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Review: The Decline of Western Civilisation Part II: The Metal Years

I’d seen snippets of the infamous Chris Holmes interview but this was my first time watching this 1988 documentary (or is it a mockumentary?) from filmmaker Penelope Spheeris. I wasn’t impressed with the pathetic display from Holmes, and I’m even less impressed having learned that a lot of what we see here in this film is either fake or elements are staged by Spheeris. A documentary on the 80s glam metal scene in L.A., Spheeris has confirmed some of the moments depicted here were staged, the artists involved have claimed some of it was staged too. For instance, Holmes mostly had pool water in that vodka bottle. However, if you think all this means I’m going to put Spheeris on blast for making a fake documentary that mocks the mid-80s L.A. glam metal scene unfairly you’ve stumbled onto the wrong review, my friend. These posers (some high profile posers, I might add) still agreed to be presented in this way and deserve a lot of the blame. Staging/editing and substance abuse can only tak...
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Review: Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

The mostly untrue story of music parody specialist Weird Al Yankovic (Daniel Radcliffe), his rise to fame, his struggles to gain the approval of his father (Toby Huss), and his supposedly torrid love affair with Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood).   I think my fandom of comedian and musical parodist Weird Al Yankovic is probably reflective of some of you out there: I was a big fan until I stopped recognising the music he was parodying. For me that was around the time of the Running With Scissors album where I really only recognised three of the parodies and didn’t much like any of them. For you, it might’ve been an earlier or later album. I still listen to the earlier albums regularly and I think Al seems like a heck of a nice guy, but I stopped listening to new music (outside of some legacy artists) by and large around 1999 so his parodies were often a bit lost on me by that point. I was excited when I heard that someone was doing a biopic on Al, and although I naturally assumed th...
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Review: Black Sunday

In 17 th Century Russia, a princess (Barbara Steele) is accused and convicted of vampirism and witchcraft. She is subsequently befitted with a spiked iron mask and burned at the stake. Cut to the 19 th Century professor Andrea Checchi and doctor John Richardson happen upon the chapel where the coffin holding the deceased princess is located. They accidentally revive her whilst one of them is tussling with a bat. Now the revived witch sets her sights on her descendant, Katya (also Steele).   One of the most important and influential Italian horror films ever made, this 1960 witchcraft story is also the best-remembered film in the career of Mario Bava ( “Danger Diabolik” , “Seven Dolls for an August Moon” ). Personally, I slightly prefer his “Kill, Baby…Kill” and “Black Sabbath” , but this film is nonetheless an undeniable classic. Bava was his own cinematographer, and he’s created a foggy, Gothic B&W work of art here. It’s probably Tim Burton’s idea of a wet dream, and wh...
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Review: The Land That Time Forgot

During WWI, a German U-boat commanded by Capt. Von Schoenvorts (John McEnery, apparently dubbed by Anton Diffring) sinks a cargo boat. That boat’s passengers (Doug McClure and Susan Penhaligon among them) wrangle their way aboard the sub when it rises to the surface. After some scuffling, the two parties agree to a tenuous truce until they can find suitable neutral land to port. Instead, they losing their way and end up on an island called Caprona, which houses dinosaurs,   neanderthals, and a volcano. Anthony Ainley plays German Lt. Dietz, who is our obligatory disruptive mutineer.   Average adventure film from Amicus Films may as well have been titled “The Sub That Wasted Time and Forgot to Go Somewhere” . Directed by Kevin Connor ( “From Beyond the Grave” , “Motel Hell” , the much better “The People That Time Forgot” ), it’s at least 30 minutes before we get out of the submarine an onto land. Which means it’s 30 minutes worth of a submarine movie, and that’s not what I ...
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Review: The Count of Monte Cristo

In the early 1800s, Sidney Blackmer’s dastardly Count Fernand de Mondego lusts after Mercedes (Elissa Lanndi), the fiancé of Edmond Dantes (Robert Donat), the first officer of a French merchant ship. The captain of the ship (Lawrence Grant) is handed a letter from the exiled Napoleon, and at the moment of his death he hands this letter to Dantes. City magistrate Raymond de Villefort (Louis Calhern) realises that his father – the aforementioned ship’s captain – has aided the exiled Napoleon, and conspires to frame Dantes for the crime instead. He does this with the cooperation of the scheming Count and a third man named Danglars (Raymond Walburn), the ship’s ambitious second officer. Dantes is jailed, and an unawares Mercedes ends up married to the Count, having been told that Dantes died in prison. O.P. Heggie plays Dantes’ only company in his island prison stay. There Dantes stews and seethes for years, planning his revenge.   A top-drawer cast delivers in this classic 1934 sc...
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Review: You Were Never Really Here

Possibly suicidal, PTSD-suffering war veteran Joaquin Phoenix lives with his elderly mother (Judith Roberts) and earns a living bashing creeps with a ball-peen hammer. His latest gig has him hired by a senator to rescue his daughter from the usual sex trafficking creeps.   I didn’t like writer-director Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin” at all, mostly because it never really got around to talking about Kevin enough . I’d take that terrible film over this one any day of the week, even though this one is actually the better made film in my view. Yeah, this is gonna be a difficult review. This 2018 film features a committed performance by the very talented Joaquin Phoenix, but is completely off-putting and by the final act it’s just a confusing mess. I found it the complete opposite of something I wanted to be subjecting myself to, much as I willingly slogged it out. And yet I feel like it would be unfair of me to properly grade the film at all, because I feel like it’s...
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Review: And Now the Screaming Starts!

Newlyweds Stephanie Beacham and Ian Ogilvy move into the latter’s ancestral family home and almost instantaneously Beacham is freaked the hell out. She’s seeing things that no one else is, and they’re really scary things. With Ogilvy worried about his wife’s sanity, psychologist Peter Cushing is called upon to investigate the matter. Guy Rolfe turns up as the family solicitor, and Geoffrey Whitehead plays a woodsman named Silas whose ghost is seems to be haunting poor Beacham.   This 1973 Amicus film from director Roy Ward Baker ( “A Night to Remember” , “Quatermass and the Pit” , “The Vampire Lovers” , “Asylum” ) was one of the studio’s non-portmanteau films, and thus isn’t as well known as say “Asylum” or “Tales From the Crypt” . That’s a shame because I really like this one. It’s actually a really tragic, sad, and bleak story but it’s also my kind of horror movie: Atmospheric. It might even rank as the best horror film Amicus ever made (their best films overall however be...
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Review: X – The Unknown

Soldiers at a quarry dealing with the handling of radioactive materials are badly burned when a huge crack opens in the ground under them. Dean Jagger is a scientist at a nearby research facility who looks into the incident. Before long a series of attacks leave the victims badly burned if not completely melted. What on Earth – or anywhere else perhaps – is going on here? Anthony Newley and Michael Ripper play soldiers, Leo McKern is an investigator, John Harvey plays a military Major, and William Lucas plays Jagger’s right-hand man.   Directed by Leslie Norman (1958’s “Dunkirk” ), this 1956 Hammer sci-fi film was intended to be a spin-off from Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass series. However, since the screenplay was written by Jimmy Sangster ( “Horror of Dracula” , “The Snorkel” , “The Nanny” ) and not Kneale, the latter refused the use of his characters, thus the final product comes with some character alterations. It’s Quatermass in all but name, and frankly a lot better than Hamm...
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