guessing all the way, expertly delivered not only from behind the camera but by actors without a single line of dialogue in the piece. What must this script have looked like, I wonder? It's fair to say this won't be for everybody, but this one ticked every box for me, and it has to be top marks at 10/10.

Welcome back to the final installment of Cronenberg month, where this time around we'll be taking a look at one of the director's better-known movies, the telepathic odyssey that is Scanners. Hard to believe this one was released the year I was born, but there you go. Even if you haven't seen this movie for yourself, there's a reasonable chance that you'll recognise the moment where a character's head explodes from its various uses as an internet meme. Of course that's a memorable scene, but there's plenty more to this feature than just that one thing – so let's get into it, shall we...

The story follows Cameron Vale, a shiftless drifter with a dangerous secret – he can 'scan' people, effectively a form of telepathy that allows him to read the thoughts of others as well as affecting the minds of those around him (if he really puts the effort into it). However all those streams of subconscious thought are rather overwhelming, until he is discovered by Dr Paul Ruth an introduced to Ephemerol, a drug that can reduce the volume of thoughts and allow clarity to re-emerge. But Ruth has a motive beyond purely helping out – there is a dangerous rogue Scanner out there in the form of Daryll Revok, and it's up to Vale to help stop him before he kills the entirety of the Scanner underground. What follows is a dark tale of underground intrigue so typical of the Cronenberg 'brand' at this point, but probably the best he had delivered up until this stage.

There's plenty to like here, and it's not surprising this one has cemented a firm place as a favourite in the director's back catalogue. While the technology involved here clearly dates it, if you view it as a sort of time capsule it still holds up really well today. Stephen Lack is perfectly serviceable in the lead, deliberately playing things down for this own sanity, while there are great turns from Jennifer O'Neill and specifically Michael Ironside, who has always been a great movie bad guy and shines in his limited screen time here. Patrick McGoohan also does a fine job as Dr Paul Ruth. All of that is backed up by an intriguing storyline that takes you down numerous twists and turns, delving deeper and deeper into the secret world of Scanners, its internal politics and just how much people outside of the group would love to exploit their potent powers. It certainly suggests a much wider world, and the ending does leave things fascinatingly open-ended. While there were sequels to this, as well as neo-sequels in the form of the Scanner Cop movies, none of those had Cronenberg involved and as such I've not checked those out. It's possible they may continue the story, but I couldn't say for sure. It would have been great to see Cronenberg come back or, if I can dare say the word, maybe see some sort of remake in the near future? It's pretty rare you hear me say that, although there could be something to a modern spin on this one.

RATING: 9/10. Not really much to criticise here, and you'd have to nitpick pretty hard not to get something out of this one. This feels like we're getting ever closer to the David Cronenberg that would ultimately bring us stone-cold body horror classics like Videodrome and The Fly, and certainly ranks the best of what we've seen so far this month. There are some strong acting performances from a great cast, a really interesting and powerful core concept, plenty of surprises and unexpected moments within the plot and a really likeable finale that did rather beg for a Cronenberg-led sequel that sadly we never got. Obviously there were bigger fish to fry elsewhere for the director, and looking at what followed he probably made the right decision to leave this setting behind ultimately. So it's a striking 9/10 – and you didn't even need to read my mind to know it would get that sort of mark...