Peeping Tom

Often associated with Hitchcock's PSYCHO due to originally being released within months of each other in 1960, Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM effectively destroyed his career while Mr. Hitchcock's reached new heights. And yet over the years Powell's voyeur themed thriller has maintained and grown a cult status truly deserved by this layered and multi-themed classic.

Set in late 50s London Mark Lewis explores the seedy underbelly of smut, pornography and prostitution using his ever running camera to record his voyeuristic experiences as he indulges in murder keeping footage of the last terrified moments of his victims deaths as home movies. A result of his fathers experiments during his childhood Mark Lewis is the first psychological film study of what would later be tagged as the serial killer.

PEEPING TOM shocked and appalled the critical elite on its release and was spurned as a sleazy exploitative effort, and Hitchcock learned a lesson from this by not showing PSYCHO to the press in advance of its release, by those not ready to allow sympathy for the films villainous lead or acknowledgement of the voyeuristic aspects of cinema into their 1960 mindset. The slasher film genre owes more to PEEPING TOMs Point of View death sequences than it does to the often honoured PSYCHO and now a new generation can be introduced to this classic film through an astoundingly beautiful re-mastered Blu Ray release before it is reaped for the poignant plot by Remakewood.

A happy horror hard-on for PEEPING TOM.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

The reputation of this movie proceeds it and the title to a certain extent serves as a spoiler. The movies central conceit that of people being sewn together to create the titular creature, is more or the less the only plot point in Tom Six horror feature.

Paving a new medical themed avenue into the much malingered torture porn sub-genre tag two female American tourists get lost in the woods in Germany at night after their rental car breaks down and they have lost their mobile signal. This cliched introduction leads the two girls to the house of a psychotic crackpot doctor who for reasons unknown sews the girls ass to mouth behind a third, a male Japanese tourist,

It's all very convenient that the doctor was ready to begin his experiments when the two girls stumble into his clutches. And it is this well trodden and obvious story that robs HUMAN CENTIPEDE from total originality. The actual events that follow are more original and surprisingly less disturbing than you would think, at least for the jaded horror viewer, and the movie is relatively bloodless and less exploitative than expected but in the end it feels like director Tom Six, with his cold clinical observational directing style, is testing the waters before he really unleashes the full scale of his body horror with HUMAN CENTIPEDE: FINAL SEQUENCE. A poor start does lead to an enjoyable disturbed tale that is likely a little more notorious that it really deserves to be.

Semi.

Rare Exports

Hailing from Finland RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE is the feature length version of a couple of very clever short films of the same name which you can find kicking about YouTube.

A mining excavation in the northern wilds of Finland has found what appears to be a large burial mound containing the very original manifestation of Santa Claus. This is not the Coca-Cola sponsored image of the jolly Christmas chap but rather the dark and twisted fairy tale Santa that has been diluted from. Two young boys stumble across the discovery which leads one of Santa's "helpers" to follow them home and the true dark face of the Christmas legend becomes exposed.

RARE EXPORTS is an oddity more dark fantasy than horror it could likely be marketed as a kids film if it were not for the copious amount of old mans cock swinging about during the movies climax. It Is something a little bit different but is also a little lacking, a great set-up that around the fifty minute mark begins to falter sadly does not have any better than a fair resolve favouring an action outcome over horror like a kiddies DIE HARD 2.

Not as sharp as its short film origins I get RARE EXPORTS a semi-erection.

Spiderhole

A last minute replacement at Frightfest after the digi-beta tape deck fucked THE REEF right up SPIDERHOLE is a British torture porn and slasher variant about a group of squatters who pick the wrong house to doss down in.

Despite standard genre plot points SPIDERHOLE is a solidly performed and directed film that skates above the cliched norm and fliers with just enough ambiguity to tease a sequel or just leave as one if those open ending horror tales that leaves you wondering. It is a fun British variant on the dead teenager film with enough nasty malevolence to keep this reviewer happy for 80 or so minutes.

Semi- erection and a smile for SPIDERHOLE.

(P.S. I passed the poster for this all night in the Empire and kept wondering "Who get's it in the SPIDERHOLE?" fate brought us together I suppose.)

Choose

The words choice and game feature predominantly in the artwork for this direct to DVD flick that encapsulates neither the torture porn or slasher genres it hopes to ingratiate itself with.

A promising opening gives us a young girl faced with the ultimate Sophies Choice, pick either her mother or father to die or her little brother gets it. This is the introduction and one of a few appearances of the films villain credited as Scarlip. Next we are introduced to Fiona Wagner and her Sheriff father who become the central points of the story as they are tainted by the killer and investigate further leading them to a dark secret around Fiona's mothers death. A dull police procedural follows with the films villain disappearing for the majority of the films running time. No one ever really feels in any danger and there is a distinct lack of any tension, mystery or horror.

To compare CHOOSE to SAW or THE COLLECTOR is lazy and insulting to those films and their makers. This half-baked, hell one-tenth baked, script and cliche ridden mess fails to act on its two strengths a possibly good villian, though the use of a gun by slasher/anti-hero is a cheat, and a beautiful lead actress Kathryn Winnick last seen to genre fans in AMUSEMENT. There are no shocks, no thrills leaving this psycho killer thriller to commit the most heinous of horror movie crimes; inducing boredom.

Floppy, floppy, floppy.

The Silent House

Laura and her father are staying at a dilapidated old house, boarded up windows keeping the light out and the darkness in. Without power they use battery powered lamps and flashlights to explore the house as bumping and banging is heard from upstairs . Within minutes Laura's father is dead and she is left to confront whatever dark secret hides between the stone walls.

Horror from Chili does not come along very often and with this one comes a certain amount of hype. Lauded as the new PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and sold amongst a bidding flurry at Cannes THE SILENT HOUSE sells itself as being shot on the prosumer level Digital SLR camera from Canon as well as being shot in one take. Immediately you are taken out of the film and challenging yourself to pick apart the technical aspirations of this low-budget thriller that has potential to scare if it could just straighten out its damn mind what the plot is or ifi it even exists. I assume there is a deleted subplot about a book as the lead character spends a lot of her looking at shelves, in minute detail.

Left with no idea why anyone was in the house, why the lead character was so scared of banging noises she spent the time looking about storage areas or how they explain away the placement of lighting sources in a one take movie nor why the audio suddenly dips like a wireless microphone has come loose in her clothing the hype of A SILENT HOUSE is never lived up to.

NOTE: Adam Mason's PIG has already used the same camera to film a "one-take" improvised horror movie in broad daylight.

Floppy.

Altitude

Look at that artwork posted there. How can this go wrong? It is not an Asylum produced Megacreature leaping at an aircraft. Those are tentacles. Which invoke two things - Lovecraft and THE MIST. Look at that trailer. Touches of CREEPSHOW and THE TWILIGHT ZONE. This is going to be a winner!

And then you meet a girl (Jessica Lowndes) far too pretty to be anyone in reality other than an actress/clothes hanger never mind a trainee pilot rebelling against her military colonel and chasing down the memory of her pilot mother who died in a plane crash. And her plausible boyfriend, a. Omicron book geek who would get nowhere near a girl this hot if it wasn't for the manipulation of their shared past. And their is the bonehead athletic boyfriend of her best friend the blonde film student who cannot work a camera and a fifth guy added in for some early disaster fodder.

And when disaster does strike it could not come fast enough. Such a shame the giant tentacle thing only kills one of the five. Bad acting, poor script but actually not bad CGI do not take horror to any new heights. It should be monsters on a plane but instead it's all hormones on a plane with only the all teeth and tits Lowndes making it palatable to the eye if you do not mind her Michael Bay inspired fake tanned face.

Limp dick for the movie. Lowndes causes some stirring.

Confessions

From Japan comes a tale of revenge filmed as confessions by various characters surrounding a school teacher who has lost her young child, the school pupils who may be involved and fact that the school milk has been infected with HIV.

Gloriously shot and beautifully crafted this is an indulgent movie both for the viewer and the film maker. Visually sparkling through slow motion rain showers, backward explosions and slapstick humour all scored with a constant medley of emotionally downbeat tunes added to startlingly observed performances from young actors underpin a disturbing story on the change of Japanese moral values and youth.

CONFESSIONS could be improved by a sterner hand on the editing shears lending a leaner view on this Eastern revenge tale before it greets a wider western audience and is much subtler than the expected violence of such a film from Oriental climes but shares a place with MOTHER and BEDEVILLED proving the dark side of Asian cinema is not all long hair ghosts and splatter.

Full on hard on.