It’s that time again. This is my third visit to Scotland’s longest-running horror film festival: the first time I dipped my toes in the murky water with Spawn of Dawn, the Saturday all-nighter that shows about eight hours of festival highlights; last year I did Friday night to Sunday morning, and this year I stayed a bit longer. Having to work means I’ll probably never manage the whole thing so I still missed a few films.
The new features I missed are:
GREEN ROOM
K-SHOP
WE GO ON, which won the audience award for best film, so I'm gutted I missed it.
MEN AND CHICKEN.

​For those of you who don’t know, the festival runs from Thursday night to Sunday night, showing a mix of features and shorts from noon till the small hours. It’s run by the indomitable Adele Hartley, who introduces each film or set of shorts.

Still in shock and recovering from the death of her brother Sarah (Danielle Jadelyn) decides to go on vacation with her best friend Rachel (Yael Grobglas) to The Holy Land.  As a going away gift Sarah's father gives her a pair of Google Glasses. 

While on the flight from American the two  travellers befriend history buff and anthropologist Kevin (Yon Tumarkin), who charms  them into taking a detour from their plans and travelling with him to Jerusalem.    Where they meet, in a night club,  Omar (Tom Graziani) a local hotel owner, who becomes their local tourist guide. 

As Omar leads them through the ancient city as it prepares itself for Yom Kippur we are given hints that this isn't going to be your usual holiday for the city.... 

I get that horror is supposed to mack you feel uneasy, I get the it is supposed to shock, and I even understand that it is supposed to push the boundaries.  So it is such a pity that all of those involved with woefully terrible film don't understand the difference between being shocking and pushing the boundaries, and just plain old abyssal film making.  

Muck must rank as not only one of the worst horror films of all time, but as one of the worst examples of filmmaking in itself.  There is not a single aspect of this film that warrants any sort of praise.  Read on to find why this film made me angrier than Scotsman the day before payday 

Over the last almost eighteen months, Film Gutter has been something of an international quest to try and find the most twisted cinema out there. But it only occurs to me in writing this review that this might well be the first I've looked at from my home nation, right here in the UK. It feels good to be reviewing something home-grown here – certainly not because I'm the wildest of patriots, but as a British-based column on a British-based website it'd be nice to give a bit of a plug to something from these shores. And now the opportunity has come with The Lesson, not long released having recently been screened at venues including Frightfest and Glasgow Film Festival.

Heaven knows it is hard enough getting a babysitter, let alone one that you can trust and god forbid a babysitter that won't torment, terrorise and taunt your terrible tots.  Don't let Hollywood films like Adventures in Babysitting fool you into thinking that babysitters are all fun and  your kids will have a great time with them.  The majority of them are surly teenage girls who will raid the chocolate biscuits and crisps from your cupboard, some will be good babysitters, but God Forbid you get a babysitter like Emelie.  If that happens you may as well kiss your happy family life goodbye.  

And now for something completely different! Yes, I’m taking a break from the murky waters of Film Gutter to venture into a more traditional thriller. Death in the Desert certainly interested me as a movie, with the classic setting of Las Vegas combined with a dark love triangle and some fine acting talent, all based on the book by Cathy Scott. The trailer itself looked good too, good enough for me to take a departure from my usual fare here at Ginger Nuts of Horror.

So, was the change of scene worth it? I want to say yes, I really do. All the motifs were there for something really promising here, but the end result was also very disappointing.

The movie follows Ray Easler (Michael Madsen), a wealthy 50-something casino in Vegas. He’s cynical, hard-drinking and a fairly heavy drugs user as well. Much of his fortune was inherited from his father, whom he seems to have a borderline obsession with – the number of times he’s mentioned in proceedings is pretty notable. One night at a strip club, Easler meets Kim Davis (Shayla Beesley) who has just arrived in Vegas. Honestly, I can’t even tell you why she’s there – I just kind of assumed it was to pursue some kind of fame. Anyway, Easler is immediately struck with her and the relationship central to the story gradually blossoms. Ray and Kim are eventually living together when Ray perversely hires a young man who Kim clearly has a liking for to help him bury a host of silver coins in the desert (I can’t honestly say that made sense to me at all). As Kim and Ray’s relationship degenerates, Kim’s affair with Matt grows and becomes both sexual and emotional.

Even on that, it doesn’t sound too bad. But there are a whole host of issues, so many that I barely know where to begin. First of all, there’s Madsen’s grating narration, which seems to barely cease and becomes a source of constant irritation. It seems to be going for some kind of Zen philosophy, but just descends into rambling gibberish. There’s also the fact there’s not a single character to like here – I don’t mind edgy antiheroes, but there was simply no one here to be interested in or care about. Easler is a deeply unpleasant character who seems to have no idea how to crack a smile, and doesn’t seem to do a moment’s work despite evidently running a vast empire. Kim is a character who is totally disinteresting from the get-go, and slips into the classic trophy wife role all too willingly. There’s no motivation for her to get with Ray in the first place that I can detect apart from the fact he has a lot of money. Even her new beau Matt is practically a cardboard cut-out of a character that we don’t come to know the first thing about. By the time I was 25 minutes in I’d stopped caring, and there was nothing much in the last hour to revive my interest. Because that’s the other thing – so little actually happens in this movie. The narration definitely begins to feel like padding over pretty shots of Vegas because basically it’s just rich guy meets stripper, relationship begins, stripper falls for other guy. That’s kind of it – even the finale, in which I was expecting some kind of drama, delivered next to nothing.
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So ultimately, Death in the Desert was a bitter letdown. On reflection I realised part of the reason I took this film on for a review – I’ve always loved Leaving Las Vegas, which is well up among my favourite movies, and there were echoes of that in the trailer. Unfortunately this one just played like a horribly sub-standard version of that far better movie. If you took the emotion and the connection with the characters out of LLV, this is about what you’d end up with. Despite its short running time, this one really dragged.  In the end I can only give this one a pretty poor rating, so it’s a 2/10 from me.
 
 

Frankenstein and his Monster  have been an enduring feature of the horror genre since their inception almost 200 years ago, and yet despite their constant presence, the number of times that their depiction has had any merit has been pitifully low.  Yes I am looking at you Victor Frankenstein and Daniel Radcliffe.  How two films that came out at the same time based on the same source source material can be so polar opposite in quality is beyond me.  

Where Victor Frankenstein is a garish mesh of loud bangs and idiotic action scenes, Bernard Rose's Frankenstein, is a clever, powerful and underplayed masterpiece that leaves the viewer in a state of shock.