Reviews

A truly dreadful and cartoonish piece of Christian propaganda. The clues are there from the start, with an incessantly swelling musical score and cheesy cliches to die for. If you miss those clues, you can read them at the end credits when it's clear this is nothing more than a commercial piece for the Billy Graham ministry. Reduces all life to falling down one day in a tent and instantly being "cured" of PTSD and alcoholism. Suggests the enemy are a barbarous race who can simply be cured by being given a bible. Disrespects and demonizes the Japanese, makes the Americans out to be stupid and generally has no redeeming features. Contrary to the holy-roller message of the film, this does nothing but demean and compress the raw experience of trauma into something that can be magicked away by a smooth talking pastor and the "love of a good woman". Possibly one of the least life-affirming films I have ever seen, one of the most stupid, and one of the most ill-informed about the true nature of mental illness and dependency. So awful on every level that I had to take bath to get its pervasive treacle off of me.

Impressive and coherent "video nasty" from the 1970's which is well worth a watch today. Sleazy and subversive but with a strong feminist undertone: the men in this movie are either matinee idols, muscle-bound hunks or weirdly trippy outsiders.

Great exposition of the myths and power of the sea. The incest theme is well introduced and explored. The scene which explains "the witch who came from the sea" is also pertinent and profound.

(It is so refreshing to me that Mary Whitehouse and the moral outrage of the 1980's did not in fact kill off such hidden gems).

Not as savage as the likes of "I Spit on your Grave" or other female retribution flicks of its ilk, but with infinitely deeper emotional resonance.

Pour a shot of rum and gaze out over the water... but watch out for the witch!

Even worse than Part 1 (if that's possible). Buttgereit's vision of romantic love for the dead is again revisited in this tiresome lame melodrama. Stodgy and boring by equal measure, with a truly excruciating sound track. (Oh and yes, Joerg's penchant for animal cruelty is back with a vengeance - this time it's a sea lion rather than a rabbit being eviscerated). There really are no redeeming features in this vile and turgid mess of a movie. Even the corpse looks ridiculous in all its green slimy glory. Editing and acting are atrocious, plays entirely for shock value and fails even and that.

This is one instance where a micro-budget just amplifies the claustrophobia of the tale. A perfectly chosen story for the location (although highly inaccurate as regards the Abramelin ritual) instantly pushes this movie to the level of Rosemary's Baby, The Wicker Man, The Exorcist or Night of the Demon and grants it cult status.

Slowburn scares and ratcheted up tension with the CGI big effect saved for the end (which is perfectly produced, in my opinion).

You can watch this one over and over again and get more from it every time.

Possibly one of the best explorations of dark spirituality ever committed to celluloid.

A near-perfect foray into the abyss of the human soul.

Pretty dreadful on the narrative front. The first part, showing a single mom with aggressive ex-hubby and a young kid with consequent "issues" never blends into the main story, which is some weird alien conspiracy in which said mother is abducted and tortured to the point her DNA will "break" and she will become some super-being (the rupture of the title). Hmmmm.

Pretty lousy and preposterous premise never gets any better. Why have the mad scientists even chosen her? What is her role in all of this? In short, what the heck is supposed to be going on here? This is a classic case of someone having an idea down the pub and somehow managing to pitch it into a full-blown movie. As a sci-fi fest, it is inane and unintelligible, as a horror it only has a few good shocks involving spiders and snakes, as a drama it makes no sense whatsoever.

Avoid with all the passion you may afford any phobia.

What a totally bizarre movie. First off it's called "Dark Continent" but the action takes place in the Middle East, not Africa.

The first third of the film is populated by irritating and unlikeable jar heads whose idea of a good night out is sex with prostitutes, drugs and animal cruelty in downtown Detroit.

Next, we move these Einstein's on to the Middle East (where I, for one, couldn't really care if they live or die).

Now we introduce some strange looking aliens, the largest of which are like huge lumbering giraffes with hydra heads, who make whale- like noises. There is apparently a smaller breed who run like cheetahs mainly, it seems, to lure the clueless Marines into IED's.

Later we are introduced to the baby of the species, one of which lives in a kids toy box and pops out like something out of a Disney movie to sprinkle fairy dust onto the desert floor.

Now add to the mix the main "meat" of the movie, a violent and visceral incursion by the American Marines into Taliban territory. Yes, this is basically a war movie with monsters thrown in (for goodness only knows what reason).

This is not a metaphor, not a satire, certainly not art-house, in fact, I can't really say what it is at all. I just kept thinking how Starship Troopers addressed the issues of patriotism and war (with aliens) in such better context so many decades before.

Not totally without merit as some of the scenes are quite haunting but this film desperately needed an editorial snip to cut at least a half hour off the run-time and a much firmer focus on intention. The acting is also pretty mediocre, but then, if the director was as confused about his vision as he seems to have been, you can't really blame the players.

All in all a major mess that needed far more real monsters and far less of the "real monster is man" cliché.

Many moons ago when I was first involved in the horror film industry I remember having a long exchange with Jörg Buttgereit about the animal cruelty in this movie. His response was, he just filmed a butcher going about his business. My repulsion with the "mondo" jungle movies of the 1980's was along similar lines - seeing big stars like Ursula Andress in films with live monkeys being fed to giant snakes was way to much for me. Animals are intelligent, sentient creatures and should not be slaughtered for our entertainment. So, from the off I despise any director who includes animal cruelty in his films for sheer shock value.

Now on to Nekromantic per se. It is a very amateur movie, made on 8mm, which explores the idea of necrophilia to a reasonable degree. It is not particularly well acted nor well made, and I personally found it rather dull. Everyone at the film festival where I first saw this were baying "Nekromantik! Nekromantik!" - thinking this was the most uber- goth un-pc movie of the night. Looking round, most had fallen asleep within half an hour.

Good as a film-school project, but certainly not in the main league. Like anyone in the main league would make a film about necrophilia....

Let's get this right from the start. This is not a horror movie, not even a "movie" in the conventional sense, and certainly not "art". (Incidentally the word "art" is often banded about when a film, or book, is so obscure within its genre, it is assumed there must be a loftier interpretation possible, but many times it becomes a substitute for the word "bad").

This is a scatological fantasy committed to celluloid by the writer and director - Tom Six. It is a work of private pornography. A scatological fantasy would, by any psychological definition, be a par-aphelia - i.e. a mental sexual aberration whereby the subject derives sexual stimulation from objects or concepts, rather than from people. It is not in itself, in all cases, a bad thing. But in this particular variant, mixed in with torture and humiliation, it is a very bad thing.

So, one can say Tom Six suffers from this particular perversity, and has attempted to follow it through via three "Human Centipede" movies. In each one he has pushed the logic of his predilection through to new heights (or lows). This is neither laudable nor to be encouraged.

Why? Well, if anyone else truly gets off on the concept of forcing people under pain and duress to eat faecal matter to the point of death, finds this in the slightest bit enticing, or even interesting, then they should, in my humble opinion, immediately seek help from a qualified psychiatrist.

I do enjoy shock cinema and I have had dreams which contain a content far worse than Human Centipede 2, but there is no way I would ever publish them for human consumption.

The simple reason is such vile and evil images can damage the mind, particularly of young people, and, as a film maker I would not want this on my conscience.

No, Mr Six, your film didn't shock me. It revealed the void in your moral compass, and the empty heart of your soul. And only YOU (not your audience) can help you with that.

Truly awful rendition of a Marvel superhero. Turgid, adolescent and inane, routine CGI effects and a plot you could write on the back of a postage stamp. The so-called comedy lines are expelled as if from a failing gattling gun, interspersed with fantasy fillers including masturbation, soft toys and sex in Christmas sweaters. If this is you're thing - I suppose, go for it. Everyone else stay well clear.

Had this been counter-balanced in any way by a genuine malevolence from our "hero" there may have been some redemption, but the violence is all just meaningless, cartoonish and blah.

Incredible that the back story involves Deadpool's attempt to "win back the girl" when he, and everything else in this waste of money movie is so overwhelmingly camp. Right up to the end credits when our hero, as a cartoon, jerks off a unicorn's horn to produce an ejaculate made of rainbows and fairy-dust. Truly, this is the very stuff this risible movie is made from.

Hugely entertaining zombie flick, let down only by a rather lame sub- plot featuring a geeky American "zombie squad" whose attempt to play for comedy falls flat on its face.

As in the original, the Nazi zombies are genuinely scary and super- powerful. These necrotic storm troopers will rip your head off then tie your body up with your own entrails. Better still, they get to fight a legion of red army corpses who have an equal eye for the claret and general bodily dismemberment.

Not content with getting their ill-gotten gold from the first movie in Red vs Dead the dead Germans attempt to destroy an entire town. Fun and gore proceed by equal measure.

Notable in my book for being only the second movie in film history to make a zombie a sympathetic character (the other being the legendary "Bub" in Romero's seminal Day of the Dead).

Political incorrectness abounds with babies being blown up by artillery shells and by a jaw-dropping climax in which necrophilia is romantically consummated to the tune of "Total eclipse of the heart" by Bonnie Tyler.

What's not to like? Get the beers in and have a bloody good time with Red vs Dead!

Really, I don't know what all the fuss is about. There are far more repulsive characters in Rob Zombie's The Devils Rejects, and far more shocking scenes in (the remake of) Last House on The Left.

Rather a turgid script, some OK performances, but overall a lacklustre attempt at shock value. I do agree with those who have written: what is the point of this movie?

I found the movie very dull to start and was tempted not to complete it. However, coming back onto IMD and hearing it was supposed to be some sort of grand guignol masterpiece managed to sit through the second half. Really - if anyone thinks this is anything new or especially shocking they should perhaps aquaint themselves with Shakespeare - try Titus Andronicus for a start, where the bodies litter the stage!

I could not find any salient comments on class, gender or anything, just a generally messed-up plot featuring characters we would rather not empathise with. No, I don't think this is especially misogynistic, just rather clumsily written.

This is certainly no southern Gothic masterpiece, as some have said. As to the "humour" - sorry, but I must have missed that (the only funny line for me was when Joe is talking about the guy who incinerated his genitals).

Really a very strange piece. I don't know what Friedkin was thinking about when he took this one on, I suspect "shock" but for my money it fails miserably in that regard.

Ultimately I suspect the script lets this down as Friedkin is a bang-on director. He must look for far better material and realise that shock value is not the only colour in the film makers palette.

Very disappointing from the director of "The Exorcist".

I cannot understand how the risible script ever got committed to celluloid!

There are more plot holes here than in a tramps vest. First off: a newscast mentions "rabies" but shortly after everyone is talking about "the undead". So just what are these creature and where do they come from? Actually, we never find out. This is not a moot point, as, unlike Romero's slavering hordes these critters do not need a head shot to take them out - which does take an awful lot of fun out of the proceedings. Speaking of Romero, well, don't. These "zombies" are pretty toothless, there's zero entertainment for gore-hounds here. I mean, a "12" rated zombie flick? Do me a favour.

Where to go from here? A woman has her hand lopped off and is cured by gin & tonic. Zombies are stopped by walls of suitcases. A wide-bodied jet filled with passengers crashes in the Welsh mountains yet only the hero and heroine survive. In the wreck, the hero is impaled with a twelve inch piece of metal - pulls it out and then walks to the WHO centre in Cardiff?

And yet it gets even worse. The solution to the zombie pandemic is found to be "innoculating" the population with a deadly virus. There is no explanation as to how this will be done on a worldwide scale, let alone how the inoculated will be re-inoculated to stop them dying from the deadly virus? Or how they will stop themselves becoming zombie chowder again when they do this??

Am I missing something here? Even the best scene - the zombies forming a huge writhing wall to break into Jurasalem city is so badly edited and paced that it loses any emotional impact at all.

Finally we are subjected to the indignity of the seminal clichéd speech trotted out in so many disaster movies that don't know how to end "the war goes on but we shall rebuild" yada yada....

Yes this, truly, is a disaster movie. Of that I have no doubt.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

The central problem with this $14 million mess of a movie is that it purports to be a sequel. Given that Boorman hated The Exorcist I have no idea why he tackled the project in the first place. I think it was Kurbrick who suggested if anyone was going to make a sequel they'd have to use "multi coloured vomit" this time. And thereby hangs the problem, whether you love or loathe the original movie you'd have to be very brave, or very stupid, to try and re-invent the wheel.

Boorman's attempt falls flat on its face. Clearly lacking love for or understanding of the material, what we get here is a mishmash of metaphysical baloney, clichéd visual metaphor, dreadful acting, laughable dialogue and a bizarre cross-cultural theme which makes no sense at all.

I can well believe Burton was drunk most of the shoot; you'd need a bottle of whiskey inside of you to pluck up enough courage to say some of the lines. In fact the dialogue is so bad it is actually comic in parts. I am equally amazed that Dick Smith was behind the FX in this one after his incredible work on The Exorcist. The effects here are lame and almost non-existent, the tension absent, the shock value nil. There is absolutely no dramatic tension since the plot makes no sense at all and the final payoff is a bizarre mixture of a collapsing building, a car crash and a swarm of locusts.

What can you say in its favour? Boorman's visuals are fine, Blair is angelic and suitably cute and the music is good. And that's about it.

Let's not forget James Earl Jones dressed up as a locust, a groovy telepathy machine (every psychiatric ward really should have one) and a little razzmatazz by way of some impromptu tap-dancing scenes.

I think I'd better lie down in a darkened room and have a rub-down with a copy of Fangoria magazine. Oh deary, deary me....

Northern chavs try to wrestle the crown from Deliverance's "banjo boy" in the survival horror stakes, and fail. Chav horror. Maybe the start of a new British sub-genre - Chavorror? In fairness the themes of "broken Britain" make a refreshing change in a horror flick. No chainsaws here, these lads wear hoodies, like a bit of "happy slapping" and carry their mobile phones about like life-support machines. You can doubtless meet most of them down McDonalds any weekday afternoon.

However its this very Britishness which doesn't gel with survivalist horror. A man-made lake somewhere "up north" is not the stuff of nightmares. And why, oh why, would a couple even want to go there for a romantic getaway? What next, a trip round the Sanatogen works in Salford armed with a Harrods picnic basket? Yes, the class issue is here. And it's all rather smug. The heroes, an affluent middle-class couple, meet a bunch of insane yobs, who are of course all working-class northerners.

That's the dubious politics out of the way, now on to the main failings of the film. It's really difficult to get lost anywhere in Britain unless you're in the middle of Dartmoor or up a mountain. And these two aren't. Most places have posties, canvassers, door-to-door salesman and legion "white van man" zipping all over the place. This is not the American midwest.

The acting is by-the-book at best, the gore is OK, if senseless, the suspense is non existent. Yes, it is possible to fall asleep during Eden Lake. I know because I did.

Which is all a shame because I'm a devout believer that Britain can make any genre movie (and yes, that includes a road movie - though I have yet to see it).

Well I'm off to get the coal out t'bath, spend my benefits on scratch cards and walk the whippets. Turned out nice again.

I really wanted to like this movie. Strangely, this was one of the infamous "nasties" of the 70s/80s which passed me by. Unusually too, I watched the sequel before seeing the original.

I hate to say it but the sequel is a much better film: taut, brutal, full of suspense and downright unnerving. What can you say about this one? In a word - Amateur.

The film simply doesn't know how to pitch itself. Yes, the violence is upsetting, and yes, the villains are suitably nasty lowlife scum. However, the movie refuses to engage the viewer on any coherent emotional level. Is this down to the poor acting, the cheesy soundtrack, or is it that Wes Craven hadn't really figured out what this film was supposed to be. It's really nothing like The Virgin Spring. Is it a satire on hometown America? Is it a dark allegory of the Vietnam war? Or is it, as I sadly suspect, a bit of a plodding mess? Last House can't even satiate the gorehounds. When the chainsaw comes out at the end I thought, at least we're going to see the chief protagonist get his suitably grisly comeuppance. I suspect the only reason the camera cut away was not due to any sense of taste or restraint but simply that the filmmakers knew that the special effects budget would simply make the scene absurd.

But what really ruined the film for me was the ludicrous "keystone cops" sub-plot in which two inept lawmen attempt to hitch a ride on a overloaded poultry truck, slip and fall and throw their hats on the ground like something out of a Lauel & Hardy film. Was this banal attempt at humour an ironic juxtaposition, a dig at authority figures, or what??? You tell me.

If The Devil made "The Brady Bunch" this would be it. The film falls woefully short of its promise (and its reputation). Go see the films that really deliver the goods: The Manson Family, The Devils Rejects et al. One for the history books this one, and not a very commendable entry at that.