The Woman in Black is a 1989 British TV movie, and is the first adaptation of the Susan Hill novel that is better known as the source for the hugely successful 2012 Hammer film. Interestingly, the screenplay is by Nigel Kneale, who of course had a long history with Hammer Films through the 1950s and 60s.

The story follows young solicitor Arthur Kidd (Adrian Rawlins), who is sent to a small English market town to attend the funeral of client Mrs Drablow, and deal with her estate at the remote Eel Marsh House, readying the property for sale. It becomes clear that the old woman had no local friends, and only Kidd and Mr Pepperall (John Cater), a local solicitor attend the funeral – though Kidd sees a mysterious third mourner, a woman. However, mention of her sees to unnerve Pepperall.

Upon visiting the house – cut off by high tides for all but a few hours a day – Kidd soon begins to understand why the locals were so frightened, as the mysterious Woman in Black (Pauline Moran) seen at the funeral is seen again, and clearly seems to be a ghostly figure. Investigation of Mrs Drablow’s papers and wax cylinder recordings suggest a family tragedy, and he hears the ghostly sounds of a horse and buggy, along with its passengers, vanishing into the marshes.

Through Sam Toovey (Bernard Hepton), a local landowner he met on the train up from London, Kidd hears of the curse of The Woman in Black – Mrs Drablow’s sister, Jennet Goss, had given birth to a son but was unable to raise him. The Drablows adopted the boy, but refused to allow his mother to ever reveal her true relationship to the child. Eventually, the desperate woman kidnapped the child, but was caught in the rising tides as she fled. Her ghost now haunts the house, and whenever she is seen, a local child will die soon afterwards…

The Woman in Black was first broadcast by ITV in the UK on Christmas Eve 1989. It was a popular and critical success, but has only been re-run once (in 1994, by Channel 4) and although released on VHS video has never been made available on DVD in the UK – a US DVD did appear but is long deleted. Oddly, no one seems to have thought to re-release it to cash in on the success of the more recent version.

Unlike the 2012 film, this version of the story stays fairly true to the original novel, save for a few curious changes – the dog Spider has been changed from female to male, the lead character’s name is changed from Kipp to Kidd, there is no phonograph in the novel (this change was presumably to help dramatise scenes of Kidd reading through paperwork) and there are several other small changes and one or two dramatic alterations towards the ending of the film. It is, however, much more of a faithful version of the story than the Hammer film, which makes a number of variations and goes for more cinematic shocks. As a result, this is a rather more low key affair than the better known recent version, aiming for a gradual creepiness than outright horror. There is only one, rather ineffective moment where the Woman in Black becomes a malevolent and upfront figure of horror rather than a haunting presence, a scene that director Herbert Wise unfortunately fluffs by allowing it to be too brightly lit and too long.

As such, the story is more realistic but perhaps less effective as a horror film for audiences raised on high-octane shockers. It is deliberately subtle and aims to be creepy rather than terrifying and explicit. As such, it fits well with Nigel Kneale’s other horror works. Although best known for his science fiction dramas such as the Quatermass series, Kneale had written several supernatural stories such as The Stone Tape in 1972 and the mid-Seventies TV anthology Beasts. The Woman in Black differs from these by being a period piece, but there is certainly a sense of connection between the works – the idea of ghosts being ‘recordings’ of the past that was explored in The Stone Tape seems to be again at play with the constantly replayed ‘recording’ on the tragedy on the marshes that is central here.

While this version of The Woman in Black seems destined to remain the most obscure adaptation, lost behind the 2012 film, the stage play and the original novel and currently unavailable from legal sources, it is nevertheless an interesting variant on the story that anyone who enjoyed the newer film – or admires the novel – would certainly find worth their while.

David Flint

Gordon Hessler (12 December 1925 – 19 January 2014) was a British film and television director, screenwriter, and producer.

Born in Berlin, Germany, he was raised in England and studied at the University of Reading. While a teenager, he moved to the United States and directed a series of short films and documentaries. Universal Studios hired Hessler as a story reader for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents television series. He became story editor for two seasons (1960–1962) for that series, then served as the associate producer for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour from 1962 until its cancellation in 1965. He directed episodes of that series and several other shows (including Hawaii Five-O).

His first foray into horror was the low-budget Catacombs (aka The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die, 1964). In 1969, he directed his first widely-released feature film, The Oblong Box, starring Vincent Price. It was the first of three horror films Hessler would direct with the veteran horror star, the other two being Scream and Scream Again (1969) and Cry of the Banshee (1970). He worked uncredited as a director on De Sade (1969) when Cy Endfield failed to deliver the salacious type of movie that American International Pictures (AIP) wanted to release.

A solid, reliable director-for-hire, Hessler’s other work included Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971), murder mystery Medusa (1973), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974 with Caroline Munro, pictured with Hessler above), Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974) Hitchhike! (1974, TV movie), The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver, KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978), Tales of the Unexpected (1979, TV movie, co-director), Evil Stalks This House/Tales of the Haunted (1981, TV movie) and The Girl in a Swing (1988) starring Meg Tilly, an adaptation of Richard Adams‘s ghost story novel.

Wikipedia | IMDb

We are grateful to Museu do VHS for the Brazilian video sleeve image.

Nurse 3D is a 2012 thriller/horror film directed by Doug Aarniokoski and written by David Loughery. It stars Paz de la Huerta, Katrina Bowden, Corbin Bleu. Dita Von Teese, Adam Herschman, Neal McDonough, Niecy Nash, and Nick Turturro. The film was inspired by the photography of Lionsgate’s chief marketing officer, Tim Palen. It will be released on various VOD platforms and limited theatres on February 7, 2014.

Acording to the official sysnopsis: “By day, nurse Abby Russell (de la Huerta) lovingly attends to the patients at All Saints Memorial Hospital; by night, Abby prowls nightclubs, luring unfaithful men into dangerous liaisons. After Danni, a young, sensitive nurse, joins the hospital staff, Abby pursues her friendship. But when the friendship turns to obsession, Danni spurns Abby, unleashing Abby’s fury and a rampage of terror…”

The film’s promotional material has been unusually sexual for a modern movie, harking back to the heyday of 1970s exploitation. Whether the film itself will live up to the hype remains to be seen!

Wikipedia | IMDb

Qatil Chudail  (“Killer Devil Woman”) is a 2001 (or 2002) Indian Bollywood horror film directed by Kanti Shah (Darwaza, 2002) for Pali Films. It stars Sapna, Amit Pachori, Vinod Tripathi, Anil Nagrath, Dimple and Jhony Nirmal.

This Indian movie is so obscure all we could find online are the images here. No synopsis and it isn’t even on IMDb.com. One to seek out for international horror completists!

Patrick: Evil Awakens (formerly Patrick) is a 2013 Australian sci-fi horror film directed by Mark Hartley (Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!) from a screenplay by Justin King. It stars Charles Dance, Rachel Griffiths, Sharni Vinson, Peta Sergeant, Eliza Taylor, Martin Crewes, Damon Garneau and Rod Mullinar. Richard E. Grant was originally cast as the doctor but had to withdraw due to a scheduling conflict. The film’s score is by Pino Donaggio (Tourist Trap, Dressed to Kill, Crawlspace). The film is a remake of Patrick (1978) which previously spawned an unofficial sleazy Italian sequel Patrick Still Lives (1980). The movie premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival on July 27, 2013 and was officially theatrically released in Australia in October 17, 2013.

Plot:

After killing his mother and her lover some years before, Patrick is the comatose patient in Room 15 of a remote, private psychiatric clinic run by the secretive Dr. Roget, who treats him as guinea pig in his bizarre studies of life and death.

When Kathy, a nurse who has recently separated from her boyfriend, begins working at the clinic, she is instructed to care for Patrick. She is disturbed by Roget’s treatment of him and somehow feels that Patrick is trying to make a connection with her. When Kathy realizes that the lifeless murderer can communicate, she is shocked but compelled to prove her theory. Patrick has psychokinetic powers, which he uses to talk to Kathy by transferring his thoughts to her computer. As Patrick’s communication becomes stronger, strange and terrifying events begin to occur. Patrick has feelings for Kathy, and his affection is about to manifest itself as a deadly, bloody obsession.

Reviews:

‘Laden with simple jump scares and backed by a tone that’s both brutally violent and darkly amusing, Patrick is a good example of how to remake an obscure but admired horror flick: remake a little, rewrite a lot, always respect the source material, and if you can actually address a few of the original flick’s shortcomings in the process, well that’s just a cool bonus.’ Scott Weinberg, FEARnet

‘The setup is decent, the actors are good and even the script and direction initially seem like they’re going to rise above the pack. But then convolution and an overwhelming chintziness set in (alongside gore effects that conceptually rub the wrong way against the film’s tone) and it becomes a slog to the finish line. I felt like I knew every maddening, repetitious beat like the back of my own hand and was just winding down the clock.’ Evan Dickson, Bloody Disgusting

‘Yet rescuing the film from its weakness for cliche is its strong cast, with Dance – the go-to guy for condescending hauteur – a huge improvement on the original’s campy Robert Helpmann. Vinson makes a convincingly feisty heroine, Peta Sergeant is a live wire as her chief ally, Nurse Williams, while Griffiths rescues a potentially over-the-top character by underplaying. Scoff, you may, at the moments reeking of Camembert, but the extended climax is a satisfying onslaught of madness and mayhem that should leave viewers suitably drenched in perspiration.’ Lynden Barber, The Guardian

‘Because the film is so highly stylized, it’s easier for Hartley and screenwriter Justin King to get away with some of the more implausible death sequences, but it must have also been difficult to craft kills that weren’t too ridiculous. Because the tone is established and maintained, it allows Hartley and company to be almost limitless in their creativity. Also, because Patrick has control over circuit boards and can use his will to travel through electricity, new technology is used to the film’s advantage without undermining its roots, staying true to the original film in some respects. It’s so inventive and these types of kills are rarely seen on screen, so the joy felt watching them and how they compliment the premise make it much easier to go along with the outlandish.’ Drew Tinnin, Dread Central

Wikipedia | IMDb

Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster (also known as Scooby-Doo 2 or Scooby-Doo 2: Curse of the Lake Monster) is a 2010 live action/CGI American television film directed by Brian Levant for Cartoon Network with a screenplay by Daniel Altiere and Steven Altiere based on the Saturday morning cartoon series Scooby-Doo by Hanna-Barbera. It is the fourth installment in the Scooby-Doo live-action film series, and a sequel to the 2009 film Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins, whose cast reprise their roles again here. The film was shot in Santa Clarita, California and premiered on October 16, 2010. Dean Cundey (Halloween, The Thing, Jurassic Park) handled the cinematography. Michael Berryman has a minor role.

Plot:

School has just ended for the summer. Velma (Hayley Kiyoko), Shaggy (Nick Palatas), and Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) meet up with Fred (Robbie Amell) and Daphne (Kate Melton) so they can go to meet Daphne’s uncle, Thornton “Thorny” Blake V, who has given them summer jobs at his country club in Erie Point.

That night at the club’s opening party, a huge frog-like monster suddenly appears and wreaks havoc. The gang decides to solve the mystery. They decide to investigate the only person who has ever taken a picture of the lake monster, Mr. Uggins, the lighthouse keeper. He then tells them the story of the lake monster: how when people were first settling Erie Point, an old woman named Wanda Grubwort warned them not to come onto her land. They paid no attention to her, so she used her magic staff – which used moonstones as the source of her power – to turn a frog into a horrible monster that attacked the villagers. Wanda was later tried for witchery and burnt at the stake…

Reviews:

‘If not for Scooby’s reduced role, Curse of the Lake Monster would be a substantial improvement over The Mystery Begins. A bit shaky in the earlier movie, Nick Palatas is more comfortable and natural as Shaggy the second time around, though his take on Norville Rogers is more vocal impersonation than full-bodied performance. Unburdened by uninteresting (and, frankly, unnecessary) exposition introducing characters that have been around for four decades, the movie is able to get down to the mystery right off the bat. The mystery itself is entirely predictable (and too reliant on the supernatural to be a classic Scooby-Doo story), but given that Curse of the Lake Monster is designed specifically for young audiences, that isn’t a deficiency worth getting hung up on.’ Judge Dan Mancini, DVD Verdict

‘The acting is subpar at best, the CGI horrid and the main freakin’ title character isn’t even in various and important scenes. While it’s not as bad as I had expected because I did manage to chuckle a couple of times and Hayley Kiyoko makes for a hot Velma that anyone can fall in love with, it’s still not wasting your time on either.’ Movieman’s Guide to the Movies

‘If you can get past the whole romance and movie not being subtle about who the villain is thing, your kids would enjoy it (though you’d might have to explain the whole relationship thing to them if they’re not aware of the birds and the bees). If you can’t, The Mystery Begins and the straight to video cartoons are your better bet.’ That Guy with the Glasses

Wikipedia | IMDb | Facebook

WH

The Prey is a 1980 American horror film directed by Edwin Scott Brown from a script he wrote with his spouse Summer Brown (the latter also produced). It was apparently released to cinemas briefly in 1984 by New World Pictures.

The film stars Debbie Thureson, Steve Bond (Massacre at Central High, To Die For), Lori Lethin (Return to Horror High, Werewolf TV series), Robert Wald, Gayle Gannes (Human Experiments), Philip Wenckus, Jackson Bostwick (The Psychopath, What Waits Below, The Outing), Jackie Coogan (Halloween with the New Addams Family), Connie Hunter (Something Evil) and Garry Goodrow (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1978, Eating Raoul, Once Bitten). Future adult movie star John Leslie has an uncredited role as a gypsy.

Don Peake (The Hills Have Eyes, 1977) provided the score except for the opening credits which are accompanied by Modest Mussorgsky’s classical piece ‘Night on Bald Mountain‘.

Review:

The deep, dark forest has always been an ideal setting for slasher flicks, hasn’t it? From Don’t Go In The Woods to The Forest to I Spit On Your Grave to, of course, summer-camp fare like Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp, The Burning, etc. the formula is a simple,  yet effective,  one — throw a bunch of city folks out in the sticks and bad things happen to them. They’re out of their element, while the killer is most certainly in his, so there’s never any question about who’s got the upper hand and who’s gotta fight to (temporarily, in most cases) survive. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and it works. Why mess with a good thing?

In 1980, former (and future) porn director Edwin Brown figured he might as well throw his hat into the horror ring and show he could make a backwoods slasher, as well, since everybody else seemed to be doing it — and making a tidy little profit in the process. With a little bit of money (under $50,000 from what little info I’ve been able to gather) to go out to the wilds of Utah to see what he could come up with. The end result is The Prey, one of the slowest, most hopelessly padded, most agonizingly repetetive entries in the entire “country killer stalks the city slickers” canon, yet  also a  remarkably interesting one — albeit for all the wrong reasons.

Here’s the deal: in 1948 in a remote area of the Keen Wild known as the North Point Woods, there was a forest fire. Some unnamed dude evidently got burned up pretty bad in it, and now, in 1980, seemingly out of nowhere, he’s out for blood. Fortunately for him, a half-dozen semi-virile late-teens/early-20s types (none of whom are played by anyone I recognize) show up, so he can start his killing spree good and proper. There ain’t much blood, there ain’t much by way of even partial nudity, and there definitely ain’t anything fitting any standard definition of the word “riveting” going on.

And that’s about it as far as the plot goes. Here’s where things get (forgive me for abusing the term) intriguing, though — Brown (along with — I think, at any rate — his wife, Summer, who co-wrote the screenplay) had so much time to kill that to even hit the 80-minute mark  he resorts to some truly mind-blowing shit in order to stretch the proceedings out.

How mind-blowing, you rightly ask? How about tons and tons of stock footage of various critters in the wild that looks like it’s culled from literally dozens of different National Geographic specials? Seriously, there’s spiders,  lizards, frogs, snakes —  even fucking caterpillars and centipedes — shown for countless minutes on end doing pretty much nothing. And if that’s not enough for ya, the single-longest scene in the flick involves one of the two forest rangers we meet telling a joke about a frog with an unusually wide mouth — to a deer! Yes. Really.

If you’re still in the mood for even more blatant stuffing of the run-time’s ballot box, though, fear not — there are also a bunch of pointless scenes of go-nowhere conversation around campfires, and, in a truly bizarre instance, a lengthy discussion about the culinary merits of cucumber-and-cream-cheese sandwiches. It all becomes so staggeringly mundane that it almost borders on the exotic.

I believe the word we’re looking for here, friends, is surreal. And speaking of surreal, this movie’s Addams Family connections are just that. The forest ranger mentioned a minute ago who can’t get enough cuke sandwiches? He’s played by Jackie Coogan, better known as Uncle Fester from the TV series, and our “hideously” malformed killer (made up by a very-early-in-his-career John Carl Buechler) — who, curiously enough for a film with absolutely nothing going on doesn’t even show up on screen until about the final ten minutes or so — is portrayed by Carel Struycken, who would go on to play Lurch in Barry Sonnenfeld’s two Addams Family movies. How weird is that?

Still, probably weirdest of all is the fact that there apparently exists an even longer, 95-minute cut of this film out there someplace. Don’t ask me what sort of extra filler that might be weighed down with, since by the time Thorn/EMI released this on VHS about a year after its almost-certainly-brief theatrical run (I’ve never met anybody who’s seen this thing on the big screen, have you? Nor could I find a single image of its poster anywhere online —  but New World did, for a fact, put this out theatrically — somewhere) it had been mercifully pared down to the still-way-longer-than-it-has-any-business-being version most of us remember (to the extent that any of us remember it at all). It’s never been released on DVD, so I’ll leave you with a link to the VHS cut that some enterprising horror fan has slapped up for posterity on YouTube. Be prepared for the longest hour and twenty minutes of your life. But not, curiously enough, the dullest.

Ryan, C. – review courtesy of Trash Film Guru

Wikipedia | IMDb

Fear Paris is a 2014 horror film currently in pre-production.

Press release:

The producers behind Paranormal Activity, Insidious and The Iceman join forces on the genre bending Fear Paris, an ambitious new film of unique interconnected stories exploring the dark underbelly of the city of lights.

Helmed by directors Joe Dante (Gremlins, The Hole), Xavier Gens (Hitman), and Timo Vuorensola (Iron Sky), the genre bending and connected stories will present a Paris unlike anything seen before, in a combination of fantasy, horror and science fiction. Casting is under way as the film will go into production this Summer/Fall. Two additional directors will join the line up soon.

Laura Rister (Untitled Entertainment) and Ehud Bleiberg (Bleiberg Entertainment), together with Steven Schneider (Vicarious Entertainment) join Darryn Welch(Instinctive Film) to produce the film.

Tony Noble (Moon) is the production designer. Kristyan Mallet (Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter) is onboard for special effects makeup and prosthetics.

The imaginative world will be created in collaboration with the great visual effects minds at Pixomondo (Hugo) and Prime Focus (Gravity, Judge Dredd). Richard Raaphorst(Frankenstein’s Army) is the concept designer.

Scintilla is a 2014 British science fiction horror film produced by Liquid Noise Films and directed by Billy O’Brien (Isolation, Ferocious Planet) from a screenplay co-written with Rob Green, G.P. Taylor, Josh Golga, Steve Clark. It stars John Lynch (Isolation, Night Wolf/13Hrs), Craig Conway, Antonia Thomas, Jumayan Hunter, Morjana Alaoui and Beth Winslet. Mongrel Media will distribute in the US whilst Metrodome has secured UK.

An elite team of mercenaries are chosen to carry out a covert operation deep in a former Soviet State. They must first battle the ferocious armed militia at ground level before descending through a maze of tunnels inhabited by dark, menacing creatures. When the team arrives at an underground laboratory they discover the purpose of their mission: A genius scientist has been genetically splicing alien DNA with human and the results of this revolutionary work must be secured. The soldiers must protect and save the specimens whilst avoiding the threats of multiple predators, both human and otherwise…

IMDb

Images is a 1972 horror film written and directed by Robert Altman, starring Susannah York, René Auberjonois, Marcel Bozzuffi, Hugh Millais, Cathryn Harrison and John Morley.

Cathryn (York), a writer of children’s stories, is quietly losing her mind. With her husband Hugh (Auberjonois), whom she suspects of philandering, she drives for the weekend to Green Cove, a secluded country retreat, hoping to forestall an incipient breakdown, but instead of relaxing she begins to ‘bump into’ old acquaintances who may or may not be real – René (Bozzuffi), a previous lover believed dead in a plane crash, and Marcel (Millais), a predatory buddy of Hugh’s whom Cathryn finds simultaneously attractive and repulsive. Sinking deeper and deeper into psychosis, Cathryn decides to eradicate the illusory interlopers once and for all; but who is real and who is make-believe?

Robert Altman’s critical reputation is based on a clutch of highly respected films which he made in the 1970s, including M*A*S*H (1970), McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971), The Long Goodbye (1973) and Nashville (1975), but he’s also notorious for directing wayward, disappointing or just plain awful movies: Quintet (1979), Popeye (1980), Beyond Therapy (1987) and Prêt-à-Porter (1994) for instance have found few admirers. Despite a sprinkling of awards at the time of its release, Images is sometimes misfiled in the latter category, when it is in fact a haunting, consummately disturbing film that deserves to be ranked alongside the contemporary masterworks of Nicolas Roeg and Ingmar Bergman.

As the story begins, Cathryn is home alone while her husband Hugh works late. The telephone rings and a female caller indolently taunts Cathryn about Hugh’s whereabouts. The scene appears set for a conventional saga of marital infidelity. However, we soon become aware that the voice on the line is Cathryn herself.

Here is a woman lost in a tangle of introversion and self-obsession, a perceptual hall of mirrors. She’s in flight from the world, and it’s impossible to say which is the more damaging, the reality she’s fleeing or the isolation to which she turns. By choosing solitude she merely hastens her mental collapse, filling the emptiness with phantom visitors. Her only outlet involves the writing of a labyrinthine children’s story, “In Search of Unicorns”, which she reads in voice-over. In it, a heroic narrator strives for self-knowledge that is forever deferred by mystical agencies, whimsical symbolism, and – truth be told – by Cathryn’s fear of the ‘self’ in question. Turning to her world of elfin magic is an escape route from failed love and unwanted sexual attention, but the painful reality of life invades her reveries, leading to confusion between imagined and real events, and on into murder.

Hugh, Cathryn’s husband, is a wonderfully nuanced creation, at times either solicitous or massively unhelpful when dealing with his wife’s problems. Trying to play along with Cathryn’s harmless fantasies, he misjudges the extent to which she can process his sense of humour, which tends to the facile and the surreal in equal measure (“What’s the difference between a rabbit? Neither; one is both of the same!”). His witticisms are well-meant, but his bizarre non-sequiturs and absurdities simply makes matters worse. Just as much as Cathryn, he’s in a world of his own; one of the melancholy perceptions of the film is that relationships founder when the participants cease to find one another amusing. Exploring the upper floor at Green Cove after Cathryn insists she can hear an intruder, Hugh finds nothing, but instead of merely announcing this he jangles his wife’s nerves by leaning a mounted deer’s head around the corner at her. The effect is funny but unnerving as we find ourselves looking at the world from Cathryn’s paranoid point of view.

“In Search of Unicorns” was in fact written by Susannah York as a genuine book for children, just one of many parallels between the characters and the cast. Real names and character names get swapped around: René Auberjonois plays Hugh, Marcel Bozzuffi plays René, and Hugh Millais plays Marcel. Susannah, the spooky little girl who befriends Susannah York’s Cathryn, is played by the weirdly blasé Cathryn Harrison: “When you were my age, did you look like me?”, she asks, “Because I think, when I grow up, I’m going to be exactly like you.” When Cathryn asks Susannah what she’d do without a friend to play with, she replies: “Tell myself stories, play in the woods… I’d make up a friend.” The first words echo an earlier remark from Cathryn about her own childhood, but the final clause is new, and shows a vital difference; unlike the older woman, this strange, self-aware child can still grasp the difference between fantasy and reality; but for how long?

Altman’s style of filming conveys a constant perceptual ambiguity. He is, like Stanley Kubrick, a master of the zoom, able to achieve great things with this oft-derided tool. Constant shifts of focal length mean that we’re never sure where our attention will slide next, a supple, fluid way of representing Cathryn’s mental state. Complex framing is also a major contribution to the film’s unsettling mood, while the photographic image shifts from luminous clarity to vague softness, finding abstract mystery in the interstices of the real world.

The camera rarely stops moving, panning and tracking with seductive ease to capture odd details and juxtapositions. Vilmos Zsigmond’s photography turns the beautiful countryside of Ireland into a seething array of shifting texture; clouds send shadows scuttling over green hills, the wind shudders through gorse and bracken, and a shale escarpment towers over a car like a slow motion landslide in the corner of a paranoiac’s eye.

In keeping with the schizophrenic quality of Cathryn’s perception, certain gestures and movements are invested with tantalising significance, while the constant presence of mirrors and Hugh’s photographic equipment emphasise both Cathryn’s fractured self-image and our own dialectical involvement in the fiction. Images is thus a meditation on the nature of the cinematic process phrased as a study of psychosis (seeing people who aren’t really there, hearing voices), and a metaphysical enquiry into subjectivity. Along the way, Altman draws our attention to the nature of film viewing, a benign psychosis which – though we may blithely talk about a communal experience – is mostly a solitary, introspective affair.

A stand-out sequence depicts Cathryn making love to someone who appears variously to be Hugh, Marcel or René. Brilliant editing and photography blur the boundaries of the human and the inanimate, sending the camera on fantastical wanderings through landscapes of body parts and bedding. People talk about ‘losing themselves in the act of love’, but this sideways lurch into a space between the living and non-living is unlikely to be anyone’s cup of tantric tea (except maybe Jess Franco’s, whose work explored similar terrain at times). A special mention here too for the film’s extraordinary John Williams score, which blends curdled romanticism with avant-garde percussion and disconcerting oriental twangs from Stomu Yamash’ta, a child prodigy who at the age of fourteen contributed to the score of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.

Perhaps the pivotal moment in Images occurs quite early on, when Cathryn, out walking with Hugh in the hills above Green Cove, looks down at their house in the distance below. A glint of sunlight on chrome draws her attention to a car pulling up in front of the house. Peering through binoculars, she sees that the car is her own. A woman gets out and turns to look up at the hillside. Somehow it’s Cathryn, and she waves to the figure on the crest of the hill, miles away, silhouetted in microscopic isolation. Smiling, this second Cathryn turns away and walks into the house. We stay with her and never cut back to the first space-time location. This elegant, disturbing ellipse is the divided core of Images; a perceptual dislocation that mirrors the central character’s fractured identity by means of absence, emptiness, rather than presence. Two moments, separated in space and time, impossibly linked, like the subjective and the objective. In between, an abyss beyond representation.

The film was shot in November 1971 in Ireland, centring around a lakeland location of Lough Bray, County Wicklow. For her role as Cathryn, Susannah York was awarded the Best Actress award in Cannes, 1972. In addition, Altman was nominated for the ‘Palme d’Or’. Images was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score, received a nomination for Best English-language Foreign Film at the Golden Globes, and was nominated for Best Cinematography at the BAFTAs in 1973.

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia

N.B. Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, whose work graces some of cinema’s greatest movies, also worked for Al Adamson on Horror of the Blood Monsters in 1971. Clearly, an aberration in his career.

Species III  (aka Species 3) is a 2004 low budget science fiction horror film. Directed by Brad Turner, it is the third instalment of the Species series and stars Robert Knepper, Sunny Mabrey, Robin Dunne, Amelia Cooke, John Paul Pitoc and Christopher Neame (Dracula A.D. 1972, Ghostbusters II). Natasha Henstridge, who was contracted to a trilogy commencing with the first Species film, briefly reprises the role of Eve in the opening scene. The film’s American broadcast premiere was on the Sci Fi Channel (now Syfy Channel). It was then released to video by MGM in both a standard and an unrated version. The film was shot in high-definition video.

Executive producer Frank Mancuso Jr. (responsible for the Friday the 13th sequels, the regrettable cheap TV series of the same name and the insulting 1986 film April Fool’s Day) wanted the sequel to be aimed more at young adults, so the characters were written to be younger than what was originally planned. Also, Mancuso wanted the creatures to look slightly different from Swiss artist H.R. Giger‘s original concept. The alien species was then redesigned by Rob Hinderstien.

Plot:

The film begins immediately where Species II left off. Hours after the events of the previous film, the medical van transporting the lifeless Eve has lost its way but when the co-driver tries to radio their superiors, the driver stops and holds him at gun-point. Both are surprised by the alien child (now called “half-breed”) appearing in the back window and killing the co-driver with his tongue. In the back the driver finds the half-breed and a reviving Eve, who goes into labor and gives birth to a newborn alien. While the half-breed strangles Eve with his tongue, the driver wraps the newborn into his jacket and runs off through the forest as a military helicopter finds the deserted van. Government agent Wasach orders an autopsy and afterwards the burning of Eve’s body…

Reviews:

‘Still, though, there’s absolutely some good fun to be found here. Species 3 is actually a more cohesive and sensible flick than part 2 is, but ultimately, it’s just a lot of the same old schtick, only with newer, younger boobs contributed by a newer, younger aliengirl. It sure isn’t what you’d call a “good film,” but Species 3 has the sense to deliver the goods. The kills are frequent and freaky, the concept is just slick enough to tickle the sci-fi fans, and I believe I already mentioned the frequent female nudity.’ Scott Weinerg, DVD Talk

‘ … all this cheap nudity can’t distract from the hole-riddled plot and abysmal special effects – even when another sexually driven, hybrid female shows up with the same dislike for clothes. Ludicrous dialogue and a complete absence of tension increase the air of ineptitude, and does the film a particular disservice in the pathetically feeble finale.’ Sloan Freer, Radio Times

‘Ben Ripley’s screenplay, presumably in an effort to save money, places the emphasis on meaningless technobabble, something that’s exacerbated by a seriously overlong running time (at almost two hours, the movie is at least 45-minutes too long). As a result,Species III is often incredibly dull – no small feat given the amount of nudity and violence in the flick.’ David Nusair, Reel Film Reviews

‘The movie’s true death knell is that it runs nearly two hours long, about a fourth longer than any B-grade straight-to-video title has the right to. Apparently someone—the writers, the execs, or the director—thought that audiences would invest enough in the banal characters and sluggish plot to sit through this for almost 120 minutes. They were wrong. Species III should do the honourable thing and be the conclusion to this series of low-level sci-fi thrillers once and for all.’ Judge Patrick Naugle, DVD Verdict

Wikipedia | IMDb

in lurid production-still colour…

and glorious black-and-white…

The creatures commonly referred to as ‘the Brains of Morphoton’ appeared in “The Velvet Web”, episode two of the 1964 Doctor Who story The Keys of Marinus starring William Hartnell as the Doctor. Unnamed in the story, they were featured only once in the classic series and have so far not been invited back in the revived version. The story was written by Terry Nation, who had recently penned the first ever Dalek story, and for the devious cerebellums of Morphoton he drew imagery from such classic horror films as Donovan’s Brain (1953) and Fiend Without a Face (1958).

In episode one, the TARDIS materialises on a small rocky island surrounded by a sea of acid on the planet Marinus. The Doctor and his grand-daughter Susan (Carole Ann Ford), accompanied by schoolteachers Ian Chesterton (William Russell) and Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill), enter an imposing black tower on the island where they meet an unscrupulous lawmaker, Arbitan (George Colouris). He prevails upon them to seek the five keys of the Conscience of Marinus, a giant supercomputer which, when working properly, governs the minds of the populace and prevents evil thoughts. The keys are scattered in hidden locations across Marinus and the TARDIS occupants must find them, a quest which leads them first to the city of Morphoton. In episode two (“The Velvet Web”), the time travellers are greeted by a race of men and women who seem to live a life of idle luxury. The food is abundant, the fruit juice flows freely, and the Doctor and his companions are assured that their every wish can be granted. It all seems too good to be true…

And of course, it is. During the night, the time travellers are placed even deeper under the influence of a mind-altering device that was activated on their arrival, clouding their minds to the truth of Morphoton. Barbara however, escapes hypnosis when the device placed on her forehead slips off during the night. What follows the next morning is a well-directed and quite chilling scene in which Barbara wakes to find that the luxurious chamber of the night before is just a filthy ruin, the fine goblets merely chipped mugs. The sequence is filmed with a subjective camera for Barbara’s point of view, with the camera swapping back and forth between her perception and the Greco-Roman fantasy of the others.

Barbara runs away from her brainwashed friends and discovers that Morphoton is in fact governed by four monstrous disembodied brains with eyes protruding on elongated stalks. The creatures live inside huge bell jars and communicate through an electronic speaker system. “We are the Masters of this place. Our brains outgrew our bodies; it is our intelligence that has created this whole city but we need the help of the human body to feed us and to carry out our orders,” they explain. As you may have guessed from the shameless nominative determinism of Nation’s scripts, it turns out that the residents of Morphoton have been enslaved in their, er, sleep by a mesmeric device called a Mesmeron, which subjugates the will of the humanoids enabling the brain creatures to exploit them for their labour. “The human body is the most flexible instrument in the world, no mechanical device could reproduce its mobility and dexterity,” one declares, with a lipsmacking relish impressive for a creature with no lips. This paean to human bodily excellence is slightly undercut, however, as Barbara attacks the four jars with a spanner but succeeds in shattering just one; luckily the other brains scream, their eyestalks wilt, and all four of them die, so presumably they are a gestalt organism; kill one and you kill them all. (Either that, or Jacqueline Hill was asked not to shatter the bell jars in order to save money.)

The brains and their apparatus were designed by the BBC’s Raymond Cusick and made by Shawcraft Models, a company whom the BBC Props Department habitually hired to handle construction (Shawcraft built the first Daleks, along with other early monsters like the Zarbi).

Transmitted on 18 April 1964, “The Velvet Web” scored a huge audience of 9.4 million viewers, almost three million more than watched Stephen Moffat’s highly regarded David Tennant Doctor Who episode “Blink” (2007). It’s a little known fact that this makes the Brains of Morphoton officially more popular than the Weeping Angels.

The Brains of Morphoton may not have enjoyed a second appearance in Doctor Who – yet - but perhaps they are the same creatures encountered by Captain James T. Kirk in the 1968 Star Trek episode “The Gamesters of Triskelion”?

Other cousins of the Morphoton brains appear in The Brain from Planet Arous (1957) and The Curious Dr. Humpp (1968).

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia

Piranha Sharks (formerly Piranha Great White Sharks) is a 2014 American comedy horror film produced by Mark Burman for Red Sea Media. It has been written and directed by Leigh Scott. The film stars Collin Galyean, Josh Hammond, John Wells, Noel Thurman, Kristina Page, Brandon Stacy, Jessica Sonneborn, Benjamin Kanes, Barry Ratcliffe, Frederic Doss, Ashe Parker, Ramona Mallory, Martin Ewens and GinaMarie Zimmerman.

Or watch in better quality on Vimeo.com:

Great white sharks bio-engineered to be the size of piranhas with the purpose of living in rich peoples exotic aquariums, terrorise New York City when they get into the water supply and do what great white sharks do best…

Piranhas on Horrorpedia

Related: 2-Headed Shark Attack | Great White | Jaws | Jaws 2 | Jersey Shore Shark Attack | Jurassic Shark | Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus | Psycho Shark | Sand Sharks |Shark Attack 3: Megalodon | The Shark is Still Working |Shark Week | Sharktopus | Snow Shark | Super Shark | Swamp Shark | Zombie Shark

Special effects test footage:

IMDb | Thanks to TarsTarkas.net for one of the images above.

A Haunted House 2 is a 2014 comedy horror sequel to A Haunted House directed by Michael Tiddes from a screenplay by co=producers Marlon Wayans and Rick Alvarez. It stars Marlon Wayans, Ashley Rickards, Scott Burn, Dave Sheridan, Essence Atkins, Cedric the Entertainer, Gabriel Iglesias, Kirsty Hill, Affion Crockett, Rick Overton, Iva La’Shawn, Audrey Petenbrink, Chris Gann, Marissa Welsh and Steele Stebbins. It says on Marlon’s lips the movie is unleashed on US screens on March 28, 2014.

The comedy spoofs supernatural horror movie hits such as Paranormal Activity 4, Sinister, The Possession, Insidious, The Conjuring, and more.

“After losing his possessed girlfriend Kisha in a car crash, Malcolm (Marlon Wayans) meets and falls for Megan, a single white mother of two. As he moves into a new home with the family, Malcolm discovers bizarre paranormal events surrounding the children and the property. To complicate matters, a back-from-the-dead Kisha moves in across the street, and there’s nothing worse than the scorn of a demonic ex-girlfriend…

IMDb

Zombeavers is a 2013 American sex comedy horror film co-written (with Al and Jon Kaplan) and directed by Jordan Rubin. It stars Bill Burr, Cortney Palm, Rachel Melvin, Hutch Dano, Jake Weary, Rex Linn, Brent Briscoe, Robert R. Shafer, Peter Gilroy, Lexi Atkins, Phyllis Katz and Chad Anderson.

A group of college kids staying at a riverside cabin are menaced by a horde of deadly zombie beavers. A planned weekend of sex and debauchery soon turns gruesome as the beavers close in on the terrified teens who must fight to save their lives…

‘Horny co-eds, severed feet, the great outdoors, and undead beavers chomping their way toward crotch, Zombeavers is more than just a simple film. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will inspire great interest in mother nature, and it just might teach you something about love. For instance, in one scene a man says, “I’ve never seen a beaver up close.” His girlfriend responds, “You should try going down on me once in a while.” See? Life lessons.’ Lacy Donohue, Defamer at Gawker.com

IMDb

Monsturd is a 2003 American comedy horror film co-written and co-directed by Rick Popko and Dan West. It stars Paul Weiner, Beth West, Dan Burr, Brad Dosland, Dan West, Rick Popko and Hannah Stangel.

Plot:

Butte County: Jack Schmidt, a serial killer, escapes from a maximum security prison. Meanwhile, Dr. Stern of chemical company Dutech is conducting ‘evil experiments’ and covering up his mistakes when colleagues are fatally contaminated. The FBI corner escaped convict Schmidt and gun him down in a sewer tunnel, where he falls into a pool of toxic chemicals dumped by Dr. Stern. The apparently lethal combination of faeces and the dumped chemicals actually transforms him into a half human, half faeces creature, a monsturd, who goes on a killing rampage. Meanwhile, the town’s annual Chilli Cook-Off is impending and a serious blow out is expected…

Reviews:

‘Films like Jack Frost (killer snowman), Killer Tongue (sinful oral appendage), and Killer Condom (‘nuff said) have pushed the envelope of terror ticklishness into the patently absurd, but Monsturd sets a brand new skidmark in fright flick tomfoolery. Showing a sense of style, a commitment to clever cinema and a brand of humour far more developed than your normal labor-of-love videodrome, this is one of the best, more entertainingly satirical monster movie massacres ever created. Like Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker and some of Troma’s more “toxic” titles, Monsturd gets it all correct: atmosphere, references, and wickedly witty execution. It can occasionally lapse into retarded toilet humour, but what do you expect from a movie with an evil entity of excrement as its lead character?’ Bill Gibron, PopMatters

‘Yes, the plot is dumb. Yes, some of the acting is amateur-ish. Yes, it’s a movie about poop… but there is something really fun about this. It’s a total gross out flick with a ton of legitimately funny, well done dick/fart/poop humor. Reminds me a lot of a Troma flick. Only gripe I have is how similar it is in plot to Jack Frost… you know… but… with POOP.’ Camp Movie Camp

‘You may be shocked to hear this, but despite a concept tailor made for some major league gross-out film Monsturd is not loaded with wall-to-wall gross-out gags or an endless stream of poop jokes. While it definitely has more than its fair share of those, the grossest being the world’s longest vomiting scene, most of the humour is a bit more subtle – and dare I say smarter… ‘ Jon Condit, Dread Central

Buy Monsturd on DVD | Instant Video from Amazon.com

Choice dialogue:

‘How about you sit on my face and make me look like a glazed doughnut?’

‘What on earth would you need a million flies for?’

‘I’d like to get to the bottom of this little mystery…’

‘A giant No.2 killed my daddy!’

‘How do you kill a Shit Man?’

IMDb

Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud  (aka Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud) is a 2007 made for television sequel in the Pumpkinhead franchise of horror films. The film was written and directed by Mke Hurst. It directly follows 2006′s Pumpkinhead: Ashes to Ashes. It stars Amy Manson as Jody Hatfield, Bradley Taylor as Ricky McCoy, Claire Lams as Dolly Hatfield, Rob Freeman as Sheriff Dallas Pope, Ovidiu Niculescu as Bobby Joe Hatfield, Peter Barnes as Papa McCoy, Lance Henriksen as Ed Harley and Elvin Dandel as Tristan McCoy. Initially announced as Pumpkinhead 4, it was filmed in Bucharest, Romania back-to-back with another sequel titled Pumpkinhead 3.

Two men on their motorcycles are driving away from Pumpkinhead. One of the men hits a tree branch in their path, falling from his motorcycle and allowing Pumpkinhead to catch up to him. As the man is being killed, a man in a log cabin seems to share the pain inflicted by Pumpkinhead on the fallen man. The surviving man, named Dallas, rides to the log cabin, and the man who conjured Pumpkinhead, begging him to call the demon off. Pumpkinhead smashes through the window and Dallas attempts to fend him off by shooting him with a small pistol with little effect, and is clawed in the chest by the demon. When Dallas realizes that his bullets have no effect on Pumpkinhead, he swears to take the summoner with him, shooting the man and killing him, causing Pumpkinhead to vanish. Ed Harley then appears telling Dallas that Pumpkinhead will return and there will be no place to hide.

Five years later we are shown the family of the Hatfields and McCoys ongoing feud started because of a car in the 30′s. The Hatfields then trash the McCoy wedding. Jody Hatfield sneaks out to see her true love, Ricky McCoy. Ricky brings his sister, Sarah, to look out for him and Jody. The two then start to make out…

The film seems more concerned with a dreary Romeo and Juliet-style tale of forbidden love and an age-old backwoods family feud rather than the essential horror elements. Decent production values aside this inspires little interest despite the impressive creature effects and the requisite gory demises. Adrian J Smith, Horrorpedia

‘I couldn’t help but get the feeling this film was originally intended to be set in the early 1900s until the producers came along and insisted that it be set in the present, and despite being set in present times, the filmmakers still went out of their way to make just about everything look, feel, and sound like it’s from at least a century ago. The way they dress, the way they talk, the way they behave, even the town they live in – it all feels like it’s stuck in a time warp like in M. Night’s The Village, but then we see a few modern touches, some old (but not that old) vehicles, and the opening scene even involved some shiny new dirt bikes. Other than that, the majority of the time I felt I was watching “Little Pumpkinhead on the Prairie”.’ Jon Condit, Dread Central

‘ … we get people from LA providing the worst fake southern accents I have heard in a while, and Lance Henrkison looking like melted candle in his 4 minutes of screen time. The Pumpkinhead monster alternated between looking like a claymation puppet from a 60′ sci fi movie, and a mediocre beast formed out of paper mache. The kills are many and are well done considering how stupid Pumpkinhead looks, and the plot moved at a decent enough pace to keep the viewer interested between Pumpkinhead related maulings.’ Bloodcrypt

Choice dialogue:

‘We are what we do’

Wikipedia | IMDb

The Axons appeared in The Claws of Axos, a Doctor Who story made in 1971 starring Jon Pertwee as the Doctor. They featured only once in the classic series and have so far not been invited back in the revived version, although an Axon can be seen briefly in S01E02 of the unaffiliated Who spin-off K-9.

A strange, organically-formed spaceship arrives in Earth orbit, and the occupants, a quartet of golden-coloured humanoids called Axons, send a distress signal asking for assistance. In return, they offer Axonite, a substance able to mimic other molecules, with wide-ranging applications including the creation of unlimited food supplies for the Earth. However, the humanoids are not what they seem; they and their spaceship are actually part of the same single life-form, Axos, a galactic parasite intent on sucking the life out of planet Earth. When the Doctor uncovers their plan they drop their pretence and adopt a more threatening physical form, bipedal monsters covered in writhing root-like excrescences, and mount an attack on a nearby nuclear power station…

Voice of Axos: “Axonite is simply bait for human greed. Because of this greed Axonite will soon spread across this entire planet, and then the nutrition cycle will begin … Slowly we will consume every particle of energy,  every last cell of living matter. Earth will be sucked dry!”

The Claws of Axos was the first story written for Doctor Who by the team of Bob Baker (writer of the Wallace and Gromit films) and Dave Martin. Location shooting took place in the first week of January 1971 in Dungeness and other Kent locations, with the studio material shot between 22nd January and 5th of February. Transmitted over four weeks between 13th March and 3rd April 1971, it scored 7.3 million viewers for its first episode, rising to 8 million for the second, dropping to 6.4 million for the third and finishing on 7.8 million. The original colour materials were lost in the BBC’s purge of videotape and film prints in the 1970s; fortunately, prints sold abroad were found in Canada, and the story is now available in its entirety on DVD. Episodes One and Two were filmed as “The Vampires from Space”, and credits were completed with this name before being replaced with the final screen title. Prints bearing “The Vampires from Space” were accidentally circulated abroad and can be seen in the extras on the BBC DVD release.

Amid the spectrum of alien menaces in Doctor Who, the Axons fall into the category of monsters with no redeeming features, with whom there can be no dialogue or compromise. In this they embody an ‘old-school’ attitude to the monstrous; the creatures are designed purely to frighten young viewers. In later years such ‘one-dimensional’ threats fell gradually out of favour in Doctor Who (to the point where even the Daleks were deemed unfit for total destruction in stories such as 2005’s Dalek and 2008’s Journey’s End).

The Claws of Axos can perhaps best be summed up by the phrase “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” (from the story of the Trojan horse in Virgil’s Aeneid, a pertinent reference given that the scripts were first commissioned under the title “Doctor Who and the Gift”). Initially, the Doctor is angry with UNIT (The United Nations Intelligence Taskforce) for firing on the Axon spaceship without making contact with the occupants: on seeing the golden humanoids for the first time he sarcastically remarks, “There’s your enemy” to the soldiers and politicians, as if the aliens’ attractive appearance says all there is to say about them. However even he changes his view, later on describing Axos as a “cosmic bacteria”.

In design and conception, the Axon monsters are among the most extravagantly weird creations of the Pertwee era. Coloured reddish-orange, spitting smoke and electrical sparks from their ‘hands’ and walking with a distinctive rolling gait, they cut a fearsome, fantastical sight. Combining aspects of Lovecraftian horror with a vibe redolent of the 1950s pulp scifi comics, they combine a high-concept backstory with a generous helping of the bizarre.

Also striking is the malleable, ever-changing manifestation of Axos: from the golden humanoids, to the tentacled monsters, with variations such as a golden humanoid with a tentacled head and an amorphous baglike creature, The Claws of Axos constantly startles the viewer with a parade of curious monstrosities.

Upon viewing Episodes One and Two after they were edited and scored, producer Barry Letts decided that two key scenes of horror were too upsetting for children and ordered that they be electronically obscured in post-production. The first, in Episode One, involves the discovery of a tramp’s desiccated corpse; when a soldier touches the body, the tramp’s face collapses like an empty sac. The second scene, in Episode Two, shows a golden humanoid Axon merging itself into the walls of the spaceship; during the absorption process the face bloats and then collapses, an effect which is authentically disturbing and grotesque. In both cases the effects can still be seen intermittently despite post-production masking.

The UK DVD (recently updated to this ‘Special Edition’ with improved picture quality and expanded extras)

The US Region 1 DVD

The original Target novelisation, published in April 1977 and penned by frequent Who writer / Pertwee-era script editor Terrance Dicks

A second imprint of the novelisation with new cover artwork 

The Fog is a horror novel by English writer James Herbert, published in 1975 by New English Library (NEL). It is about a deadly fog that drives its victims insane when they come into contact with it. Herbert’s second book, it is completely unrelated to the 1980 film of the same name by John Carpenter. Well before the infamous British ‘video nasties’ moral panic, Herbert’s The Fog was being passed around school playgrounds by hordes of stunned yet fascinated teenagers.

John Holman is a worker for the Department of the Environment investigating a Ministry of Defence base in a small rural village. An unexpectedearthquake swallows his car releasing a fog that had been trapped underground for many years. An insane Holman is pulled up from the crack, a product of the deadly fog.

Soon the fog shifts and travels as though it has a mind of its own, turning those unfortunate enough to come across it into homicidal/suicidal maniacs who kill without remorse, and often worse. Respectable figures including teachers and priests engage in crimes ranging from public urination to under age sex. A Boeing 747 pilot is also made insane and crashes the aircraft into the BT Tower in London.

Soon a bigger problem is discovered – the fog is multiplying in size and nothing seems to be able to stop it. Entire villages and cities are in danger and the only chance left is to use the treated and immunized John Holman to take on the fog from the inside where who knows what awaits him…

Thanks to H.P. Saucecraft at the Vault of Evil: British Horror Plus web board for the reprint cover image

Some animals are guaranteed to inspire feelings of disgust and fear in cinema audiences, and not more so than the humble rat. While many people keep rats as pets, even they will see a difference between their domesticated companions and the sewer-dwelling, disease carrying vermin that we are continually told that none of us are ever more than six feet from (an urban myth perhaps, but with a certain basis in facts – there are a LOT of rats in the world). Collective memories of the black death, horror stories about rats climbing out of toilet bowls or being found in babies cribs and the mere possibility of waking up to find a rat siting on your bed, possibly eating your face (and yes, it’s happened!) ensure that rats will never be seen as cuddly by the majority. And with news stories about oversized ‘super rats’ or claims that they are becoming resistant to poisons, it’s not hard to see why rats make many people shudder. There is nothing we can do to stop their rise, it seems, and if filmmakers are to be believed, even a nuclear holocaust won’t slow them down.

Rats have long been used by filmmakers as shorthand for disgust, decay and dirt. Think of how many times you’d seen someone exploring an old building, a gothic castle or a disused warehouse in a horror film where the sense of creepiness is emphasised by scuttling rodents. Rats have also been the food for mutated throwbacks and subhuman monsters, to show how depraved they are – having your character snatch up a rat and start munching on it is sure to repulse the audience.

In George Orwell’s futuristic fear of a totalitarian state novel 1984, protagonist Winston Smith is driven to breaking point when confronted with his worst fear – rats – in Room 101. This was memorably shown in the controversial BBC TV version of the story broadcast live in 1954, with a pre-Hammer Films star Peter Cushing suitably terrified as a ‘rat helmet’ is placed on his head. Viewers of early British TV were thrilled and appalled in equal measure. This showed the power that rats had to terrify not only Smith, but viewers in general. Yet, oddly, it wasn’t until the 1970s that rats became the central figures in horror movies.

British eco sci-fi series Doomwatch gave a hint of the rodent horrors to come in 1970 episode Tomorrow, the Rat, in which a new strain of voracious, flesh eating, intelligent and poison-resistant rats is created by a scientist – as you do – and some inevitably escape to attack Londoners. It’s an interesting story, let down by some frankly laughable special effects – the scenes of rubber rats sewn to the clothes of actors who frantically try to look as if they are under attack became a staple of comedy shows looking to sneer at low budget productions of the past, and truth be told, these moments are pretty ludicrous. But the episode as a whole – and the series in general – is worth a look.

The most famous and successful rat movie was Willard, made in 1971. The film follows social misfit Willard (Bruce Davison), who develops a strange relationship with the rats that surround the old, dilapidated house he lives in with his mother. After the old woman dies, this odd relationship increases, as a large number of rats begin living in the house and he develops a close bond with two unusually smart one – Socrates (who is, rather impossibly, white) and Ben. He soon starts using the rats to take revenge on those who have made his life a misery, namely his exploitative boss Mr Martin (Ernest Borgnine). But when Martin is torn apart by the rats in revenge for him killing Socrates, Willard is snapped back into reality and decides he must get rid of the rats – but by this time, it’s too late.

An intriguing and effective psychological horror film, Willard was a surprise box office hit and would inspire imitators like Stanley (where snakes took the place of rats) as well as spawning a sequel, Ben.

Also in 1971, rats were one of the Biblical plagues used by The Abominable Dr Phibes to take revenge against the doctors he blamed for his wife’s death. Actually, rats were not one of the plagues in the Bible and the scene where a handful are found in the plane being piloted by Dr Kitaj (Peter Gilmore) is possibly the weakest of the film, with the clearly disinterested rodents hardly looking like much of a threat.

Ben, made in 1972, sees the titular character – who is considerably smarter than the average rat – leading an army of rodents after escaping the purge on the household after the events of Willard. While the scenes of rat attacks and vast colonies of the creatures in sewers ramp up the horror of the first film, the movie hedges its bets by also introducing a maudlin story where Ben is adopted by a sickly child. This rather schizophrenic storyline ensured that the film would be less successful than Willard, and allowed for the inclusion of the teeth-grindingly sentimental title song, performed by Michael Jackson (who would trouble the horror genre again many years later, with Thriller)  – possibly the only love song to a rat that has ever entered the pop charts.

The popularity of Willard didn’t see a massive explosion of rat cinema – most imitators copied the story but used other animals – but the ever opportunist and eccentric Andy Milligan tried to ride the wave with The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! in 1972. This film had started life in 1969 as one of Milligan’s London-lensed low budget period horror films, this time about a family of werewolves, but had sat on the shelf of infamous producer William Mishkin until 1972, when the director was instructed to add around 20 minutes of rat footage to the film in order to cash in on Willard and Ben. The resulting film is as weird as you might expect. Milligan has seen a degree of critical reassessment over the last few years, and it’s true that much of his work is less ‘bad’ as it is bizarre. The unique Milligan style is on full display in this film.

Also possibly showing some influence from Willard at this time was The Pied Piper, a British version of the famous fairy story made in 1972 by French director Jacques Demy. This is a darker tale than you might expect. Set at the time of the Black Death and with English folkie Donovan as the Piper, it mixes in corruption, revenge, anti-semitism in a film that is often an uneasy mix of children’s fantasy and adult drama. Towards the conclusion of this offbeat production, the piper takes his revenge on the corrupt townsfolk by unleashing the rats he has promised to rid them of, resulting in amazing and unsettling scenes of rodent rampage – at one point they even burst out of a wedding cake! It’s a curious, unique film that is sadly rarely seen today, possibly because of the strange mix of styles it contains.

Paul Naschy battled rats in his appearance in the title role of The Hunchback of the Morgue, one of his livelier films. In a controversial scene in this 1972 film, when he finds them eating his beloved’s corpse, Naschy sets the rats on fire – no special effect this, real rats were burned!

If regular sized rats are scary, then imagine how much worse giants rats would be! That, I assume, was the thinking of legendary B-movie maestro Bert I. Gordon, when he embarked on a ‘loose’ (to put it kindly) adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Food of the Gods in 1976. Mr BIG had long had a fixation on oversized creatures – his earlier films include The Amazing Colossal Man, War of the Colossal Beast, Earth vs. The Spider and Village of the Giants, and he would follow this film with Empire of the Ants. In The Food of the Gods, a couple discover a mysterious and miraculous food stuff, resembling porridge, bubbling out the ground and start to feed it to their chickens, as you do. This causes massive growth in the birds. But unfortunately, the local rats, wasps and worms have also developed a taste for the stuff, and soon a small band of survivors are being terrorised by the giant rodents (the wasps and worms only play a minor role in the proceedings).

This is a surprisingly slow moving and unsurprisingly inept effort, with Bert’s trademark shoddy special effects, yet it proved to be an unexpected box office hit. In 1989, an overly belated direct-to-video sequel was made – Food of the Gods 2 (aka Gnaw: Food of the Gods II) that had no connection to the earlier film, this time telling the unlikely story of a misguided scientist who grows giant rats whilst trying to find a cure for baldness! These oversized rodents are released by animal rights activists and cause the expected amount of chaos in a film that is notable only for making the original Food of the Gods look like art.

The same year, Yugoslavian satire The Rat Saviour sees a writer discover that rats are learning how to imitate and ultimate replace humans. Much like Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, the film is a comment on the loss of humanity and a biting criticism of the socialist state.

Also in 1976, British TV series The New Avengers took a rare step into the fantasy world with the episode ‘Gnaws’ by Dennis Spooner. While the 1960s series The Avengers was often fantastical, this 1970s spin-off tended to be more ‘realistic’ and concerned itself with espionage rather  than science fiction on the whole. But there were exceptions, and Gnaws was the most obvious, with Steed, Purdy and Gambit chasing a giant rat through the London sewers!

Showing alongside The New Avengers on TV in 1976 was Beasts, a horror anthology by Nigel Kneale, which included the episode During Barty’s Party. In this two hander, a middle aged couple find themselves besieged by ‘super rats’ (the titular radio show fills in what is happening in the outside world). We never see the rats in this story, the horror being effectively conveyed by sound effects and the growing panic of the couple.

The 1922 Nosferatu had featured scenes of rat filled coffins that added to the general creepiness of the film (and similarly, 1931′s Dracula added rats to the creatures infesting the Count’s castle), but Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake emphasised the rat infestation much more, showing Dracula as, quite literally, the plague – the rats he brings with him spread disease just as much as the vampire does.

In 1974, James Herbert’s novel The Rats had become a massive success in the UK, spawning a whole ‘animal attack’ pulp fiction sub genre and eventually leading to several sequels. This graphic and lurid novel about giant rats seemed ripe for filming, and in 1982, it was finally shot by Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse for Hong Kong’s Golden Harvest. Relocating the action to Canada (doubtless for the tax breaks that encouraged many productions during this period), the resulting movie was decidedly less outrageous than Herbert’s novel, and proved to be a pretty ineffectual and slow moving affair. Things were not helped by the low budget, which didn’t allow for decent rat effects – notoriously, the giant rats were played by dachshunds in rat suits, which fooled nobody. In Britain, the film was released on video as The Rats, but elsewhere – where Herbert’s novel was less well known – it went out as Deadly Eyes, which probably just confused potential viewers more.

Curiously, it wasn’t the only Canadian rat film at the time, as 1983′s Of Unknown Origin also features rampaging rodents, though this time on a more domestic scale, as Peter Weller (future Robocop) find himself becoming increasingly obsessed with catching a huge rat that is in his house, even if it means destroying the property in the process. As much an allegorical tale as anything (Weller’s character is literally caught in a rat race and his desperation to the marauding beast represents his ineffectuality in face of his desire to ‘own’ his own space), the film is well worth seeking out. For a more comedic version of the same story, check out the 1997 film Mouse Hunt.

Director Bruno Mattei had featured a scene involving a zombie rat in his entertainingly trashy Zombie Creeping Flesh in 1981, and he later expanded on the idea in Rats: Night of Terror, a post-apocalyptic tale where survivors of the nuclear holocaust stumble upon a village full of food and water. Unfortunately, it’s also full of mutant rats… deliriously trashy and gory, it’s no surprise that the film has built up quite a cult following over the years.

1983 horror anthology Nightmares featured the tale Night of the Rat, where a young couple argue over what to do about a rat that is apparently living in their house – Clair (Veronica Cartwright) wants to call in an exterminator, but Steven (Richard Masur) is convinced he can sort out the problem with rat traps. But as things get worse, with huge holes appearing in the walls and the family cat vanishing, it soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary rat, but a giant variation. Directed by Joseph Sergeant, the film was originally made for TV, but was considered too scary for the small screen and so benefitted from a successful theatrical release.

Giant rats were also among the horrors facing survivors in the post apocalypse comedy Radioactive Dreams, made in 1985. This is as Eighties a film as you could hope (or dread) to find, and the giant rodents are a mere aside to the action involving cannibals, mutants and roving bands of Mad Max inspired punks.

The same year saw Terror in the Swamp, in which a mutant cross between a nutria (a type of swamp rat) and a human, being bred for the fur industry, escapes and goes on a killing spree. Set in Louisiana, this is a classic example of a local horror production, and is probably for rat horror completists only.

In 1987, the spectacularly tasteless Ratman emerged from Italy, courtesy of director ‘Anthony Ascot’ [aka Giuliano Carnimeo]. Starring dwarf Nelson de la Rosa, this was the story of a homicidal rat/monkey hybrid creating by a mad scientist in the Caribbean, for reasons that are never made clear. Italian exploitation veterans David Warbeck and Janet Agren turn up in this bizarre effort.

Stephen King’s short story Graveyard Shift was filmed in 1990. The film takes place during the night shift clean up of an abandoned mill that has just reopened, where the workers find themselves attacked by rats… and something much worse. The film invariably pads King’s original story out with ‘personality conflicts’ that add little to the story – you would be better served sticking to the prose.

The third season of TV series Monsters, broadcast in 1990, opened up with Stressed Environment, where super intelligent rats bred by scientists fight back against plans to close the lab and exterminate them, even crafting miniature weapons to attack their enemies with. It’s an interesting idea, but it’s rendered ridiculous when we see the rats, which are terrible stop-motion models. I’m not sure the sight of spear-carrying rats could ever be certain to cause shrieks of horror rather than shrieks of laughter, but the monsters here are especially rotten.

1991′s The Demon Rat is set in the near future, when environmental pollution has reached new levels and toxic chemicals have created mutant animals, including a giant man-rat! This Spanish film mixes science fiction and satire in a fairly effective manner.

In 1995, Bram Stoker’s short story Burial of the Rats was adapted – if that is the word – by producer Roger Corman. As the plot involves a young Bram Stoker being captured by scantily clad female warriors who use hungry rats to punish evil men, it should go without saying that any connection to the original short story begins and ends with the title. It should not be confused with the 2007 Japanese film of the same name, which has no connection to Stoker or rodent rampages.

Altered Species, made in 2001, sees rats attacking partygoers after the scientist host pours his new formula down the sink. For some reason, one of the rats has mutated into a giant.

2002′s The Rats has no connection to James Herbert, but instead has a department store infested by mutant rats – clearly, regular rats were no longer cutting it as horror creatures by this time. A year later saw the release of the similarly titled Rats, which takes place in a multi-purpose institution that houses both rich drug addicts and the criminally insane. It also turns out to be home to an army of super-intelligent giant rats, the result of past medical experiments of Dr Winslow (Ron Perlman).

2001 German movie Ratten: Sie Werden Dich Kriege (also known as Revenge of the Rats) sees an army of rats brought out onto the streets during a garbage collectors strike. To make things worse, these rats are carrying a deadly virus! Jörg Lühdorff’s film was popular enough to spawn a 2004 sequel, Ratten 2 – Sie Kommen Wieder!

2002′s Nezulla is a Japanese film in which a half rat, half human monster that has been created by American scientists goes on the rampage in Tokyo. Inevitably, the film is let down by its shot-on-video visuals, but might appeal to fans of Eighties monster movies.

Willard was remade in 2003, with Crispin Glover in the title role. Directed by Glen Morgan, the film sticks pretty much to the story of the original film, and is quite effective in its own right, but failed to connect with audiences.

2006 film Mulberry Street sees an infection turning people into mutant rat creatures. Closer to the zombie genre than usual rat movies (the film was retitled Zombie Virus on Mulberry Street for UK release), this is one of the better recent films in that overdone genre.

Most recently, 2011′s Rat Scratch Fever sees giant mutant space rats, who have stowed away on a spacehip and are now terrorising Los Angeles. Cheap, trashy and unashamed, the film is likely to appeal to anyone who enjoys watching low rent giant monster movies on SyFy.

The days of the serious rat horror film would seem to be over for now, which is a pity – there is still a lot of potential in the genre I would think. Perhaps one day, an enterprising filmmaker will once again remember that rats are both omnipresent and terrifying for many, and exploit that to its full potential…

Article by David Flint