The overall plot is your typical vengeful ghost story with a few surprising and welcome twists. It isn’t often that a movie can surprise me. There are usually just too many gimmes in a plot for me to be legitimately surprised by anything. I was floored when the identity of the killer was finally revealed. It was so unlikely and yet the plot had all the indicators so it didn’t feel out of place or forced. I ended up feeling like I had missed some breadcrumbs somewhere back along the path and gotten totally lost but, in a good way. My one criticism is that I wish they had gone into more detail with the larger phenomenon that they hinted at during the movie. I almost envisioned a Romero-esque rise of blood ghosts seeking revenge on those who wronged them. The ending left things wide open for a sequel and, if they can maintain this type of quality storytelling I hope they make it. This ghostly gore fest should make anyone’s terrifying top ten movies to watch.

The protagonist, Sara Tobias, did not engender any sort of empathy in me. Usually I can identify with the protagonist in a movie like this but, the script just piled on a bunch of trite problems that have been done to death in a thousand other flicks before this. If it had just been the tragic death of her parents or her nearly being raped or even being the freak at school I could have felt a connection. With all of them piled on the poor girl I couldn’t help but feel that she needed to just die and get it over with. I actually found myself hoping that at some point one of the bizarre and lethal incidents that were happening to the people around her would happen to her as well. To her credit Laura Mennell, the actress playing Sara, seemed to be giving it her best effort but, I think even she was struggling with the ridiculous weight of circumstance placed upon her character.

My last real bone of contention is the final sound mix. This is another indicator of this movie’s shoestring budget. There is a real problem when I have to turn my television up full blast to hear dialogue at normal levels only to be nearly deafened by background noise three minutes later. I understand budget constraints but seriously does it cost that much to normalize volume? I honestly can’t say I’d recommend this movie to anyone I like, which includes my readers here, but, if you have no other options and need to kill an hour and a half or you just want to torture someone then give this movie a try.

The Last Broadcast is shot as a faux-documentary about the murders of three men in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey – the haunt of the infamous Jersey Devil. Filmmaker David Leigh presents the facts surrounding the incident (dubbed the “Fact or Fiction murders” by the media) in a series of interviews with people who were involved with the case. The three men were carrying out a live broadcast of their supernatural-themed show, “Fact or Fiction”, from the woods when they were killed leaving Jim Suerd (the fourth member of the group) as the sole survivor and prime suspect. Suerd dies in prison under “mysterious circumstances”, which prompts Leigh to set out to find the truth about what happened in the woods that night.

This was the first film to be created in an entirely digital format, something filmmakers Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler achieved using software borrowed from friends and with PCs they built themselves. I’m not going to take any jabs at the look of this film because it would be unfair and I eventually got used to the “greasy lens” look and monotone narration.

I think some additional editing in the first 45 minutes would have helped to move the story along quicker because things don’t really pick up until the second half when Leigh receives a box of pulled video tape and becomes an important character in the story. Analyzing this footage becomes the focus of the remainder of the movie as he enlists the help of data retrieval specialist, Shelly Monarch, to restore the tape which appears to document the last moments of the men. I thought this last half was genuinely creepy as Leigh prepares to visit the site of the murders and we see Monarch slowly recovering images that include an indistinct shape that was present during the attacks.

Considering the budget they were working with (allegedly $900) the dialogue and acting aren’t bad and there’s some perceptive commentary on how “truth” is shaped by media sensationalism and further distorted in this age of 60 second sound-bites and the constant flow of online information.

I really wanted to like this movie: it merged the internet with a centuries-old legend and the last half of the film is worth the wait. But, in the end, I felt duped and had no way of consoling myself. For fans of first-person POV horror films, this is one of the earliest efforts in the genre and is definitely worth a watch but prepare to be shocked by a horrific ending.

“A Tale of Two Sisters” is based very loosely on a Korean folktale known as “Janghwa, Hongryeon”.  The folktale tells of two sisters who are terrorized by their brutal, sadistic stepmother. There’s no fairy godmother to save the day in either the folk story or the movie, however, and in the latter, the viewer can only watch as strange, seemingly supernatural events spiral out of control.

Right from the get-go, the sense of mystery and tragedy is palpable. When the film opens, the older sister Su-mi (Su-jeong Lim) is shown being questioned by a doctor in a mental instution. She sits expressionless as the doctor intensely quizzes her about her family. The scene dreamily dissolves into a idyllic, pastoral country scene. The contrast between the stark white-walled asylum and the lush South Korean countryside is unsettling and effective. We are then introduced to Su-Mi’s family– her distracted father (Kap-su Kim); her sweet, soft-spoken younger sister Su-yeon (marvelously portrayed by Geun-Young Moon);  and her adversary– her step-mother Eun-joo (Jung-ah Yum) who appears more Stepford Wife sinister than brutal sadist.

Even in this peaceful domestic setting, it’s obvious that something is out of place. The girls are haunted at night by strange spectres. Visitors to the home spontaneously fall into violent spasmodic seizures. Stepmom’s prized pet bird is found dead in the girls’ bed. Slowly, the secrets behind the family’s tragic, disturbing past are teased out until the situation reaches a bloody, mind-bending climax.

The ending to A Tale of Two Sisters is, in fact, rather puzzling and ambiguous. The lines between dream and reality have been blurred into a nightmarish haze. I’ll admit that it took two viewings for me to fully piece together all the strange clues scattered throughout the movie.  (The director did an in-depth interview about the symbolism behind the story, but the DVD I rented didn’t come with Cast Commentary.)  All in all, the movie is impressive in its scope– it goes beyond a typical ghost story and proves to be a surprisingly moving story about how a family copes with loss.

The film documents the efforts of Sir Hugo Cunningham (Robert Stephens) in his bid to gain immortality via the entrapment of The Asphyx. The Asphyx only comes into existence at the moment of death, so this affords the film a number of interesting sequences such as Cunningham electrifying himself to the point of death. The Asphyx itself is a piece of mystical nonsense, but its importance lies in propelling the narrative forward. It functions in much the same way as an Hitchcockian MacGuffin. The film isn’t really about The Asphyx but instead about one man’s efforts to control life and death, to gain power through the manipulation and control of nature. Cunningham’s initial motivations are powered by an objective desire to ensure that society advances in a progressive and liberal fashion (his outrage at a public hanging is evidence of this). Unfortunately the objective appeal of immortality soon makes way for a series of highly subjective decisions which lead to death and tragedy. Cunningham is a tragic but driven scientist who has buried one wife, and watched his son and fiancé perish in a boating accident. His zealous determination to continue the Cunningham line and immortalise his daughter Christina (Jane Lapotaire) and his adopted son Giles (Robert Powell) soon takes over any benevolent motivations that Cunningham may once have harboured.

The accidental death of Christina plunges Cunningham and Giles into a dilemma which is violently resolved with the suicide of Giles. The cold and implacable performance of Robert Powell makes this scene something of a surprise, and its place in the narrative seems somewhat contrived and inappropriate. With his Asphyx safely away behind a combination lock, the digits of which died with Giles, Cunningham faces a life of tortured immortality. The morality of most films that deal with immortality is that the condition is a curse rather than a utopian ideal. Cunningham is punished for playing god and belongs to a long line of well to do scientists who ultimately lack the maturity to deal with the forces they have unleashed. The 1872 Victorian setting places the film firmly into the Age of Reason and the modernism that was embraced in the name of this cause. Its attitude to science and technology is a cautious one – offering brilliance and hope in the shape of Cunningham’s moving pictures, but tragedy and death in the shape of the trapped Asphyx.

The film is book-ended by two sequences in modern day London. They add very little to the proceedings, apart from an absurd final image of the hideously aged Cunningham being crushed between two oncoming vehicles. But even these tacked on moments are invested with emotion and pathos by the gerbil (the first creature made immortal by Cunningham) being the only thing to which Cunningham as an emotional attachment. The film is perhaps a little philosophically weak and fails to follow through the metaphysical issues it raises, but credit must go to Brian Comport for a screenplay overflowing with ideas. The cinematography by celebrated DOP Freddie Young is outstanding at times, and it is essential that the film is enjoyed in its original aspect ratio and in a sufficiently decent print. If you can handle the deliberate and measured pace of the film and are interested in ideas rather than actions then there will be much in The Asphyx of interest.

If you choose to watch Mr. Jingles, you will be strongly tempted to shut it off – and that’s just before the opening credits finish, which list what must be the equivalent of an entire small town, lingering on each name for enough time that you’ve re-read it five times over before it fades away. Half the crew is the same two or so people (who also appear to be related) and their names are repeated so frequently that by the time the credits finish, the director assumes you know them on a first-name basis and drops the last names. And sadly, you do.  After close to four minutes (which is quite a while if you think about it – near a tenth of the brief runtime), the credits finally come to a close and the film gets slightly more interesting from here on. I stress slightly.

Shot on a consumer camera with what appears to be a wonky focus button and recorded with what sounds like a tape recorder (good luck understanding a single word without the subtitles), Mr. Jingles begins with the titular Mr. Jingles invading a house and slaughtering a family. The scene is a good indication of what’s to come. Mr. Jingles slashes the dad’s front shirt and rips a sausage, doubling as intestine, out. He then bops the mom’s head to the floor with all the force of a cranky five-year-old. Meanwhile, the couple’s ten-year-old daughter, Angie, cowers upstairs in her closet. This ten-year-old is inexplicably played by a twenty-three-year-old woman, which remains a puzzling choice until the film flashes forward “Ten Years Later” and you realize they just decided to use the same actress who played Angie as an adult. They were apparently unable to find a real ten-year-old girl who could substitue for the brief prologue. Right before Mr. Jingles finds Angie and is about to do her in, two policemen burst in. One moves a toy plastic gun up and down and you hear some sort of popping sound, similar to the sound “Pop Rocks” make when dissolving.

The opening sequence effectively establishes what’s to come: along with the terrible effects work (i.e. sausage as intestine) and pure incompetence (a full-grown woman playing the ten-year-old girl), there’s the utterly irritating clown, Mr. Jingles, who spouts out stupid one-liners for the remainder of his screen time. In the opening scenes it’s – and I’ll paraphrase to avoid having to re-watch – “You have to be punished for twinkling your panties!” Later on, his lines degenerate to the point where he simply begins calling his victims “douchebags” and “fuckos”. Imagine if Michael Myers, before killing a victim, called out “Hello fuckos! How’s it hanging?”. It effectively kills any potential scares, not that there were any to begin with here, but you catch the drift.

You’ve seen the movies Mr. Jingles cribs from countless times before: it’s a combination of every bad slasher film you’ve seen and every bad demonic posession film you’ve seen, except the villain is initially an innocent clown falsely imprisoned on charges of pedophilia. While incarcerated, this Mr. Jingles vows to get revenge on those who have wronged him and dabbles in the occult, as one character explains in the tired cliché of “he sold his soul to the devil”. After acquiring supernatural powers and escaping from jail (which of course we only hear about in drawn-out exposition), he sets out to kill the relatives of those responsible, in this case young Angie, and a killer-clown variation on Halloween ensues. Eventually, after leaving an assortment of dead bodies littered around town, he ends up at a teenage party, where he hacks through the partygoers one by one as he tries to get to Angie.

The entire movie is primarily a lead-up to the party sequence finale and until then it’s essentially out-of-focus, inaudible filler. There are a few subplots thrown in to keep it interesting, including one that involves an elaborate prank orchestrated by some Goth kids that goes absolutely nowhere and one involving a grave keeper who knows how to kill Mr. Jingles that goes absolutely nowhere. By the time of the big finale, in which Mr. Jingles finally reaches the party and wreaks havoc, you’ll likely be bored beyond imagination and welcome the change of pace despite the ensuing stupidity. Some of it crosses the line into the unintentionally hilarious, but most remains simply bad. How can two girls run into the middle of a vast field, with no one around, only to have Mr. Jingles pop out and grab them? Where the hell did he come from?  How the heck does he manage to collect and assemble the bodies of everyone he has killed during the course of the night, roughly ten people, around a dinner table in approximately thirty seconds? How and why is a man who was hacked repeatedly with an axe and presumed dead now back with only a small knick on his cheek?

Then, after over 70 minutes of absolute idiotic tedium (although I can assure it will have felt about twenty times longer), Mr. Jingles manages to deliver one truly frightening final sequence, that is up there alongside the best moments of The Exorcist and Psycho in terms of sheer terror: the filmmakers leave it open for a sequel. Now that’s horror.

By the time Corman decided to divert his attentions to an adaptation of the H. P. Lovecraft short story The Case of Charles Dexter Ward he already had House of Usher (1960), Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Premature Burial (1962), Tales of Terror (1962), and The Raven (1963) behind him. It’s more than conceivable that Corman was a bit bored of Poe. But AIP were not bored of Poe and inspired by box office receipts the production company decided to market Corman’s latest horror picture as another Poe film. With a few scant lines from the obscure poem The Haunted Palace appearing on screen, Lovecraft suddenly became Poe. AIP would go on to do this a number of times during the 1960’s – Witchfinder General (1968) became The Conqueror Worm and The Oblong Box (1969) has no relation to the short story after which it was named. Lovecraft was very much the heir to Poe’s throne in literary terms and it would have been a fitting tribute if AIP could have segued from Poe into the cosmic terrors of Lovecraft. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be and Lovecraft wasn’t utilised at all in the marketing of The Haunted Palace.

Vincent Price gets the opportunity to play two characters here – the soppy and pathetic Charles Dexter Ward and the infinitely more interesting Joseph Curwen – a man who is burnt at the stake by the villagers of Arkham for his love of the black arts. Over a century after this vigilante deed Ward arrives in Arkham to claim his inheritance – a suitably gothic and eerie palace handed down to him by his warlock ancestor. After enduring the indifference of a superstitious populace Ward finds himself in conflict with the spirit of Curwen whose force of will enables him to inhabit the body of the feckless Ward and continue the plans that were interrupted a century before by the torch wielding locals. Curwen is aided and abetted in his task by Simon (a bloated Lon Chaney Jr.) in their bid to harness the cryptic powers of the Necronomicon and open a passageway for the old gods to return to our world and once again hold dominion. Chaney Jr is badly underused and apart from a few eerily lit moments adds little to the film apart from his obvious marquee value. Price on the other hand gets to ham it up and dominates proceedings, delivering his wicked lines of dialogue with the sadistic relish for which he became popular. Corman makes use of an evocative portrait of Curwen, a work of art which glares down at all who enter the palace, the burning eyes fixing Ward in their glare, communicating both control and bodily possession.

The village of Arkham is well rendered, with a number of enjoyably hysterical scenes taking place in the ironically named Burning Man Tavern. Here we get to see the mob mentality develop amid an increasing tempo of supernatural events, the least of which are two excellent revenge murders and a surreal moment in which mutated descendants of the original mob surround Ward in a bid to make him leave. Curwen’s thirst for vengeance is soon forgotten however as he successfully revives his long dead mistress (the film wastes a lot of time with this) and when Curwen finally gets around to the true purpose of his quest the film is virtually over. Curwen fails to fully carry out his revenge and Chaney Jr’s character simply vanishes from the film. We don’t see enough of the old gods, who appear almost as an afterthought as the film forgets earlier developments and rushes headlong into the typical Corman ending – a building on fire. The film benefits from first rate art direction courtesy of Corman regular Daniel Haller and an outstanding musical score from Ronald Stein. Apart from one or two major plot weaknesses The Haunted Palace is easily one of the most stylish and enjoyable of Corman’s 1960’s gothic horrors.

Book of Blood is not a masterpiece. In fact it is a largely underwhelming and uninspiring film that lacks the visceral punch one is accustomed too in a Clive Barker adaptation. Instead writer/director John Harrison opts to go down the atmospheric haunted house route – aiming perhaps for the thick and cloying mood of The Others (2001) or The Orphanage (2007). It is a brave strategy in a current marketplace overflowing with sadistic torture and gut crunching mayhem. In such a film the pressure on dialogue, performance, and suspense is increased exponentially and Book of Blood falls down in all these key areas. Harrison’s screenplay conflates the Barker short stories ’The Book of Blood’ and ’On Jerusalem Street’ and part of the films unevenness comes from this clumsy attempt to fuse together two stories. The narrative proposes the idea that on a parallel plane to our own exist highways of the dead, and on these highways are intersections. The house where the bulk of the action is situated is on one of these intersections. The film is told in the form of a flashback as Simon McNeal (Jonas Armstrong – BBC TV’s Robin Hood) explains the circumstances of his transformation into a living book of blood too a man who has been paid to relieve him of his skin.

This decision to tell the story this way reduces a great deal of suspense as we approach the narrative armed with the knowledge of McNeal’s eventual fate. This leaves us with just a series of ghostly apparitions to look forward too. Unfortunately the intersection is a mess of unconvincing digital effects, and one of numerous elements of the film that are a let down. McNeal’s attempts at hoaxing the spectral events seem utterly pointless, especially in light of the fact that the house does have a genuine ghostly presence. The paranormal investigator Mary Florescu (Sophie Ward) is a dreadfully dull creation whose character trajectory from academic researcher to scribe of the undead to someone who pays to acquire McNeil’s skin doesn’t ring true, and the potential thematic value of exploring the lengths an academic might go too in order to push their heads above the parapet set by their contemporaries is fumbled by a screenplay determined to create a villain where one doesn’t really exist. The performances are ponderous and humourless which is a surprise considering the vein of black humor that runs through much of Barker’s work. Perhaps the worst crime of Book of Blood is to be completely unmemorable. Barker’s material has a habit of clinging resolutely to one’s psyche, so that short stories one might have read fifteen years ago remain festering in the subconscious. This film had the potential to stand out, but a combination of desultory performances, mishandled digital effects, and weak atmospherics, damages this film beyond repair.

Our two main characters (Paul and Barbra) are on a small but sturdy passenger boat in the middle of only god knows where.  They are on this mini vacation with a middle aged couple that are also good friends of theirs.   It’s time for them all to relax and forget about work, the stock market, and their busy lives on the main land.  While they relax, a storm approaches with incredible abruptness, and it is soon time for our young couple to abandon ship and flee toward a nearby island.   It is evident that the older couple that they have sailed with was left behind in the wreckage and they have most surely drowned in the unforgiving sea or died of injury.  Once our couple safely arrives at the mainland, they find that the town is occupied by uninviting townsmen.  Our characters are soon separated, and throughout most of the picture, Paul is determined to find and reconnect with Barbra.  Along the way he soon finds out many of the secrets behind the island and the villagers that inhabit it.

Dagon unfolds like a tale you’ve read as a child.  As the film progresses, as do the vibrant color schemes and dramatic elements in both the plot and Paul’s struggles with love and personal identity.  At no point does the film’s progressions and themes seem at all mature or thought provoking.  Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli (screenwriter) have no intent to convey this hidden world as a complexity of science and religion.  More so than anything, they aim to tell a story about a man’s journey in finding his identity and true belonging in such a preoccupying world.   The man being Paul, the geeky yet lovable boyfriend turned hero.  This was probably not Lovecraft’s intent of the story.  Still, Gordon has followed Lovecraft’s bare-bones structure and still managed to create a world that is not just violent, sadistic, and biologically strange, but also created a place in which someone can discover identity and meaning.  In Paul’s case, a world that doesn’t revolve around probability and foreseeable outcomes , because in a world that is ran by Dagon, anything is possible.

Watch Dagon for its story and atmosphere.  They both progress within a horrific dream that will both captivate and entertain.  Gordon brings the film to a climax that seems a bit halfhearted, but still fitting.  Some will find that after its first viewing, Dagon is nothing but a skillful production with an unusually silly and possibly lazy outcome.  Fans of Lovecraft might even be upset by Gordon’s translation of the original work, but it is very necessary to keep in mind the films intent and Gordon’s usual themes.  If you let the story grab your attention and you except the film for the tale that it’s trying to tell, you will not be disappointed with any of its aspects.  If anything, something that is so violent, simplistic, yet vividly so dreamlike is very welcomed by this film viewer.  If you have enjoyed the rest of Stuart Gordon’s collection, you will undoubtedly hold Dagon to heart, even if you are a fan of the short story of which the film pays little resemblance.  If anything, Dagon and Reanimator are his most well-rounded productions.

As the curtain rises, fresh-faced Justin (Ward Roberts) is in the midst of preparing to summon a demon.  His beloved April (Sarah Lassez) has been mysteriously and violently accosted by a sinister hell-beast and he’s desperate to retrieve her from the depths of Hades.  She’s a strange, pretty girl with an obsession for the occult.  As a token of love, she’d given him a rare, ancient tome along with the strict warning to burn it should anything happen to her.  Justin does not heed her warning.  Using a spell from its pages, he raises a demon to find April for him.

The demonic creature is called Lo.  Lo (voiced by Jeremiah Birkett) is a sarcastic, hungry demon who does not appreciate being at Justin’s beck and call.  It soon becomes a battle of wills between the two– Justin adamant on rescuing April, and Lo, hell-bent on changing his mind. With the help of several motley creatures, a demonic joker in a Nazi uniform, an eerily calm waiter and even an undead lounge act, Lo replays key moments from Justin and April’s courtship as a reminder that not everything was as peachy as Justin liked to think.

By no means is Lo a traditional horror movie.  Some rather creepy creatures inhabit the screen, but there’s very little in the way of blood and violence.  The acting is a bit campy at times and the story a little corny.  But it works.  Watching Lo made me nostalgic for the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” series– and this is a positive thing.  The off-the-wall humor of Lo adds a light, weirdly fanciful feel to what otherwise would be a melodramatic, predictable plot.  For those with a significant other interested in horror movies, this is an excellent date movie.