Film Review - The Witches (1966)

The Witches (1966)




Now, if you’re anything like myself, you’ll find a Hammer horror film irresistible – From undisputed classics such as The Devil Rides Out or The Curse Of Frankenstein, to their lesser fare such as Dracula AD 1972 or even the godawful Ralph Bates starrer Horror Of Frankenstein, I can’t get enough of their low-budget-but-always-professional outings, and I for one was overjoyed when the recently resurrected company came back with such strong material as Let Me In and the astoundingly good Wake Wood.
The Witches concerns a woman (Joan Fontaine) who suffered some kind of traumatic experience whilst working for a mission in Africa – something about witchdoctors forcing an uprising, although it’s never really gone into in any detail. To recover from her mental breakdown she takes a job as headmistress at a private school in the country, which at first seems idyllic, until she gradually realises darker forces are at work in the village (I’ll give you a clue here – Read the title of the film again). When she is about to expose the village’s elderly witch for what she believes is murder, she suddenly suffers another breakdown and her memory is wiped...will she recover enough to expose the conspiracy of witchcraft?
The Witches at first seems an atypical outing – It’s a Joan Fontaine vehicle for one, which she co-produced (stories abound of her being very dissatisfied with her working conditions and of possibly being upstaged by her co-star Kay Walsh), and features none of Hammer’s regular stock of actors, although the ones who appear (Leonard Rossiter as a suspicious doctor, Michele Dotrice aka Betty from Some Mothers Do ‘Ave Em as a young housekeeper) are of top quality – are excellent, with special merit being given to Kay Walsh as a provoctative newspaper columnist and Alec McCowan as her obviously rather unhinged brother (we first see him dressed as a priest, but it soon transpires he wears the collar ‘for comfort’). Also of merit is the script by the late, great, ever-reliable Nigel Kneale, which touches on British folklore and Pagan traditions several years before The Wicker Man appeared – In fact, there are many parallels to that film here. In its first half the film is actually quite brilliant – with an air of mystery gradually unfolding, and some great humorous touches and a very intelligent, adult feel to the whole thing. Unfortunately, whether to do with what was allowed on-screen at the time, or by a massive mis-step by director Cyril Frankel (mostly known for directing episodes of every cool TV series from the 70’s), the entire film is deflated by a ludicrous final sequence – It probably won’t be too much of a spoiler to tell you that there is a black mass, but the way it’s portrayed looks frankly like a bunch of posh stage school actors in ripped clothes improvising a voodoo dance, which, well, is probably what it is, and it’s utterly laughable.
I’d watched most of the film genuinely excited that I’d discovered a lost classic of British horror in fact, and remarked such at the time. Unfortunately, when the credits rolled, my opinion had changed to ‘oh’. My advice would be to watch it up until the scene where the cat is (literally) let out of the bag (actually quite disturbing, this bit!), and then attempt to forgive the last 15 minutes. Or watch something else instead. C’est la vie!

Film Review - The Silent House (2010)

Firstly, I haven’t seen an awful lot of films from Uruguay. In fact, The Silent House is the only one (yes, I did do my homework and go through a list of Uruguayan films just to check. There really aren’t that many).

Secondly, I haven’t seen an awful lot of films that purport to be in ‘real time’ either – especially not that take pains to look as if they were filmed in one take as well. In fact, errr...I’ve still not see one of those.

So, yes, Silent House doesn’t really deliver on it’s initial promise of one-take real-time terror – There are camera edits (although well hidden), and the coda takes place the next day, but such technical criticism seems rather churlish, as the film should stand on the merits of its story and atmosphere, right?

Well.

The plot (what little of it exists) goes like this – Handyman and his young daughter go to clear out an abandoned old house which the owner is selling. They arrive at night and are to sleep there until the next day. The father soon falls asleep and the girl starts to hear some strange and rather disturbing noises. Then her father wakes and goes to investigate, until he turns up bound and dead....

That’s literally all the plot I can give away without spoilering. Unfortunately I rather wish I could be more spoilerific with this review, because A) Most of my negative reaction to this film comes with the ending and B) You’d be less likely to want to see it.

To be fair, for the most part the film does what I expected it to do – It puts you at unease with the feel of the real time, single take, where there is a lot of darkness and not much happening, and then steadily amps up the scares – most of which are of the very effective ‘unexplained scary noise’ variety, until the dead father turns up, and things get stranger.

Unfortunately, it’s the aforementioned ‘twist’ ending that breaks it apart. On the first watch I was a little confused, so I attempted it again, and got even more confused. Obviously, in a reviewer, this is generally not a good look, so I went and read all the spoilery reviews I could find in an attempt to make sense. Where am I now? Well, I’m still just as confused, if I’m honest - whether it was the film maker’s intention to have this as deliberately vague as it comes across, or whether it was a result of bad writing/story telling I’m not sure, but it will leave the average viewer scratching their heads and shrugging (sorry, I could go into specifics, but, again, spoilers).

So all in all I cannot really recommend The Silent House – which is a shame, as for the first 40 minutes or so I was impressed by the naturalistic acting and setting and the slow-burn tension – But slow burn is useless without release, and that just doesn’t happen here.

MYTHAGO RAVE!

Hello everyone,

It’s been a while since I posted a mix up, and so I’m pleased to announce you can now get over to Soundcloud and listen/download my latest mix, Haunt Of Togetherness 2 : Mythago Rave. It’s just over an hour of the freshest and heaviest filthstep and drum & bass out there, all mashed up together. I really hope you enjoy it, leave me a comment!

Peace,

Dr D

Dellamorte presents Haunt Of Togetherness Part Two; Mythago Rave by Dj Dellamorte

So, some of you may be aware of my musical outings as one-third of ADD genre-hopping electronica act Codex Machine. I mention this because it's with great sadness that we're marking the death of Jerry Haynes , a fascinating man (read the link!) who we sampled on our track Big Noise a couple of years back. In tribute we present to you a free download.

Please share, love, dance and make BIG NOISE.

Big Noise by CodexMachine

This weekend's Radio Show

Hi folks,

I've got another show over at Spiritplants this weekend - It's on at 12.30am Saturday night and repeated at 12.30pm Sunday lunchtime GMT....This week we have music and remixes by/of such artists as Tensnake, Ratatat, RAC, Stevie Wonder, Sugarhill Gang, Kool & The Gang, Wild Cherry, Mark Ronson and Chic. Come join in the fun!

Triple Dip Time!

So welcome to Dellamorte’s Triple Dip! I did a similar post a couple of months back, with a few treats old and new which I’ve dug up on my musical travels and which I think you need to hear...I enjoyed doing it so much that I’ve decided to turn it into a semi-regular feature.

First off, here’s a tune from LA-based duo Poolside, who make what they term ‘daytime disco’ (Frankly it’s what I put under the possibly erroneous umbrella of ‘cosmic disco’ myself, which I use to cover a variety of sins). But whatever you wish to call it, what we have here is a slow, shimmering disco cover of Neil Young’s Harvest Moon, which almost tangibly ripples with heat, and it’s bloody gorgeous. Check it.

Poolside - Harvest Moon by Poolside Music

Their website is over at www.poolsidemusic.com

Now here’s an oddity – a super-obscurity from a very well known band...The Animals are quite rightly held up as one of the premier ‘beat’ bands of the sixties – Their extrapolation of American R&B into a hard-living Northern British idiom made for some very powerful pop music indeed. However, towards the late sixties they went through many line-up changes, even (as Eric Burdon & The Animals) embracing US psychedelia (and all it’s trappings). All their work from this period is well worth checking out, but until very recently I was unaware of the album ‘Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted’, which was recorded in 1976, and released in 1977, featuring the original line-up (indeed, billed on the album cover as The Original Animals). Apparently it sold rather well in the Netherlands, but elsewhere was lost amidst the new wave of punk music which was then making the old guard seem passé. A real shame, since this is a great album, with real passion, depth and soul all the way through. Check this cover of Dylan’s Baby Blue out... It’s a song which has been covered a great many times, but this is perhaps now my favourite version.




Lastly, but oh-so-certainly not leastly, my favourite dance artist has a new EP out! (and, be still my trembling fanboy heart, a first LP on the horizon). Fake Blood’s Deep Red EP, is, well, 3 tracks of exactly what we’ve come to expect, actually, and certainly none of the worse for that. In my humble opinion nobody has ever made house music quite like Fake Blood, and despite many imitations, no-one else gets it quite right. Enjoy! And don’t forget to buy it from Juno here!

Film Review - Alien 2 : On Earth (1980)

The world of the Italian exploitation film is a strange one – From 1956 until petering out sharply in the early nineties, the Italians simply made the most colourful, exciting and over the top B movies in the world, mostly with ultra-low budgets and a sense of artistic freedom undreamt of by Holywood. Their pioneer spirit and commercial nous (many Italian exploitation films did incredible business around the world) sometimes meant that conventionally accepted rules were sometimes bent, however, such as in the case of ‘Alien 2’.

Obviously, Alien 2 is not an official sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/horror masterpiece Alien – The official sequel was, of course, James Cameron’s awesomely pumped-up 1986 Aliens – Instead Alien 2 was apparently written before the Alien trademark was registered (another story claims that the producers of Alien attempted to sue for $10 million, but were thwarted when a 1930 novel also titled ‘Alien’ came to light). There’s no way even the most uneducated of viewers could mistake this for a film in the same series however. Instead this feels a lot more akin to, for instance, Norman J Warren’s ‘aliens in a cave’ flick Inseminoid (also 1980), with plot points borrowed from the first two Quatermass films.

The basic plot goes like this – after a plethora of stock footage, we learn that an aborted space mission is on it’s way back to Earth, (shades of the original Quatermass here). A young woman starts having terrible visions which may or may not be linked to the return of the mission (You may or may not be surprised!). When the spacecraft returns, all of it’s occupants seem to be missing, and a few days later strange blue rocks start appearing around LA.

The girl who was having the premonitions is part of a group of pot-holers investigating stalactites, and their caving expedition runs afoul of the deadly blue stones, which, in a twist blatantly obvious to anyone slightly familiar with Quatermass 2 or the ‘chest-burster’ creatures from the original Alien, turn out to creatures which incubate within human hosts. Can they survive?

I probably shouldn’t have enjoyed Alien 2 quite as much as did, but I did. Part of this is the aesthetic joy I get from watching any Italian exploitation, specifically that filmed abroad (on location in California no less!) without sync sound and with Cinecitta dubbing and sound effects, and part of it is the sheer wrong-headedness of the monsters and the gore. The creatures resemble nothing more than piles of guts (fairly likely that’s what they were..I have a theory that butchers made half their income from gore films in the 70’s) which burrow into people and, er, make their heads explode – Or, in one particularily grin-inducing moment, slowly drop off in a shower of grue. None of the well-thought out and convincing ecology of Scott’s Alien here – This thing is played for yucks alone, and when they come, they’re brilliantly executed (for the budget and time, silly and effective yucks – Actually pre-empting, in the case of one or two, Rob Bottin’s FX from the Thing a couple of years later (there’s no secret that John Carpenter was a fan of the Italian horror film, after all). It’s a shame that (spoiler alert) when the fully-grown alien at the end makes an appearance, we only see it from a POV shot (through an, erm, interestingly-shaped ‘eye’).

All in all, then, your enjoyment of Alien 2 probably relies on your expectations – If you’re expecting gritty realism, intelligent spectacle or the psycho-sexual edges (aside from the afore-mentioned ‘eye’) of the Alien series, you’ll be likely to be heavily disappointed. If you’re expecting a fairly slow-moving Italian sci-fi gore flick which does, at least, finally deliver on the grue, then you might well be entertained.

(Interesting bit of trivia – One of the cavers is future director and Argento protégé Michele Soavi, the man behind a film called Dellamorte Dellamore (1994), of which this author is rather fond)