​When a newly married detective and his pregnant wife move into their dream home unaware of its dark history. When his wife claims their baby is being tormented by a supernatural force and seeks the help of a renegade demonologist, he must investigate the past to save his family.  

Sounds very familiar, doesn't it?  OUT OF THE SHADOWS can best be described as a hotchpotch of nearly every other haunted house/ some supernatural entity is after my child movie.  Ranging from The Conjuring, to Insidious, with a wee bit of The Babadook (the monster bares more than a little passing resemblance to the Baba), OUT OF THE SHADOWS could so easily have come across a piss poor man's Poltergeist, luckily the film isn't a complete disaster it.  

Out of The Shadows is beautifully shot throughout, a surprise for a film with such a low budget, and the use of zoom and pan out to panoramic drone shots of the Australian countryside work really well to give a real sense of isolation.  Complementing the stunning cinematography is a very good film score, that reinforces the tension on the screen.  

The two main leads provide a solid if not outstanding performances with Blake Northfield's portrayal of the beleaguered police detective is the better of the two.  There is a nice subtly to his acting that allows for a sense of believability as his character develops and reacts to the unfolding storying line. Kendal Rae's performance isn't exactly bad, it just lacks a stable middle ground, she is excellent when the plot demands the needs for hysterics, and she is good at the start of the film when everything is all good and happy.  It is the spaces in between where she has problems, and her acting only appears to have hot and cold, which hampers and blindsides her character completely.  

Lisa Chappell's Demonologist character is also a slightly missed opportunity as she comes across almost like a failed comic relief, too much Bonzer and not enough bang.  

However, the biggest failure of this film that keeps it from fulfilling its potential is the somewhat muddied and confused use of mythology.  It can't seem to decide if we are dealing with ghosts, demons, or creatures from another dimension.  Whether this is down to the film's troubled production, or just down to an unnoticed mistake, it does hamper the films ability to entice the viewer into its world.  

Having said all this OUT OF THE SHADOWS, may not be original, and it may also suffer from some lack of unified vision. However it is still a reasonably decent supernatural thriller, it won't set your world on fire, but it will keep you pleasantly entertained for its running time.  It finished with a  sort of a cliffhanger and based on this film if there were to be a sequel I for one would tune in for it.  

A WTF movie.
 
No, ‘WTF’ is not the production company, it’s wtf as in “What the F*** did I just watch!” If you are familiar with my reviews you’ll know I’m a tough crowd, and may by now be thinking “Oh shit, here we go, another hatchet job”, but you’d be wrong. If you’re going to make a low-budget indie flick about a rampant zombie dinosaur then this is absolutely the way to go about doing it.

Is it dreadful? Hell yeah, it has a nonsensical plot, is poorly scripted with cringeworthy dialogue and a guy in a large rubber dinosaur suit yomping around menacingly. It has a stock set of characters including some tech nerds and of course ‘Black Ops Mercs’ who might actually just be gun-happy rednecks, one of whom is an absolute hoot as there’s no effort whatsoever at disguising him being based on Duke Nuke-Em, hell they even called his character ‘Duque’ (Pro bodybuilder and U.S. National Freestyle Wrestling champ Andy Haman), that’s the sort of stuff we’re dealing with here. He’s joined by ‘Cuchilla’ Vasquez (Raquel Pennington - UFC  Fighter), ‘Stick’ (Ruselis Aumeen Perry - American Ninja Warrior) while they attempt to stop the mad Dr Borge from unleashing a chemical apocalypse on the world which will turn every living thing into a zombie . Unfortunately Dr Borge has already reanimated a smaller than average bio-engineered T-Rex which is hard to kill as it’s already dead, hence the title.

Needless to say, Duque and his crew attempt to save the world. Can they defeat the Dino and prevent Dr Borge from destroying life as we know it? You’ll just have to watch it to find out.

As someone familiar with some of the special effects production techniques the film for me was also a ‘spot the CGI’ game, not so much in that I was looking for where it was, as that’s painfully obvious, but more of a ‘which company did they get their stock from’ game. It doesn’t make a difference to the film as it’s all been done on a budget, that much is obvious from the beginning, but the production crew must be commended on giving it an almost cinematic appearance.

It’s barking mad stuff from beginning to end, and has some genuine laugh out loud moments. Oh, and make sure you watch after the credits ;)
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AVAILABLE ON VOD, DVD & BLU-RAY/DVD COMBO (EXCLUSIVE TO WALMART)
 

 
From Freedom Cinema comes a collection of seven exceptionally well-made short movies featuring all manner of goodies such as cannibals, zombies, monster jellyfish and a certain Lovecraftian God who apparently calls himself ‘Charlie’ these days.

Anyone who watches horror anthologies will be aware that they are often a mixed-bag with some better than others and varying in production quality. This is almost no exception, because although some stories do fare much better than others, it’s all satisfyingly sleek and well put together.
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It has the sense of humour and high production values of the likes of Creepshow and The Witching Season and manages to do quite a lot with what was probably a meagre budget. It is broken up into segments called ‘Clots’ and unlike Creepshow has no wraparound story linking them, they are standalones and each unique in its delivery.

Clot 1: HELL OF A DAY.
There’s not a lot I can say about this without giving too much away. It’s heavy Zompoc territory here, and there’s an injured woman locking herself in a basement and hoping for the best while the dead are battering their way in. Will she survive? You’re just going to have to watch it to find out. Trust me; you’re going to want to watch it ;)
 
Clot 2: NEVER TEAR US APART:
Two friends head to a dilapidated cabin off the beaten track, but when they get there… Oh dear! This was actually one of the weaker stories, mainly because it’s largely just two guys chatting on the way to a cabin, until things go tits-up, but when that happens it’s powerful stuff which is over much too fast. This was a very short segment which could have benefitted from more of the excellent gory special effects, and perhaps ramping up the fear more instead of plumping for an ending which seemed dissatisfactory in light of what preceded it.
 
Clot 3: BLUE MOON:
Sleazy and inventive this is a tale of ‘dogging’ gone wrong. Well enough acted, nicely scripted and definitely a novelty piece with enough gore to satisfy even the most bloodthirsty palate. There’s also a surfeit of T and A and even some D as well, so if that’s your kind of thing you’re going to love this.
 
Clot 4: TIME TO EAT:
There’s something in the basement. It has huge tentacles. It’s slimy.
There’s a little boy playing with a ball, he drops it, it goes right to the top of the stairs and quick as a flash… Okay, so the ball bounces down. The little boy goes to retrieve it. It doesn’t end well. But hey, the story IS called ‘Time To EAT’ ;)
 
Clot 5: STILL:
This one alone is well worth the price of the film.

Are you sick of Zombie movies and TV series? Really? Room for one more, surely? If you can just squeeze this in you won’t regret it.

STILL is the story of two things we would normally run from, one of which is Zombies, and the other being ‘street performers’.  In this case there’s a street performer who is one of those well-dressed gents in a top hat, he’s painted head to toe in gold and is an expert at keeping still, which is for the best as all around him are either eating or being eaten. Can he keep still, or will he end up on the menu…

This is tense and gory fun, highly recommended.
 
Clot 6: HELLYFISH:

This is daft stuff, played 100% for laughs and hitting every note. If you like the comic mayhem of the Piranha movies and Sharknado films then this is bound to please as Atomic Radiation has mutated Jellyfish into gigantic ravenous monsters which go full-on Jaws at a crowded beach.
As with all of the film shorts it’s beautifully played and the effects are cheesy but superb.
 
Clot 7: THE CALL OF CHARLIE:

The OLD ONE gets a new twist with this tale of a most unusual dinner guest. I’m not into the whole Mythos thing and so I don’t know whether those who are will find this entertaining or insulting, but from the outside looking in it is a solid story with great acting, even if the basic premise does stretch credibility to snapping point.

I liked it, but for me the gem of this collection has to be ‘STILL’.
 
All told this is a fantastic anthology and the kind of thing that’s perfect for a dark night with a bunch of friends, pizza, beverages and popcorn. It’s quite easily the most entertaining thing I’ve seen in weeks.

Available now on Amazon and VOD, though once you stream it you’re probably going to want to own it ;)

William, it was really nothing.
 
Minutes to midnight is the film that could have been. Could have been funnier, could have been scarier and could even have been destined for cult classic status (who knows, it still might be), were it not for minor details. ‘Starring’ William Baldwin (of the lesser-spotted Baldwin brothers) you kinda-sorta know a film is in trouble when he’s the star, more so when the co-star is former teen-hunk Richard Grieco who these days looks like his plastic surgeon owes him an apology and a refund. The story is a simple one, it’s New Year’s eve in a small town and a small bunch of people who work for Baldwin are looking to celebrate. He pops in, wishes them a Happy New Year, and buggers off, which is pretty much all that you see of him until the end of the movie. Okay, that’s up to you whether or not that’s a blessing in disguise given that his acting career hasn’t exactly set Hollywood on fire, but it seems as if more and more mothballed ex-celebs are being dusted off and put into low budget horrors with varying results. The same can be said for poor Mr Grieco, who plays one of the most unconvincing Town Sheriffs I’ve seen to date. The story has a slight, and I do mean slight, echo of ‘My Bloody Valentine’ in that something nasty happened in the town once-upon-a-time, so there’s generally not a whole lot of celebrating going on, but hey, the youngsters never learn, so off they go to a… wait for it… Cabin in the woods. Yeah, that’s right, another film in which a bunch of young people (I’m avoiding the word ‘teens’ here as they clearly aren’t) get attacked by a mystery assailant, or indeed several.

I began by saying what this film could have been, but here’s what it actually is, it’s a decent enough film with some of the better ingredients of many of the better horror films of its type. It has a routine story and the acting isn’t all that and a bag of chips, BUT it is actually quite effective in the horror aspects, with wholesale gore and the kind of masked psychos that companies make action figures of. Where this film really goes wrong is that it’s trying so hard to be a Rob Zombie film without having Rob Zombie involved, even to the point that there’s a suitably maniacal performance from everyone’s favourite Otis Firefly the legendary Bill Moseley, so it’s not all bad. The other actors are largely just window dressing, with no stand-out performances from the usual stereotypes, and yes, there’s a bit of screwing involved and there IS the almost obligatory gratuitous lingering shower scene, all of which is totally unnecessary in a film which if it were just to concentrate on the horror instead of cheap titillation could have been so much better. When it comes down to pure adrenaline soaked action, well, there’s an attempt at it, but it comes across a bit like two pensioners in a nursing home fighting over the last biscuit on the tea tray.
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Can I or would I recommend it? Sure, it’s not so bad that it’s not worth watching, and if you can see it on VOD for cheap then it’s probably ok with a couple of beers and some popcorn, but it’s not going to rock your world or even wiggle it a bit.

Let’s all join hands and try to contact a decent scriptwriter…
 
This is going to be a very short review, mainly because there’s not a lot to say about this film, which is somewhat sad given that it is well-intentioned yet very poorly executed by those-on screen. The title gives the impression that it’s the last in a series, which when watching the film itself there is no indication of and if this were any sort of sequel I could only hope that what went before it benefitted from a different script and cast. This film is all rather basic, girl studying to be an art restorer inherits a house she doesn’t want but has to drop off some documents there. She goes with three stereotypical friends, they find a hidden room, find a Ouija board, use said Ouija board and all hell breaks loose… Except it doesn’t.

What actually happens is an hour and a half of tedious scripting, ham-fisted directing, piss-poor dialogue and bad acting. No creepy atmosphere, no scares and pretty much nothing of any note in this film. It’s an absolute shame because it is fairly tightly focused, beautifully lit and shot, and the sound quality is superb. Almost all technical aspects of the actual production are fine as one would expect from an Italian film company, it’s just unfortunate that the script offers nothing new, in fact it is even struggling to hit the cliché riddled heights we could expect from a straight-to-video 80s movie.
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I’m ending here as I don’t want to say anything which might really hurt any individual’s feelings. Suffie to say that I don’t recommend it, but if you feel like watching it it’ll be available soon.
Ouija Seance : The Final Game is on VOD 7/3/18 and 8/3/18 on DVD.

 
Somebody reckoned that this idea looked good on paper, and I must admit that I thought the same when I read the distributors blurb. We are in low-budget territory here, that’s nothing new with independent filmmakers and so one has to expect somewhat lower standards than major movie companies have. It’s also expected that the quality of talent may not be top-notch, and the industry is full of people using friends and family as extras in their films, but when the ‘star’ of the film, Nana Gouvea, is a totally wooden ‘actress’ who also happens to be the Producer’s wife, you just know that there are barrels laying around with the bottoms scraped out. It’s nepotism at its worst.

For purely practical reasons I often dictate the review as I watch the film, it saves me a lot of time because following the dictation all I will need to do is to come back to this and edit it. A similar process usually happens in filmmaking, where the ‘rushes’ from that day get reviewed, which I can only assume didn’t occur with Black Wake. My reason for saying that is simply that even 12 minutes into this film it is already a tedious mess of poor protracted dialogue, bad pacing and unnecessary scenes.

Tom Sizemore, once a reliable backup for tough guy roles in many big Hollywood movies, does his best with a lacklustre script, although to be honest his acting these days isn’t up to scratch, even so, he still manages to elevate a few of his scenes in a dire film with his presence. Under normal circumstances an actor with the quality of Sizemore’s back catalogue wouldn’t be working in films like this, but alcohol and drug abuse have clearly taken their toll and his history of violence against women is similarly intolerable so my bet is that he’s glad of any work he can get. He has worked with Carlos Keyes before on the films Blood Circus and Killer Response (both of which, not surprisingly, star Nana Gouvea). However, exactly how long they will continue to work with Sizemore is debatable in the wake of this month’s allegations of him molesting an 11-year-old girl.

Regarding Nana Gouvea, in less than 20 minutes she has already proven her ability to overact into a web cam, it is also unfortunate that much of what I’ve seen so far is exposition from her character in streams of badly delivered dialogue. Her facial expressions are often at odds with what she is saying and considering that much of this film (in its entirety) is her talking, that’s not good.

Over the 20 minute stage and Eric Roberts makes his first appearance, now Eric Roberts has also had a heavyweight career, although a mixture of heavy cocaine use and a disfiguring car crash, both in the 80s, altered his trajectory. He has a reputation these days for never turning down a project with 74 movies in the bag last year alone. I will go on record here as being an Eric Roberts fan, I think he is capable of much better things than walk on parts in rubbish like Black Wake. I hope there will come a time when he gets that second bite of the cherry and can leave B-Movies behind, but for the time being he’s doing stuff like this, and that might well be good for him financially, but it’s bad for the rest of the cast as they all look far worse next to someone who can actually act.

From the distributor blurb:

“It has screened at festivals across the world, winning Best Horror Feature Film at the 2018 Phillip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival, Best Special Effects and Best Kill at the Independent Horror Movie Awards 2018 and the Special Jury Award at Brazil International Film Festival 2018.”

Maybe it’s just me; I’m always fascinated when something as bad as Black Wake wins awards. It makes me question the credibility of the awards to the point where I actually bother to research them to see if they have any validity. The Philip K Dick film Festival awards are in the sixth year, so perhaps not enough word is out for them to be sent good quality movies, I will give it the benefit of the doubt. The two awards from the Brazil international film festival seem hollow considering the somewhat limited field, so in my opinion, and it is only my opinion, I don’t see the awards as been that big a deal on the international forum. Sounds good for publicity reasons, just not a true indicator of any quality.

An hour into this is and it is finally getting better, for a film alluding to Lovecraftian darkness it’s taken its own sweet time getting anywhere near that, we now have scorpion-like bugs, uninspired zombies and a largely unseen monstrous mind-controlling shape in the sea, but still we monstly have Nana Gouvea mugging to the camera and explaining shit that we should be being shown to the point where I am now sick of the sight of her.

1:18 and we actually see what (some of) the shape is and then the end credits with the only part of the film worth watching, the mass of out-takes in the end credits.

To say that I didn’t enjoy this film is an understatement. To give you some idea of just how thrilling it wasn’t I started watching it three and a half hours ago and thanks to it being so boring for the first hour I was able to leave it every ten minutes or so and go do something more enjoyable such as emptying the bins, cooking and eating my lunch, doing the washing up, putting laundry in the machine, hell, I would even have de-wormed the cat except that I don’t have a cat. Anything would have been more enjoyable than… Ah fuck, I can’t even remember the name of this pile of shite now… THAT’s how good it is. Black Wake, that’s it, it’s called…. ZZZZzzzzzzzzzz

Having finished it I can only assume that those who give awards have probably watched the last ten minutes and assumed that’s representative of the whole, something like that anyway. Needless to say, I can’t recommend it.

A short French film from Director Roman Soni

 
Many filmmakers produce short movies with varying results in terms of production quality, acting ability et cetera, some having very ill-conceived and poorly executed ideas, but I am glad to say this film by Roman Soni is not one of them. A shade less than 13 minutes long Strix begins with an unfortunate woman being attacked and murdered and a Venetian mask being left by her body. We then jump forward 12 years to an almost obligatory shower scene, rather than the usual woman taking a shower getting stabbed by an assailant this woman is actually able to finish her ablutions and get dressed. There is however someone at the door, that someone is wearing the same Venetian mask.

What could be a standard slasher flick takes a little diversion as the guy in the mask holds the woman hostage. Her husband and his friend arrive back at the house to find her with a knife being held at her throat, and they are told they must play a questions and answers game or she will die.
At this point you’re probably thinking that you can guess the rest, and if you manage to your better at this than I am because although I got some of it in advance it was clever enough to include a satisfying twist.

The stars, Corentin Cuvelier, Sebastien Wust, Emilie Gn, Yohan Desvaux and Juline Thibaut all add class to the proceedings with clear and credible performances.

The technical aspects are solid, the score near-perfect and special effects as good as anything out there.

Obviously with it being less than 13 minutes long there is not a hell of a lot of content to review, certainly not without giving major spoilers. So I will go no further except to say that it’s available on YouTube and worth 13 minutes of anyone’s time. It is in French, so you may need to toggle the subtitle setting.
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1EDk4jF_cU

 
 
I’m wearing my ‘Fanboy’ hat today; for once it’s not a case where I was unfamiliar with the subject of this biography as I have grown up watching Larry Cohen’s output. There’s a better than average chance that even if you are unfamiliar with Larry Cohen you’ll have seen, or at the very least heard of, many of his films. For the benefit of those who can’t quite place him here are a few of his ‘cult classic’ creations:
 
It’s Alive.
Maniac Cop.
The Ambulance.
Q (The Winged Serpent)
The Stuff.
A Return to Salem’s Lot.
 
Aside from those he is the man responsible for dozens of other films and TV series spanning several genres and fifty years, amongst which is the first thing which brought him to my attention, the TV series ‘The Invaders’ with Roy Thinnes as David Vincent, an architect who sees a UFO and spends 43 episodes trying to convince everyone that aliens walk among us. It’s classic TV and expands on the small town paranoia evident in America at the time as well as being bolstered by such things as the Twilight Zone episode ‘The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street’ from 7 years earlier.

His work output is something few can match, but aside from being prolific as both writer and film-maker there’s another aspect of Larry Cohen which is noteworthy in that he is a true renegade. Up until recently there have been relatively few people who have wrote/directed/produced their own projects, mostly as film studios have overbearing control of what their budgets goes into, although nowadays with modern technology making it possible to create an entire movie on a smartphone it’s more common to be an ‘indie film-maker’. Larry Cohen had one way of operating, and that was ‘his own’, he didn’t want what he was writing to be at the mercy of directors and producers who would bastardize his work and so he wore all of the hats required to get a project in the can. He also had a somewhat liberal attitude toward ‘getting permission’ for certain things such as filming street scenes and using particular buildings, and so he winged it for much of the time, setting up cameras and ‘stealing shots’. A fine example of pushing his luck would be having comedian/actor Andy Kaufman dress as a policeman and join a real NYPD Police Parade without telling anyone. The documentary is full of stuff Larry Cohen brazenly pulled off which if you were to try it today you’d probably end up doing hard time for, assuming that with today’s permit-centric society with surveillance on every street corner you were actually able to do something longer than the average ‘prank’. What Cohen did was, simply put, ‘Guerrilla Film-making’ at its finest.

For the addicts such as myself there are many clips of his finest works, such as the notorious ‘Window Cleaner’ scene from ‘Q’, and a wealth of interviews with John Landis, Martin Scorsese, Joe Dante, Fred Williamson, Rick Baker, Yaphet Kotto, Traci Lords, Eric Roberts, David J Schow, J.J. Abrams and Mick Garris to name a few, and of course the man himself who gives plenty of screen time packed with anecdotes, (some of which are typically disputable for such a roguish storyteller) of his life and times from his early days of wannabe stand-up comic turned writer and film maker, right up to his latest endeavours.

‘King’ Larry Cohen may not be a household name, and that is something I think is awful given his contribution to entertainment, but one thing is for certain, he deserves the title ‘King’ as he is the ruler of his own talent as well as a man who recognises the capabilities in those around him and enables them to give their best, something which has been for the betterment of an industry in which the strictures placed on creativity are overwhelming.
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‘King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen’ will receive a full theatrical run across the U.S beginning July 20 in L.A (with other cities in the weeks to follow), courtesy Dark Star Pictures. There’s no news as yet about distribution for the home audience, but when that happens I’m certain this will be a ‘must see’ for any genre enthusiast.
Definitely one to watch.