Korkarlen (The Phantom Carriage)

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One of my all-time favourite things about going back in time with cinema is when you find those films that spawned so many recognisable and iconic scenes. It’s a truly weird and delightful feeling when you watch a scene in a really old movie and it reminds you of a scene in a film that was made decades later and that part of your brain that remembers and stores scenes and images lights and begins whirring like mad. This afternoon I watched a particularly good one of these movies: Korkarlen (The Phantom Carriage).

Rather reminiscent of Dickens’ classic ghost story, Korkarlen takes place on New Years’ Eve at the bedside of a dying Salvation Army sister (Astrid Holm). Her dying wish is to see the man whom she loves turn over a new leaf. Outside in the cold the man of her prayers, David Holm, (Victor Sjostrom) is drinking away the remains of the year when he gets into a tussle with his companions and dies. Death’s carriage arrives to take his soul, but the driver –a former sinner and friend of David’s- prolongs the engagement by showing David’s ghost all the pain and misery he has caused in the hope that there might still be time to save his soul.

Historically, The Phantom Carriage is a cinematic masterpiece for a number of reasons. Not only did it cement the fame of Swedish silent cinema throughout the 1920s, it is probably one of the most widely sampled and quoted films within modern cinema –especially in films that depict the spirit world.

It might not be the first, but it is definitely the most celebrated ghost movie in silent cinema, with the scene of the soul rising from the deceased body and then staring back down at it, being one of the most widely recognisable sequences in modern movies. Made in a simple, but incredibly time-consuming and meticulous way with series of double exposures, the film was the first time audiences got to see a three-dimensional ghost world on screen and it’s truly haunting.

The eerie tale of disease, decay, and spiritual corruption is highlighted further by the supernatural element as well as the film’s (at the time) modern narrative method of telling the story through flashbacks and even flashbacks within flashbacks. All this results in an intricate and complex tale of society in decline, which would depress even the dead, but is uplifted by its resounding message of hope and the opportunity of turning over a new leaf that the New Year brings. It is wonderfully metaphoric while at the same being completely sincere and the drama and horror of the central stories of woe is superbly brought out by the mesmerising performances of the cast.

Image credit: IMDb

Sjostrom in particular, is a captivating protagonist, beginning the film as this cackling and hateful, disease-ridden human who, in true Scrooge fashion, gets sense finally knocked into him through a series of scares and forced re-livings of his own past perils. Getting all the best scenes in the movie including looking down at his own corpse and breaking down a locked door with an axe a la Jack Nicholson, (“Heeere’s Johnny!”) it’s a true testament to the power of visual storytelling and performance that this hateful character can make us cry along with him in the end, and seriously Sjostrom is remarkable!

The Phantom Carriage influenced the works of Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, and practically every other director who ever did a transparent ghost movie, and even all these years later it still stands up as a truly moving, impressive, and iconic film.

Director: Victor Sjostrom, 1921

Cast: Victor Sjostrom, Hilda Borgstrom, Tore Svennberg, Astrid Holm, Concordia Selander, Lisa Lundholm, Tor Weijden, Einar Axelsson, Olof As, Nils Ahren, Simon Lindstrand, Nils Elffors, Algot Gunnarsson, Hildur Lithman, and John Ekman

Winchester

Image credit: Rotten Tomatoes

Horror movies inspired by real events are ones to be taken with a grain of salt. The level of terror they can inspire comes directly from what genre of horror they are. Films that tread thriller terrain with psycho killers, detectives, and abduction cases tend to have a leg-up on other genres as we come across similar stories –though not always so extreme- in headlines. Whereas not everyone can get on board with paranormal flicks based on real reports. While movies such as The Exorcist prove that they can still make for iconic cinema, not all ghost movies make the grade.

Winchester tells the story of grieving widow Sarah Winchester (Helen Mirren) –whose husband invented the repeating Winchester rifle- who lives in a gargantuan mansion that is always under construction and is also seriously haunted. Sarah is convinced that the souls of all those killed by her husband’s invention gather in her home and so she is continually building rooms for them to either be locked up in if they are malevolent or helped to move on if they are merely lost. Superiors at the office of the Winchester Company hire physician Dr. Eric Price (Jason Clarke) to issue a formal evaluation declaring Sarah insane and unfit to run the company, but soon after arriving at the mansion Eric begins to encounter its ghostly residents –including one particularly malevolent spirit with a powerful thirst for revenge.

Shot in Melbourne and directed by the Spierig brothers Winchester is an interesting story, but a relatively mediocre movie. It would make a very exciting gothic novel a la Horace Walpole or Anne Radcliffe as it covers all the generic tropes including an elaborate mansion with secret passages, a cursed/dysfunctional family, and of course the past forever intruding on the present. This was definitely the film’s aesthetic –which reminded me very strongly of The Woman in Black- although where it falls down in this respect is with the house itself. On the inside it’s a classic Victorian ghost story and the cinematography is pretty spot-on, but on the outside the house –and a number of its inner technologies- are more modern and clash with the vibe.

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In terms of a paranormal horror flick it’s eerie, but not anything overly special or frightening. The jump scares are all strongly premeditated causing you to spend the lead up poised with your hands over your ears – and nine times out of ten they happen exactly where you think they will.

The performances are all very solid, but nothing incredible. Helen Mirren as a grieving grand dame delivers a stylish performance and Jason Clarke does a relatively good job of playing the rational character in a house of horrors while simultaneously being haunted by ghosts of his own.

Stylistically Winchester is a fine film, but as a horror movie it’s only so-so. The jump scares do work and the possessed child –a popular genre cliché thanks to The Exorcist- is still a creepy thing to behold, but as the film treads these familiar boards it becomes too recognisible and loses that immersion you look for in a horror movie experience.

Starring: Helen Mirren, Jason Clarke, Sarah Snook, Finn Scicluna-O’Prey, Emme Wiseman, Tyler Coppin, Laura Brent, Bruce Spence, and Angus Sampson

Wes Craven's New Nightmare [MA]

It’s been ten years since the Nightmare on Elm Street movies came to a close with the death of Freddy Krueger. But for Heather Langenkamp, who starred as Nancy in the first movie, the nightmare isn’t over. She’s been receiving some creepy phone calls reciting that old sing-song rhyme, and having a Freddy nightmare that turns out to be eerily prophetic. Wes Craven is writing a new Nightmare movie and wants her to reprise her role as Nancy. As the script remains under wraps, Nancy’s nightmares grow steadily worse and it becomes clear that the evil of Freddy isn’t going away unless she confronts it. 

A cleverly and highly metafictive movie, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare works both as horror movie and social commentary on the popularity of the Freddy Krueger franchise. After the string of trashy but fun b-grade horror sequels that came after Craven’s chilling original, this is a drink of fresh water; rich in intertextuality, metafiction, and parallel running plot lines. 

What I liked best about this movie was its metafiction. Personally, I’ve always been fascinated by films that draw attention to or make fun or commentary on their own status as films. Films where actors play themselves, or a slightly different version of themselves, I just find really funny and a very clever way of making social commentary and critique on various topics: in the case of this movie, the unexpected popularity of Freddy Krueger and his iconic status as the killer that always comes back. Krueger as metaphor is a very strong theme running through this movie: a metaphor for the film’s endurance, for a character/film being definitive of an actor, and even the everlasting-ness of cinema and how actors are often haunted by films that they’ve done, which they’re not always the proudest of or consider their best works. The idea of Freddy haunting Heather as Heather and not Nancy is a stark illustration of this and this is where the film achieves its status as both metafictive horror movie and social commentary. 

All the original taboo themes of the first film are being explored again, but this time there are various hints that suggest alternative meanings of the movie and contradict certain events. It’s a film that leaves you with a lot of questions to ponder and I think I like that most about it. 

Heather Langenkamp delivers a great performance as a haunted version of herself and Miko Hughes who plays her son Dylan is very entrancing to watch, especially in his scarier moments of trance, fear, and possession. 

After a decade the special effects have become a lot crisper, but occasionally there is still one that makes you think ‘ugh that is so fake’. Oh well, can’t win them all. 

Starring Matt Winston, Rob LaBelle, David Newsom, Wes Craven, Marianne Maddalena, Tracy Middendorf, Sam Rubin, Robert Englund, Robert Shaye, Tuesday Knight, and Tina Vail, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is an eerie and entertaining horror movie and social commentary that’s filled with metafiction, action, horror, drama, and comedy. It’s a homage to the powers of storytelling and I found it quite engaging and entertaining. 

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare [M]

Thanks to Freddy Kruger there are no kids or teenagers left in Springwood… except one. A nameless amnesia case is picked up by the cops and dumped in a neighbouring town’s youth centre, with no clues as to his identity but a clipping from a newspaper. His doctor suggests a trip back to Springwood to jog his memory, but the trip goes bad when two out of three stowaway patients meet grizzly ends in their sleep whilst there and only one development is made in the John Doe case: Freddy Krueger had a child. 

The final chapter in the Freddy ‘saga’, Freddy’s Dead does prove to be a little bit of an improvement of its predecessor at least in terms of writing… well, for the base idea at least. It still follows in the footsteps of the entire string of spin-off movies: being a trashy 1980s B-grade horror flick, but at least, at the very least there was a bit of an effort made to salvage Freddy’s history… if only just a bit. 

Essentially what this movie was, was an attempt to put a lid on the string of Nightmare movies whilst simultaneously being a last minute attempt to salvage the severely mutilated history that lazy and clichéd writers had dreamed up for Freddy. Mixing spiritualism, religion, and psychology, the Freddy history that we are given in this film is much more compelling and believable than the satanic spawn theory of Dream Child. Having said that, there still are a few gaping plot holes: namely the fact that this movie doesn’t link on from the others in any way at all. Admittedly, they set it for ten years from ‘now’ (whether that ‘now’ is the leave-off point from the last film or the actual present is unclear), so kudos for trying. Then the recurring dream and the sudden information dump that Freddy had a child is a bit of an unstable bomb, but it works for the rest of the film, loosely. The story, however flimsily written, does succeed in depicting a believable tale of incredibly troubled childhood resulting in a psychologically fractured man so, for me after Dream Child, that was a massive relief. 

The rest is more or less, take it or leave it, the same. Freddy’s killings become a little less creative and a little bit predictable with the gore in this film being dialled down a notch… during some parts. 

Englund still delivers a classic Freddy performance complete with the memorable wise cracks and one-liners and the other thing that I liked about this movie was the sneaky appearance from Johnny Depp! Little bit of intertextual satire there, which was priceless. 

Starring Lisa Zane, Shon Greenblatt, Lezlie Deane, Ricky Dean Logan, Tom Arnold, Roseanne Barr, Yaphet Kotto, Elinor Donahue, Breckin Meyer, anda sneaky, sinister appearance from Alice Cooper Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare is a shameless close to the Nightmare saga and to give credit where credit is due, it did resurrect the franchise slightly with the rewritten history of one of cinema’s iconic slashers. Filled with action, horror, gore, violence, drama, trauma, and comedy, it’s still a fun and trashy ‘80s B-grade horror movie, but it’s shameless about what it is and I liked that about it. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child [M]

Alice thought she had gotten rid of Fred Krueger and those horrible nightmares. But now dreams are taking on an eerily familiar tinge of danger. After a terrible nightmare where she almost drowned in the shower, it seems to Alice that Freddy is back and when her boyfriend is brutally killed in a car crash her worst fears are confirmed. Freddy is back and in search of new souls, but what’s different this is that he’s attacking their dreams… when they’re awake. 

And we’re back on to the bad follow-up movies that attempt to tell the impenetrable back-story of Fred Krueger and… fail, absolutely epically. But we’ll get to that in a minute. After exploring and mutilating the themes of identity and Lacanian mirror theory in The Dream Master, this follow up movie explores pregnancy and motherhood. Maybe it’s some stab at the ultimate abject; kids and parents turning on each other, whatever the writers were trying to do with this movie caused it to be a class flop just like its predecessor. Admittedly, you can argue that these films have become a deliberate B-grade string of ‘good’ bad movies, but it really doesn’t make them any less bad. 

So, Freddy is somehow back again and really we have no idea how; we’re given all these clues, but no information dumps, which is kind of surprising seeing as films like these tend to favour them generically. The first thing that I want to tear apart in this film is the religious aspect of it. I can completely understand the appeal of creating a history for a notorious cinematic slasher like Freddy Krueger; he’s one of the best horror movie killers around with his fedora and his wise cracks. But what irritates me is the fact that whoever was in charge of coming up with Kruger’s back-story, didn’t really bother to explore the other, more frightening possibilities. Think about how much fun you could have writing about Krueger from a psychological point of view. But no, they go for the religious aspect and how he is some mutated spawn of the Satan. Now, this annoys me for two reasons. 1) Freddy Krueger was not born some mutated creepy devil spawn: he was a man who was a child murderer and was murdered by the townsfolk, thus sparking his revenge story of the first movie. 2) I cannot help but feel that it’s an example of incredibly lazy writing when you just slap on a ‘religious’ label and then don’t explore that further. In this film we get the slightest hints of explanations regarding Christian mythology, and Freddy’s one weakness, his mother (a bit of a reverse Bates or Vorhees thing going on there), is a nun. End of research. 

All of the film’s attention is on the ‘gross-out’ aspect, which is really just a lot of tapioca, claymation, and rubber daubed in shiny gluey liquid. One thing that can be praised in this movie is Freddy Krueger in black and white comic strip: that return to the grey tones of noir was pretty cool, especially for such a modern character as Freddy. I have to admit also too that there was a little hint of Mad Max about the first death scene, namely the victim literally becoming one with his bike. It was actually eerily prophetic of Fury Road. Whether this was deliberate or not, I still responded in a positive way to that bit. 

Most of the performances are pretty solid with a special shout-out going to Lisa Wilcox as Alice and Kelly Jo Minter who, in a slightly annoying and obvious but nevertheless effective way, provided the voice of reality, authority, and all of the characters who were not meant to believe what Alice was telling them about a guy killing people in their dreams. 

Starring Danny Hassel, Erika Anderson, Nicholas Mele, Joe Seely, Valerie Armstrong, Burr DeBenning, Beatrice Boepple, Clarence Felder, and Robert Englund, Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child provides a fairly predictable cinematic experience that results in disappointment because it is so obvious. Filled with gore, classic Freddy wise cracks, drama, horror, and a sneaky exhibition of Englund without scarred Freddy makeup, it’s just as bad as its predecessors and should be viewed with the expectation of being a tacky, B-grade horror movie. Not much less and certainly nothing more. 

The Uninvited [PG]

When London-based siblings Rick and Pamela discover a huge empty country house in Cornwall, they fall head over heels in love with it. Fortune seems to be on their side when they learn that it’s for sale at a rock bottom price. But town rumours about bad business taints the cliff-top manor and soon it becomes clear that there is something horribly wrong with the house. The pets won’t go anywhere near the staircase, there’s a strange coldness in the upstairs studio, and just before dawn the ghostly sound of a woman crying can be heard all throughout the house. 

A little bit Rebecca, a little bit The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Uninvited is quite a lovely little gothic, romantic ‘horror’ that is wonderfully balanced between comedy, romance, and suspense. Minus any great violence or bloodshed, it’s got everything you could want in a gothic romance, complete with a scandalous love triangle that’s still making noise from beyond the grave! 

More beautiful than scary, director Lewis Allen (Suddenly) shows a definite flare for light and shadowing in this movie with many of its most thrilling shots so perfectly depicting just why black and white is better for horror movies. Between white faces floating about with the rest of their bodies in shadow, wide light pools made by candles that eerily elongate our heroes’ shadows, and a wispy special effect that would be pretty if it wasn’t so malignant, there is so much to marvel at visually in this movie. 

But without a doubt the best thing about this flick is that it’s so nicely balanced between suspense, romance, and comedy. The haunting crying sounds, candle flames blowing without wind, doors opening/closing, and pages of a book moving on their own are enough to stimulate the adrenaline that comes with watching a horror movie. Then we have this quite cute little romance that flourishes between Rick and Stella, the manor’s owner’s granddaughter who is central in the ghostly story. The classic quest narrative comes into play as the siblings, in true horror mystery fashion, decide to stay in the house, try to solve the mystery and set all the trapped spirits free, freeing themselves from nightly disturbances in the process. 

Although we are dealing with ghosts, there’s a strong non-horror feel about the movie, which is rare and refreshing because you don’t really get that a lot when you think about it. The point of this movie is not to scare. Indeed much of the beauty and lightness of the movie comes in the form of its accompanying score by Victor Young, which blends eerie crescendos with beautiful serenades as well as perky and upbeat tunes that bring a lovely bounce and sense of comedic timing to the film. 

Starring Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Donald Crisp, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Dorothy Stickney, Barbara Everest, Alan Napier, and Gail Russell, The Uninvited, although it does sound like a good spooky horror movie, delivers a pleasant surprise in its gothic romanticism. Filled with supernatural hauntings, romance, drama, scandal, and comedy, it’s really just a lovely little film. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master [M]

Kristen, Joey, and Kincaid are the last of the Elm Street kids against whose parents Freddy swore revenge. Although his bones are buried and they’ve been sleeping sound, Kristen fears that they haven’t seen the last of him. Sure enough, Freddy comes back, but it’s not just to wipe out the original Elm Street kids. Hungry for the souls of more children, Freddy tricks Kristen into using her power to call new kids into her dreams and soon his sights are set on Alice, an identity-confused wallflower with a dream power all her own. As her friends start to get picked off one by one, Alice must dig deep and find the courage to face Freddy and become the dream master. 

After a slight resurrection in the quality of writing and performance and just everything in general in Dream Warriors, this next instalment in the Freddy Krueger saga is a sound flop. It just flops to the ground like a sack of crap. True, the sack of crap that it is. 

For a start, we’ve only got two members of the Dream Warriors cast and while I can understand that this is no-one’s fault really, it’s just very hard for people to see different faces on the characters they know and it’s not fair to expect us to automatically feel the same (if any) attachment to them as we had before. To be honest, even the two originals made it feel like they didn’t really want to be there. 

Having said this, the new characters made a solid go of it and fair play to them! More power to Lisa Wilcox who stars as Alice; it’s hard to play a convincing wallflower who actually does have friends, but not really a sense of belonging and she did the role really well, particularly when she takes on the character traits of each of her friends as they meet their end. I actually quite liked her as a character and thought that her eventual embodiment of all her deceased friends forming her identity was a nice touch (in sentiment at least). 

Freddy’s methods of killing and wisecracks become more creative and hilarious with him turning our heroes’ deep-seated fears and social anxieties against them: one girl gets gruesomely transformed into a cockroach and another has everything sucked out of her when Freddy asks “wanna suck face?” Need I say more? 

Moving on to things that bring this movie down, the major one is the way that the writers tried to be deep and smart in the ways of Lacanian mirror theory. If for nothing else, the overt and brutally ham-fisted way in which mirrors are used in this movie as a metaphor for identity really drags the film down to the lowest depths possible with a heavy coat of pretentiousness. 

The dialogue is shoddy, rumbling along fine and then suddenly popping forward or backward, and there’s at least two or three places where you forget that there’s some sort of shaping plot going on. Overall, it doesn’t make for very gripping entertainment on any level. 

Starring Rodney Eastman, Danny Hassel, Richard Garrison, Andras Jones, Tuesday Knight, Nicholas Mele, Toy Newkirk, Ken Sagoes, Brooke Theiss, and Robert Englund, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master falls back bounds behind its predecessor. Filled with gore, action, drama, murder, and comedy it’s another 20^th century B-grade horror flick that achieves a few throaty chuckles at its derpy hilarity, but ultimately just isn’t good. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors [M]

All over town teenagers are committing suicide. Survivors of attempts are grouped together in a clinic where they have nothing in common, except for a recurring figure in their nightmares. A burned man with knifed fingers terrorises them in their sleep and it’s not until the hospital receives a new staff member, Nancy Thompson that any hope of survival comes through. Knowing the foe that these kids face, Nancy teaches them to use the powers of their dreams to fight back against Krueger. But Freddy’s been gaining strength from the souls of his victims, is Nancy and a bunch of kids really strong enough to fight him? 

Whilst it’s not a cinematic masterwork by any means, Dream Warriors is still a hell of a lot better than Freddy’s Revenge. This is where the films become somewhat camp, like Joel Schumacher’s Batman movies, but that element of campiness actually has a lot to be said for it. Dream Warriors introduces this fun element as well as the horror and stomach-churning gruesomeness that is the fun of Nightmare, making it a relatively entertaining movie. 

Firstly, the writing is much better than its predecessor! What we’ve now got is a fairly stable and balanced script that blends information dumps and payoffs with comedy, and plausible pop-psychoanalysis. Freddy’s methods of attack in these kids’ dreams become all the more inventive and scary as he takes on the form of past or repressed horrors of each character. For example, we’ve got an ex-drug addict whom Freddy kills with ten fingers of needles while another girl is forced to listen to her mother’s decapitated head complain about her attempts to ruin her relationships with other men. On a shallow level, this movie delivers the thrills by preying on the plausible psychoanalytic edges of distressed teens that are suffering from real-life problems like drug addiction, divorce, etc. This exploration into that sort of territory already makes it infinitely better than the piss-weak attempt of possession through Nancy’s old house that was at the centre of the second flick. 

Secondly, we’ve got some much stronger performances at work here and it was actually nice to see cast members from the first movie reprise their roles. I’ll concede it was a bit of a wild card bringing Nancy back into the nightmare, seeing as we never really worked out whether she died in the first film or not, but the appearance of her familiar face did bring a new layer of enjoyment to the movie: it’s always nice to see familiar faces in movies. The performances are all bounds ahead of those in the second film, with connection and chemistry actually being able to be seen between the central characters. 

What I love also too are our heroes’ interactions with Freddy and his newfound one-liners that bring that extra level of fun to the film. 

The special effects are much better and there is even a solid stab at explaining Freddy’s history, which is interesting. 

Starring Heather Langenkamp, Craig Wasson, Patricia Arquette, Ken Sagoes, Rodney Eastman, Jennifer Rubin, Bradley Gregg, Ira Heiden, Penelope Sudrow, Priscilla Pointer, Laurence Fishburne, and Robert Englund, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is a camp, but fun supernatural slasher flick filled with action, horror, violence, drama, and comedy. While it’s still not a horror masterpiece, it’s fun. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge [MA]

Jesse and his family have moved into a new house, but he hasn’t even finished unpacking and he’s already having strange nightmares about a guy with knifed fingers. Stories run rampant around the schoolyard about how the last owner of Jesse’s house went mad and killed themselves, but then Jesse finds a diary and the nightmares become all too real as he reads Nancy’s accounts of Fred Krueger. Soon Jesse is fighting for his life and his sanity as Freddy starts to take control of his body when he sleeps, killing his friends and loved ones, and threatening to take Jesse down with him. 

Hands down, one of the stupidest movies ever! I don’t think you can even call it a sequel because, aside from the house and the villain, there is literally nothing linking it properly to Craven’s original classic. And it definitely shouldn’t be called Freddy’s Revenge for the simple reason that he has nothing and no one to revenge against! All this movie is, is a return of the vengeful ghost who apparently is now killing because it takes fear to make him stronger. 

Oh there are so many things wrong with this film. For a start, it really shouldn’t exist on principal, just like Psycho II. The brilliance of the first movie was that it left us in complete suspense; really without any sense of closure, just shock. The whole dream-within-a-dream sequence with the striped car was awesome and a perfect way to finish the piece. Whilst I won’t deny that Freddy is a cool villain, it really should have been left there. I think the biggest thing that annoyed me with this flick was the fact that Freddy is now trying to gain strength to enter the real world through a corporeal being, in this case Jesse. What made Freddy so freaky in the first film was the fact that he was free of that mortal coil in the dream-plane, showing off how he could slice himself open and cut off his fingers and stuff. Now he wants to be in the real world? The whole thing makes no sense to me, even if we consider the argument that he would still be immune in reality. The idea behind Freddy was that he was this vengeful ghost that was getting revenge by killing the children of the townsfolk who killed him I their dreams. Bringing him back into a story where there is really no goal for him aside from gaining strength is really piss-weak writing. 

On that subject, the script is really bad, to the point of utmost mind-numbing lobotomy! The idea that Freddy haunts the house and that’s how he can possess Jesse is a really weak idea, which actually never gets explained, and this is where the film really starts to take shape as the giant question mark that it is. Hints as to what’s going on are dropped, but never properly explored, the audience are left to pretty much do all the work, which really just isn’t the point, and by the end of the flick it does seem that the whole reason it’s in existence is to play with special gore effects and nothing else. 

The makeup and special effects are pretty gruesome and impressive to a certain extent I am willing to admit, but that is still no reason why the writers couldn’t have tried a bit harder or the actors actually attempt to act! 

The performances are pretty shocking, either overacted completely or so underdone wooden puppets would have delivered more animated performances. There are absolutely no connections between characters at all, and no chemistry between the two leads, which really shuts the film down as their ‘love’ is meant to be what can save Jesse. 

Starring Mark Patton, Kim Myers, Robert Rustler, Clu Gulager, Hope Lange, Marshall Bell, Melinda O’ Fee, Tom McFadden, Sydney Walsh, Christie Clark, and Robert Englund, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge is a pretty piss-weak film all around. Filled with action, some fairly gruesome points of interest, possession, violence, murder, ‘romance’ and ‘drama’, it’s a pretty terrible movie!

Tormented [PG]

An accomplished jazz pianist has a fling with a beautiful singer, but breaks it off one night and says that he’s going to marry another woman. The singer doesn’t like this at all and things turn really horrible when the railing of the lighthouse balcony the two have been squabbling on gives way. Holding on for dear life, the singer reaches for the pianist, but he just lets her fall to her death. Now he’s paying the price. Trying to convince himself he’s got no cause to be guilty, the pianist tries to go ahead with the wedding, but it seems the ghost of the singer is determined for it to be otherwise and she continues to haunt and torment him in frightening ways. 

From the synopsis, this sounds like it could be a good one huh? I’m sure if it were in the hands of Wes Craven or John Carpenter of even Alfred Hitchcock (if he ever deigned to do a paranormal horror movie) it could have been really good. As it is, this is just another weak-handed B-grade horror movie that sucks you in with this story that has good potential, but ultimately just falls flat. Admittedly, towards the end things start to get interesting and suspenseful as a possible threat to a child rears its head, but sadly nothing of that ever comes to fruition and the movie just falls with a thump like the singer from the lighthouse balcony. 

There’s a lot in this movie that could really be freaky and deliver the chills if it were placed in the hands of a modern director. As I mentioned before, Craven, Carpenter, Van Sant, De Palma, any of these guys could make a solid go of this. Even Hitchcock could turn it into a great psychoanalytic thriller about the tortures of guilt and what it can do to the mind. We’ve got a guilt complex, that’s the foundation. Whilst our ‘hero’ didn’t actually kill the singer, he didn’t do anything to prevent her death or help prolong her life and that is as good a cause as murder itself to feel guilty. With this in mind, the hauntings then take on a psychological edge as they can really be perceived as hallucinations and manifestations of his own guilt, seeing as no one else can ever see nor hear when the ‘ghost’ of the singer talks to the pianist or appears before him. But then again, there are these moments of ‘real’, tangible paranormal activity towards the end of the film during the wedding ceremony, and even before that with traces of the dead singer appearing from seemingly nowhere and even a secondary character hearing and trying to converse with the ghost. I guess the aim of this movie in terms of the ‘scare’ factor was to achieve it through those moments of confusion as to whether the protagonist is actually seeing a ghost or if it’s his own imagination. Of course, as soon as another character latches onto that ‘ghost’ element, then the thrills of the unknown dissipate. 

I think this movie could have been lifted a bit if it had had stronger performances as well, but sadly the case is that the performances are all a bit flat. You can see that Richard Carlson who stars as the pianist gave it a solid shot, but there’s just something in his performance that doesn’t gel and it just drags the whole thing down and makes it very ugh. 

Starring Susan Gordon, Lugene Sanders, Joe Turkel, Lillian Adams, Juli Reding, Gene Roth, Vera Marshe, Harry Fleer, Merritt Stone, George Stanley, Dick Walshe, and Leslie Thomas, Tormented is a flat b-grade horror flick with a potentially good story that just sadly wasn’t executed as well as it could have been. I know I use the term ‘b-grade’ in a negative way, but I would like it to be known that there are some good, cult b-grade movies out there and I recognise this. This movie just isn’t one of them. Filled with romance, drama, suspense, and hauntings, I guess it was fine, just not great and I do think that in the hands of a good horror director or even thriller director, it could have been better. 

Poltergeist (2015) [M]

The lives of the Bowen family are already in a little bit of turmoil with Eric being out of work and Amy being a full-time at-home mum, but they get thrown into greater trouble when they move to a house in the suburbs. Young Griffin is the first to notice the spookiness of the house, but the rest of the family doesn’t believe in his fears. That is until one night when the floor opens up and a hand grabs Kendra the eldest, a tree rips through the roof and attacks Griffin, and little Madison disappears completely. With the help of some paranormal experts, the Bowens discover that their house is infested with angry poltergeist, hell-bent on keeping little Madison for their own. 

Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist is probably one of the hardest movies to screw up. You’d have to really set your mind to it if you wanted to achieve that feat. However, I actually was quite impressed with this version. As a horror moving standing on its own it’s pretty solid, building up suspense and tension really well and delivering many sudden shocks and frights. As a remake, it was quite close to the original, changed ever so slightly to make it that little bit different and not a horrible carbon copy of a classic (which has been done before, check out Gus Van Sant’s Psycho). I was actually quite impressed with this movie. 

The lives of the Bowen family are already in a little bit of turmoil with Eric being out of work and Amy being a full-time at-home mum, but they get thrown into greater trouble when they move to a house in the suburbs. Young Griffin is the first to notice the spookiness of the house, but the rest of the family doesn’t believe in his fears. That is until one night when the floor opens up and a hand grabs Kendra the eldest, a tree rips through the roof and attacks Griffin, and little Madison disappears completely. With the help of some paranormal experts, the Bowens discover that their house is infested with angry poltergeist, hell-bent on keeping little Madison for their own. 

As I said before, it’s pretty hard to ruin Poltergeist because it deals with themes that are always going to have an impact on an audience, the biggest and probably scariest being the abduction of children. What I liked about this version was how they gave more of a story to Griffin, the middle child and only boy, who is obviously suffering somewhat from those statuses. Where the mother was the limelight of the original, Griffin is the real hero and I like that they gave his character a story and an arc. 

As remakes or adaptations go, this is a pretty close one with some of the dialogue from the original movie making its way in there (not just the iconic line of “they’re here”). Taking place within modern day America, the spookiness of the poltergeists is actually amplified and the suspense further established because there is all this modern technology that they can mess with and it’s not just them speaking through the white noise on the TV. Phones, iPads, and huge smart TVs take on the creepy white noise gloss, establishing the horror faster and also making a point that no area of the house is safe.The sound, I noticed, was a very important part of this movie with everything being amplified: the white noise, the distorted music from headphones, bangings, gurglings, electric shocks, and of course the storms and drawstring sound of toys. At times I thought it was a little bit too much and I have to admit that, whilst it worked for the big sudden scare sequences, for the most part it took away a bit of the realism and we lost a bit of that voyeuristic pleasure in looking into a different world because the sound is so close and loud it’s almost internal. I wasn’t so jazzed with that. 

The performances were pretty so-so; the real star of the show, as I mentioned before, was Griffin, and whilst Jared Harris’ character comes into the mix and provides a good dose of information dumping and comic relief, the performances were nothing to rave about. Sam Rockwell, who I believe is a great actor, was a bit flat here and his character was hinted as having been given an arc but halfway through he sort of fell on his face, almost like the writers worked out that it wasn’t flying and so they just dropped it. 

As I said before, the story is changed up a little so it’s not identical to the original and I thought this was a good move. One major point of interest is that we actually get to see the world in which Madison gets trapped and I really liked this because it solidified Griffin’s story about bravery and such. 

Starring Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt, Saxon Sharbino, Kyle Catlett, Kennedi Clements, Jane Adams, Susan Heyward, Nicholas Braun, and Jared Harris, Poltergeist was a spooky and impressionable horror movie and worked quite well as a remake. Filled with the supernatural, action, romance, drama, suspense, violence, horror, and comedy, I was fairly impressed with it and quite enjoyed it. 

The Terror [PG]

Upon getting separated from his company Lieutenant Andre Duvalier is led to water and salvation by a mysterious beautiful woman who very quickly disappears. When she continues to haunt his dreams, his search for her leads him to the castle of the reclusive Baron Von Leppe where he discovers that the mysterious woman was the Baroness, who has been dead for many years. Allowed to stay in the castle, the mystery thickens as Andre continues to be haunted by the beautiful woman and he’s not the only one. Is she really the spirit of the Baroness or is some dark magic at use to dish out a little vengeance for a murder long since past? 

One of Jack Nicholson’s early horror movie appearances before he freaked audiences to no-end with “heeeeeres’s Johnny!”, The Terror is a Roger Corman movie that can be taken a bit more seriously as a horror flick than The Little Shop of Horrors, especially since he collaborated with a number of other directors including Francis Ford Coppola. 

Whilst sometimes the story gets a bit too twisted to straighten, this film nevertheless delivers enough levels of suspense, plot twists, and gore to keep it within the realms of reputable horror movie. 

It’s hard to go back and watch these sorts of films that don’t really have a profile within the genre and can be seen as being amateurish or outdated, but at the same time it’s fascinating to see what sort of stories are out there and, who knows, there might be some real underappreciated gems lying unearthed and uncelebrated within the horror canon. I wouldn’t say that this is one of them, but that mindset is always a good one to be in. 

Upon getting separated from his company Lieutenant Andre Duvalier is led to water and salvation by a mysterious beautiful woman who very quickly disappears. When she continues to haunt his dreams, his search for her leads him to the castle of the reclusive Baron Von Leppe where he discovers that the mysterious woman was the Baroness, who has been dead for many years. Allowed to stay in the castle, the mystery thickens as Andre continues to be haunted by the beautiful woman and he’s not the only one. Is she really the spirit of the Baroness or is some dark magic at use to dish out a little vengeance for a murder long since past? 

Jack Nicholson’s character is the typical horror movie hero who accidentally becomes involved within a mystery and I found his performance kind of interesting because he played the part with a certain woodenness and lack of drive. Whether this is just because his heart wasn’t in it or he was satirically taking a stab at this particular generic character is a matter of opinion, personally I like to think it’s the latter. He sort of strides through this movie in an uninteresting sort of way: feeding nothing more than a strong curiosity, as most horror heroes do. However, because he does it with a certain sternness and sometimes almost disinterest, it begs the question are you taking this seriously or just making fun of heroic predecessors? I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there is something boring and interesting about the way Nicholson makes his way through this movie. 

The gore aspect is actually done rather well, definitely not stomach-churning believable, but it still manages to deliver a bit of an “ew” response: we see a guy get his eyes pecked out, a woman struck by lightning and catch fire, and a face melt; all of it leading to a piqued but sustained sort of climax. 

Starring Boris Karloff, Sandra Knight, Dick miller, Dorothy Neumann, and Jonathan Haze, The Terror is an enthralling little flick in which you can never quite see where it’s going. Filled with romance, suspense, mystery, death, murder, and hauntings of numerous sorts, I rather enjoyed it. It’s no hard-hitting horror classic, but it has its strengths. 

Nightmare Castle [M]

When a scientist discovers his wife’s amour with another man, he tortures them, murders them, and uses his wife’s blood to restore the youthful beauty of his own lover. He then discovers that his wife had remade her will and left her wealth and castle to her mentally fragile sister Jenny. Desperate to get his hands on the wealth and estate, he marries Jenny and with plans to break down her mind and finally kill her once he becomes the soul inheritor. But as soon as Jenny moves into the castle, she begins to have gruesome nightmares and behave in a most strange manner. Is her sanity cracking prematurely or is it the ghosts of the murdered lovers dishing out a little revenge? 

Well, this was… eerie and macabre, in rather a lot of ways. If the story isn’t creepy enough, there are so many taboo areas explored including S&M, mental illness, vampirism, and even a little dash of the Ed Gein syndrome in the two lovers’ hearts being kept, skewered, in a box. If the dubbing and performances hadn’t been a fair level below par, this would have been a really freaky movie. 

When a scientist discovers his wife’s amour with another man, he tortures them, murders them, and uses his wife’s blood to restore the youthful beauty of his own lover. He then discovers that his wife had remade her will and left her wealth and castle to her mentally fragile sister Jenny. Desperate to get his hands on the wealth and estate, he marries Jenny and with plans to break down her mind and finally kill her once he becomes the soul inheritor. But as soon as Jenny moves into the castle, she begins to have gruesome nightmares and behave in a most strange manner. Is her sanity cracking prematurely or is it the ghosts of the murdered lovers dishing out a little revenge? 

The story stands on its own with all the bases covered for a truly sufficient horror flick: revenge, betrayal, murder, and obsession. What brings that extra level of creepiness and the macabre is the fact that so many taboo areas are either hinted at or considerably explored. We’ve got mental illness with both the ghosts and the scientist being doubly villainous as they exploit the frailties of poor Jenny’s mind. We then have these sadistic torture scenes of the scientist’s wife and her lover at the beginning of the film, which include violent beatings, being chained or tied up, acid, electrocution, and even a scene where the lover is chained to a chair whilst the scientist has sex with his (tied up) wife in front of him (the sex of course isn’t actually shown, but strongly hinted at). Finally we have this vampiric element in the scientist’s pumping his wife’s blood into another woman’s body and there’s a bit of the Ed Gein about the way he skewers the hearts of his wife and her lover together and keeps them in a box. It’s all pretty gruesome and, with the advancements of today’s cinema, this movie could really come into its own and be quite the shocker. Maybe it’s time for a remake… 

It’s all these things that keeps this movie afloat whilst the out-of-sync dubbing and mediocre performances threaten to pull it under the water, which really are the only bad things about this movie (it’s just a shame that they have such an impact). 

Starring Barbara Steele, Paul Muller, Helga Line, Marino Mase, Giuseppe Addobbati, and Rik Battaglia, Nightmare Castle is freaky little film that’s packed with murder, horror, haunting, romance, and drama. I think it’s one that could do rather well in modern cinema if in the hands of the right people. 

House on Haunted Hill [PG]

The rich and eccentric Frederick Loren and his wife Annabelle hire out a mysterious mansion on Haunted Hill to host a little themed party: haunted house themed, so inspired by venue’s reputation of being haunted by the ghosts of several people who were murdered there. Five guests and strangers to each other are invited to attend with the invitation all the more appealing as Loren promises to pay each of them $10,000 if they stay the entire night. At first a few bangs, doors closing on their own, and chandeliers falling from the roof successfully put the guests on edge, but the party takes a turn for the worst when one of them dies and fingers are pointed in all directions as to who’s to blame: the guests or the ghosts? 

How have I gone so long without ever having seen this movie!? This flick rocks like a hurricane! Aside from maybe one or two opaque gaps in the plot, this film has everything you could want in a horror movie, gruesome visions, doors slowly creaking closed on their own, ghostly apparitions, inanimate objects moving on their own, death, and screaming; lots and lots of screaming. In fact, the first thing you see is darkness with nothing over the top save for a woman’s eardrum-piercing shirk of fear! You know you’re in for a good ride from that alone! Not to mention it stars Vincent Price in all his velvety-voiced deliciousness! 

The rich and eccentric Frederick Loren and his wife Annabelle hire out a mysterious mansion on Haunted Hill to host a little themed party: haunted house themed, so inspired by venue’s reputation of being haunted by the ghosts of several people who were murdered there. Five guests and strangers to each other are invited to attend with the invitation all the more appealing as Loren promises to pay each of them $10,000 if they stay the entire night. At first a few bangs, doors closing on their own, and chandeliers falling from the roof successfully put the guests on edge, but the party takes a turn for the worst when one of them dies and fingers are pointed in all directions as to who’s to blame: the guests or the ghosts? 

Let’s get the badness out of the way first shall we. The plot itself is actually pretty damned great and it takes a turn that no one could see coming. Of course, this is due to the fact that the sudden twist sort of warrants a little bit of a back story or exposition and doesn’t get it. So yes, it achieves a brilliant effect in that you lean back from the screen and go “WHA??!!”, but once you’re over the shock it doesn’t seem all that believable and feels a bit sudden and tacked on as though the writers suddenly had this brilliant idea but then couldn’t think how to properly bring everything together in the end. 

Then there are a few question marks regarding certain characters and certain events that take place that are emphasised as having relevance to what’s going on. Whilst the major events are properly explained there are some that just aren’t at all, which sort of makes you question why was such a significant portion of the screenplay devoted to drawing attention to it? 

Aside from these little hiccups, the movie is absolutely brilliant because it’s a good, old-fashioned, horror that piques and plays to the most primal elements of the human psyche. We’ve got eerie sounds in the distance, candles flickering with no wind, an organ playing by itself, doors creaking closed and locking by themselves, curtains moving that aren’t covering a window, and then sudden appearances of people (or other things) that you just really weren’t ready for! All these work together so gloriously to culminate in a feeling of absolute cat-like readiness and anticipation. You yell at the screen “don’t go in there by yourself you twit!” or “don’t go down to the cellar!” and you clutch the couch or bed cushion so tightly it’s in danger of exploding and covering you in a shower of fluff! It’s fabulous! See, you don’t need people getting sucked into mattresses and then fountains of blood rising to the ceiling, you don’t need sadistically gory traps that rip peoples’ mouths permanently open, you don’t need an elevator filled with blood, all you need is a good scream from a woman, a slow walk, and an even slower creaking door closing by itself and that’s enough to get the blood rushing faster, the breath to catch, and the hands to grip whatever’s closest. 

Starring Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Richard Long, Alan Marshal, Carolyn Craig, Elisha Cook Jr., Julie Mitchum, Leona Anderson, Howard Hoffman, and featuring Skeleton as himself, House on Haunted Hill is a classic flick filled with suspense, drama, desperation, hysteria, dark comedy, murder, and death. I loved it right from the get-go, seriously this movie rules!