Tag Archives: Euro-horror

Scrapings

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As Vegan Voorhees winds down to its inevitable end, excluding anything incoming, there are only 39 titles left on my list to review, so in between the various responsibilities of life that close in like the walls of a trap from Saw MCMXVII, I found an opportunity to knock a few on the head that I don’t have a whole lot to say about…

*

little erin merryweather 2005

LITTLE ERIN MERRYWEATHER

3 Stars  2005/15/81m

“A flash of red… then thump you’re dead.”

Director / Writer: David Morwick / Cast: Vigdis Anholt, David Morwick, Elizabeth Callahan, Brandon Johnson, Marcus Bonnee, Frank Ridley, William Mahoney, Heather Little.

Body Count: 5

At first glance, Little Erin Merryweather sounds like a few hundred other slasher films: A killer with a thing about Little Red Riding Hood is gutting students around a college campus. But wait… this time all of the victims are boys and the killer is an unhinged female. Even the stock virginal final girl has been switcheroo’d to a guy. While role-reversals have been tried several times in horror, here the angle is relatively played down by the staging. A trio of college boys form a little Scooby gang with their psych professor when the murders begin to cut closer to home.

Meanwhile, shy, dorky Peter develops a crush on library worker, Erin, who has a penchant for laying frat boys to waste and replacing their intestines with rocks, as per the original fairytale. Why she does this is never that clear, but there’s some backstory around child abuse that causes Erin to view boys as wolves.

Director and scribbler Morwick (who also plays Peter) has created his film delicately enough to ensure there’s a realistic edge to the players without forgetting the goosebump contingent, which is realised perfectly in the final library scene, which practically redefines the concept of tension.

Why only three stars? Well, it’s a little too short, a little tame, and, despite its comparable youth, looks like it could’ve been shot in the first half of the 90s. Trivial grumbles aside, this is one for those who enjoyed Malevolence (ironically also featuring actor Brandon Johnson) and aren’t bothered by a lack of grue.

*

MOTOR HOME MASSACRmotor home massacre 2005E

1 Stars  2005/91m

“The road ends here.”

Director/Writer: Allen Wilbanks / Cast: Shan Holleman, Nelson Bonilla, Justin Geer, Tanya Fraser, Breanne Ashley, Greg Corbett, Nichole Crisp, Todd Herring, Lane Morlote, Diana Picallo, West Cummings, Jason Von Stein.

Body Count: 8

Laughter Lines: “Last time this thing was on the road, Michael Jackson was cool.”

Seven teens embark on a doomed camping trip in this strange comic-slasher, which is about as clunky as the gears on a Winnebago. Sabrina wants to get over a break-up; sleazy Roger wants to help her achieve that; dorky Benji wants a girlfriend, and the other two couples just want sex, sex, and more sex.

After the requisite double murder that opens the film (and is shown again later when the kids are given the requisite warning about Black Creek Park by the requisite store clerk), it takes nearly an hour before they even reach the campsite, befriend a girl who is also trying to escape a bad break-up, and play crappy pranks on one another.

The slaughter eventually gets underway to decidedly underwhelming effect, while the acting gradually slides down an already slippery slope once the killer is unmasked. One amusing scene where Sabrina and Benji attempt to untie themselves is not enough to save this one, which is about as agitating as a trip in an RV with six annoying people.

*

leatherface texas chainsaw massacre III 1990

LEATHERFACE: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III

2 Stars  1989/18/78m

“There’s roadkill all over Texas.”

Director: Jeff Burr / Writer: David J. Schow / Cast: Kate Hodge, Ken Foree, Viggo Mortensen, William Butler, R.A. Mihailoff, Toni Hudson, Joe Unger, Tom Everett.

Body Count: 6

Laughter Lines: “What the hell is wrong with you – why don’t you leave us alone?” / “We’re hungry.” / “Never heard of pizza?”

I’ve never been much of a fan of the Texas Chainsaw franchise, a perspective reiterated by this shoddy third entry, which was much toyed with in the editing suite, resulting in a scrappy, hard to follow story, that pairs it ‘nicely’ with Kim Henkel’s ‘true sequel’, The Next Generation – which is even more punishing.

California teens Hodge and Butler are driving across Texas to Florida when they stop at the wrong garage and are tricked into taking a route that passes by the home of Leatherface and his new clan, including future Lord of the Rings fixture Mortensen as a slick psycho. The unfortunate youngsters end up getting into a car accident with Ken Foree’s survivalist and are chased through the woods for a while before California Boy is killed and California Girl is taken prisoner back at the ranch, until she escapes for revenge blah blah blah.

The first half of the pic is fine, with a nice set up and great camerawork, but once our chainsaw-toting anti-hero enters the frame, things begin to fall apart with sloppy edits and evident gore cuts, leaving the fates of several characters entirely ambiguous, although there’s some interesting harking back to the original, with Toni Hudson’s increasingly primal last survivor of a previous group who passed by providing an interesting, though too-short distraction.

Watch for the scene where Leatherface goes up against a Speak n’ Spell and loses several times over.

Blurbs-of-interest: Viggo Mortensen was in Gus Van Sant’s Psycho remake; Ken Foree was also in Halloween (2007) and Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge; Jeff Burr also directed Night of the Scarecrow and Stepfather III.

*

the grim reaper 1980

THE GRIM REAPER

1.5 Stars  1980/18/82m

“It’s not the fear that tears you apart. It’s him.”

A.k.a. Anthropophagous; Man Beast; The Savage Island

Director: Joe D’Amato / Writers: Louis Montefiori & Aristide Massaccessi / Cast: Tisa Farrow, Saverio Vallone, Zora Kerova, Margaret Donnelly, George Eastman, Mark Bodin, Serena Grandi, Bob Larsen.

Body Count: 12

Tisa Farrow – Mia’s sister – is an au pair to an English family vacationing on a remote Greek island. She hitches a ride to shore on a yacht chartered by a group of yuppies only to find the entire place is deserted, thanks to a cannibalistic psycho. Only one mystery woman and the blind daughter of Tisa’s employers are left alive.

A confusing vehicle to say the least, undecided whether it wants to connect itself to the hordes of 70s cannibal exploitation movies, or Halloween, kind of acting as a double agent between the two genres, which is a minor point of interest.

The killer is also able to slaughter swimmers from underwater in an opening act that looks like a cheap regional Jaws rip-off. He chews out the throats of other victims, even chomping on the fetus of one pregnant woman in a scene cut from several prints.

Despite the implied gore, the film is lit so poorly it’s impossible to tell what’s going on for most of it and the rushed, inconsequential climactic chase scene only houses a couple of novelty shocks, but doesn’t do enough to sideline the boring nature of it all. Absurd is the sort-of sequel, for which Eastman returned, and is much better.

*

zombie island massacre 1984

ZOMBIE ISLAND MASSACRE

2 Stars  1983/18/85m

“Have a fun-filled vacation! Toe-tapping machete head dances! Glamorous zombie-style cosmetic surgery! Fabulous air-conditioned tiger pits!”

Director: John N. Carter / Writers: Logan O’Neill & William Stoddard / Cast: Rita Jenrette, David Broadnax, Tom Cantrell, Diane Clayre Holub, George Peters, Ian McMilian, Ralph Monaco, Debbie Ewing, Christopher Ferris, Kristina Wetzel, Emmett Murphy, Harriet Rawlings, Dennis Stephenson, Tom Fitzsimmons, Deborah Jason, Trevor Reid.

Body Count: 18

Fans of zombie movies have cited this as a waste of time on several occasions, thanks to its misleading… well, everything. The only zombie is a questionable one seen during a voodoo cultural show put on for a group of American tourists on a Caribbean island. After finding their bus immobilised, they hike to a local house, but there’s a leaf-disguised (!) killer knocking them off one by one.

So the title is a cheat and the production qualities are lousy, but this cheapo flick was still shot on location and, at the end, presents us with a plot twist not commonly seen, involving drug money and undercover investigations – though it has little to do with the murder spree, which are largely off-screen or tame, save for an impressively executed decapitation.

Former Washington-wife Jenrette is the chest-blessed heroine, something the film capitlises on as it opens with an overlong exploration of her in the shower. Most of her supporting cast are largely undeveloped couples on vacation, only there to bite the bullet at some point. A fair effort for completists, but don’t go out of your way to find it.

Blurb-of-interest: Harry Manfredini contributed the score, which is little more than a rehash of his Friday the 13th signature sounds.

 

See No Evil

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eyes of crystal 2004 occhi di cristallo

EYES OF CRYSTAL

3.5 Stars  2004/18/108m

A.k.a. Occhi di Cristallo

Director/Writer: Eros Puglielli / Writers: Luca Di Fulvio, Gabriella Blasi, Franco Ferrini / Cast: Luigi Lo Cascio, Lucia Jimenez, Jose Angel Egido, Simon Andreu, Carmelo Gomez, Ernestina Chavdorova Shinova, Eusebio Poncela, Branimir Petev Milandinov.

Body Count: 8

A late-to-the-party giallo which features a mystery taxidermist hacking up people in an effort to make a human doll, a la Pieces, but with about a million times as much class.

Homicide detectives Amaldi and Frese, who are undisciplined and violent and weathered respectively, find themselves in the centre of a whirlppol of seemingly unrelated events after the triple shooting of a pair of young lovers and a peeping Tom in a field. But what has it got to do with student Giudetta’s apparent obsessed stalker, and their ex-cop friend Ajaccio, who is in hospital suffering flashbacks to a fatal fire at the orphanage he grew up in?

All the staples of giallo are present and accounted for: Opera, sex, eyeballs, and a lot of blood. The latter is subdued enough to avoid looking excessive and stupid, and Puglielli keeps his film engaging considering the almost two-hour run time and non-stratospheric body count, never shying away from visual flourishes and striking shots littered throughout.

As always, all of the random threads eventually come together, while the killer’s motive is cloudy and bizarre, the film is slick and successful in its attempts to resurrect the ways of olde.

Blurb-of-interest: Eusebio Poncela was in Black Serenade.

 

What have you been smoking?

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amster

AMSTERDAMNED

3 Stars  1988/18/109m

“Be glad you’re afraid… It means you’re still alive.”

Director/Writer: Dick Maas / Cast: Huub Stapel, Monique van de Ven, Serge-Henri Valcke, Hidde Maas, Wim Zomer, Tannake Hartzuiker, Tatum Dagelet, Edwin Bakker.

Body Count: 8

Laughter Lines: “No more money means no more pussy – and I won’t go Dutch!”

Who could hate the city of Amsterdam? Canals, flowers, the Heineken museum, hookers sticking their asses up against the glass of their windows, pot-laced brownies, uh… Anne Frank’s house?

Although the end reaches for new depths of desperation to avoid a resolution you can see coming miles away through fields of tulips and windmills, this Dutch police thriller-cum-slasher movie is entertaining anyway. When a series of brutal slaughters plagues the canals of Amsterdam, your standard single-father, sleeps-late, has tough daughter, cop is assigned to finding the maniac.

That’s it for plot, director Maas tosses in plenty of action and some pretty good set-ups but can’t escape heavy influence from either A Nightmare On Elm Street or Jaws (!). Good scenes include a prostitute’s corpse hanging from the underside of a bridge that a glass-topped tourist barge ventures beneath, and a James Bond-like boat chase through the canals.

Absorb that dreadful Euro-pop song that graces the credits sequence as well, possibly the scariest thing in the film.

amsterdamned 1988Blurb-of-interest: Serge-Henri Valcke was later in Slaughter Night (SL8 N8).

 

 

 

Dub Stop.

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flashback 2000

FLASHBACK

3.5 Stars  2000/18/94m

Director: Michael Karen / Writer: Jimmy Sangster & Natalie Scharf / Cast: Valerie Niehaus, Xaver Hutter, Alexandra Neldel, Simone Hanselmann, Erich Schleyer, Katja Woywood, Elke Sommer, Nicola Etzelstorfer, Christian Nathe, Fabian Zapatka.

Body Count: 12

Laughter Lines: “Why do parents always think their kids will get killed if they vacation alone?”

The teen-horror revival of the late 90s (“this type of movie is very popular right now!”) naturally spilled over to regional European imitations of Scream, of which this German slasher is likely the most fun.

Blah years ago (probably ten, as is the norm), a psycho wearing galoshes, a woman’s wig and a heinous floral dress is on the loose, first offing a couple of sexy teens on a train, and then entering the home of the Fielmann family, where he slaughters the parents and dog of young Jeanette, who later developed amnesia and cannot remember what happened after the loon cornered her by the door (the key is on a hook out of her reach).

flashback 1999

In the present, Jeanette is offered a position by her shrink, teaching three spoiled teenage siblings French at their remote chalet in the mountains, while their father is away on business, scuppering their summer of partying. No sooner does she arrive then we begin seeing a cross-dressing, sickle-toting stranger everywhere (starting when she’s taken to see The Relic in a movie theater more raucous than the one in Scream 2), and it’s not much longer before friends of the three siblings, as well as domestic pets, begin getting hacked up by a cross-dressing, sickle-toting stranger.

Jeanette, meanwhile, becomes romantically entangled with the brother, Leon, much to the annoyance of Elke Sommer’s cranky housekeeper. She also begins to dream back to the murders, remembering a little more every time. There’s a whole thing about ‘the secret in the barn’ and a mid-point twist that’s partly confusing given what’s already supposed to have occurred by this point, its attempted explanation by a throw-away line is a little desperate.

flashback 2000

Plot convolutions aside, Flashback has some super awesome ‘classic’ visuals, with the camera at weapon-level as the killer closes in on victims, a fun chairlift murder, a long chase involving a guy for once (poor dude cops a sickle in balls and has to limp away holding them together), and death-by-pool-cover for the person who earlier said “no one ever died in our pool!” The relatively high-end production values elevate this above most Euro-slashers, though it loyally checks every box on its way, with a particularly vicious streak in hacking and blending cute animals as well as obnoxious teenagers.

Most releases of the film outside its homeland suffer from pretty horrendous dubbing, which gives the film an unintentional (?) cheesiness thanks to the less than committed American voice actors and verbatim translation, which turns regular Germanic sentences into bizarre gibberish – we’re talking Bloody Moon levels of poor here.

flashback 2000

There’s also some distractingly odd slapstick humor thrown in, with one poor guy repeatedly getting gunked in blood from various bodies that turn up, and a running gag about a body in a car. But when your killer is a guy in wellies and the dress grandma was buried in, it’s hard to play it too po-faced.

Worth a look but probably much better in German with subtitles – if such a version is out there.

Tueur de conte de fées

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deep in the woods 2000

DEEP IN THE WOODS

3.5 Stars  2000/18/84m

“Don’t go there alone.”

Director/Writer: Lionel Delplanque / Writer: Annabel Perrichon / Cast: Clotilde Courau, Clement Sibony, Vincent Lecoeur, Alexia Stresi, Maud Buquet, Francois Berleand, Denis Lavant, Thibault Truffert.

Body Count: 7

Laughter Lines: “It’s not my fault those bitches got killed!”

Promoted in its native France as a contemporary to Scream, this lushly produced twist on Little Red Riding Hood (titled Promenons-nous dance les bois – A Stroll in the Woods) concerns five young actors who are hired by Baron de Fersen to perform their offbeat version of said fairytale to him and his autistic grandson, Nicolas, at their manor in the forest. Deep in the forest.

One play performance, some weird dreams and gratuitous amounts of semi-tasteful nudity later, somebody dons the creepy-ass wolf costume from the play and goes after the thespians one by one. Characters number among them lesbian lovers (…le sigh), a pervert groundskeeper who cuts up a wild animal in the film’s grossest sequence, and a mysterious policeman who turns up out of the blue, claiming to be looking for an AWOL rapist.

Directed with the kind of expert visual flair the French are famed for, the style here leaves many genre directors far behind, flawed only by some weak characters and a killer who can barely scrape the remnants of a motive together. Sharper scripting and a little more clarity would’ve been welcome (though perhaps the latter was lost in translation), but perhaps the misty-eyed dream-like quality of the whole thing is kind of its point.

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