Inhuman Kiss

"Inhuman Kiss" aka "Sang Krasue" (Sitisiri Mongkolsiri, 2019, Nakid, CJ Major Entertainment, M Pictures, Transformation Films) is a Thai horror romance centred around the Southeast Asian myth of the female Krasue spirit (aka Kasu or Ahp); the flesh eating floating head of a beautiful woman trailing entrails and tentacles, and the male Krahang; a ferocious male spirit.

We meet four children, Sai, Noi, Jerd and Ting, who are playing in the forest near an abandoned house. Jerd tells the group that the house is haunted by the spirit of a woman and then the children play hide and seek in the house. 

Years later Ting (Darina Boonchu) is married with a baby, Sai (Phantira Pipityakorn) is training to be a nurse, Jerd (Sapol Assawamunkong) is working with Sai as well as falling in love with her and Noi (Oabnithi Wiwattanawarang) has moved away from the village to live in Bangkok, much to the despair of Sai, who is in love with him. Everyone seems to be getting on with their lives when suddenly Noi returns to the village with a band of hunters on the trail of a Krasue spirit who is killing and eating the livestock. But Sai discovers to her horror that the Krasue is actually a curse and she is the one they are hunting...

Having just appeared on Netflix, and seeing a clip of the insane Krasue transformation online, I knew this would be my kind of film. But I was pleasantly surprised to find it was much more than I had expected. The film delivers a full and interesting plot as well as the gore and effects and manages to strike a balance between the cheesiness of the action and the rather straight-faced character development of our main three characters; Sai, Jerd and Noi. With a run time of just over 2 hours, I had expected to feel things were dragging a little, but the film's action is quite evenly spaced and the run time wasn't really a factor.  The effects are excellently achieved, and I felt the fact it wasn't trying to be funny really worked in its favour. Definitely worth checking out.

[Image: Nakid, et al]

Hani

Land of the Minotaur

"Land of the Minotaur" aka "The Devil's Men" (1976, Kostas Karagiannis, Crown International Pictures) is a horror film set in 1970s Greece.


A group of archaeology-loving tourists begin to go missing when visiting a particular site. Could the shifty Baron Corofax (Peter Cushing) be involved? Could the whole town be in on it?! It's up to Irish Priest, Father Roche (Donald Pleasance), Milo Kaye (Mr Director himself, Kostas Karagiannis - billed here as Costas Skouras) and Laurie Gordon (Luan Peters) to uncover the mystery and put a stop to the worship and sacrifice to the Minotaur.


Both Cushing and Pleasance have led varied and extensive careers and were extremely supportive of the horror genre and its many aspiring creators, being game to appear in a true variety of quality of films. But, in spite of this, the biggest mystery by far is how they ended up in this one with so much screen time considering the other larger budget pieces they were in around the same time! Truly, we did not deserve them.


This film is a delightful piece of B-movie nonsense that includes;

• Donald Pleasance doing an Irish accent and wearing (and losing!) several hats,
• a few females in short shorts and other skimpy outfits,
• a creepy teenaged girl,
• a leading character resembling a young 70s Father Ted (I dare you to not think of it whilst watching Milo) who is nude quite a lot,
• cult worshippers in multi-coloured outfits (it seems the Baron got a discount on several metres of coloured satin at Remnant Kings - and those bejewelled eyeholes, dahling!),
• lots of shots of a convertible driving quite sensibly around Greece coupled with Donald Pleasance berating the driver for being careless,
• people haplessly digging up things on sites of archaeological interest with their bare hands,
• a mysteriously deserted town where the few townsfolk like to enjoy a beer with breakfast,
• Peter Cushing drinking beer and shooting a grandfather clock, and,
• lots of cult sacrifices to a statue of the Minotaur with a bad case of the fire sneezes and a dislike of people in his special room. 

At only 95 minutes long, it's also not too taxing a spectacle and is currently on Amazon Prime in the UK under it's UK title.

[Image: Crown International Pictures]

Hani

Color Out of Space (2019)

"Color Out of Space" (2019, Richard Stanley, SpectreVision, RLJE Films) is an adaptation of the short story of the same title by H.P. Lovecraft.


Theresa (Joely Richardson) and Nathan Gardner (Nicolas Cage) move their family into a large rural house while Theresa is recovering from cancer. The rural location, however, is meddling with Theresa's work and their kids; Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), Jack (Julian Hilliard) and Benny (Brendan Meyer) are still adapting to the change. Lavinia also makes the acquaintance of Ward (Elliot Knight), a hydrologist doing a survey of the water table in the area.


One night a brilliantly coloured meteor hits nearby, resulting in a strange light around the area and the eruption of bright and alien vegetation. The family begin to experience further strange behaviours amongst themselves and their animals and things begin to become more and more alien.


A bit of a slow start delivers an eventual impressive pay off as things wind up and up throughout the run time. With some fun and disturbing body horror, a great amount of Lovecraft's work still in there and some beautiful and eerie visuals, the whole film is both entertaining and pretty.


The only factor that didn't seem to work for me was Nicolas Cage as the dad. The whole rest of the family seem to gel so well together as a believable unit but his style and tendency towards OTT acting felt out of place and jarring in what was otherwise a fantastic fantasy horror.

[Image: SpectreVision, et al]

Hani

Mandy

"Mandy" (2018, Panos Cosmatos, Spectrevision, Umedia, XYZ Films, RLJE Films) is an arthouse horror thriller starring Nicolas Cage.



Set in the 80s, we meet logger Red Miller (Nicolas Cage) and his fantasy artist and gas station attendant girlfriend, Mandy Bloom (Andrea Riseborough) at their lakeside cabin.


A cult calling themselves Children of the New Dawn along with the help of a drugged-up, cannibalistic biker gang called The Black Skulls, kidnap Mandy for their leader, Jeremiah Sand (Linus Roache). However, Mandy rejects Sand and he instead burns her alive in front of Red.


Red then goes on a vengeful rampage armed with a special crossbow, a handmade axe and a whole tonne of hallucinogenic drugs... Oh, and there's a chainsaw battle also.


For me, the description sounded a lot better than the finished article. While I don't dislike Nicolas Cage, there's only so much entertainment I can glean from the famous Cage Rage - and this film is chalk full of it. The plot is pretty simple and the imagery is often really creative but it's all done with a kind of pretentious smirk and a lot of colour filters and starts to wear after a while. Some scenes are fantastically metal but the style likes to jump all over the place. For a film where all the characters are on drugs, however, I guess this makes sense. I guess that's also true for the odd dialogue...


The film takes a while to get started, and when it finally does it jumps off the deep end in an impressive way. If it had been cheesier, it would have been superb. But the arthouse pretention keeps this for being a hit for me.

[Image: Spectrevision, et al]

Hani

The Lighthouse

"The Lighthouse" (Robert Eggers, A24, Regency Enterprises, Universal Pictures) is a black and white psychological film inspired by the avant-garde/experimental style.


Set in the late 19th Century, two lighthouse keepers are sent to the lonely and secluded island for their four week shift. The two do not get on and, trapped on the island in a storm, it seems that they both begin to lose their sanity with deadly results...


Personally, this film was not for me. Technically speaking, however, it's an interesting film. Well shot and bleakly atmospheric, it delivers a disturbing piece. Filmed on 35mm and in an old fashioned ratio adds to the cinematic experience. From what I've read, the set up and filming process were both extremely labour intensive and complicated, so the film is certainly a feat in this regard.


Both Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe give intriguing performances as the younger, less experienced keeper and the abrasive older keeper. Their relationship is taught, uncomfortable and ultimately deadly. There's also the added element that both characters are extremely unreliable narrators (given their own secrets, alcohol abuse and apparent cabin fever), so that we are never truly sure what events are happening, and what are figments of the men's imaginations.


Overall, I found the purposefully disjointed style and delivery to be rather boring and I definitely felt the full 109 minute runtime. Whilst I can appreciate the style and aesthetic of the piece, I didn't find it to be particularly entertaining and, unlike Eggers' "The Witch" (2016) or Ari Aster's "Hereditary" (2018) , I wasn't even left with the same grim emptiness or shell-shocked feeling that lingered after the credits rolled. While I think it's sure to become an important film in the future for aesthetic and style reasons, I wasn't overly impressed with it as a film and wouldn't hold it in the same esteem as I do David Lynch's surreal and uncomfortable "Eraserhead" (1977) (which no doubt played some part in inspiration). For me it played out a little too much like a project piece rather than a finished article.


So, although I can and do appreciate the film's technical and aesthetic merits, it's unlikely to be one I'd choose to revisit. However, for the intrigued, it's certainly worth catching for the experience.

[Image: A24, et al]

Hani

Shock Waves

"Shock Waves" aka "Almost Human" aka "Death Corps" (1977, Ken Wiederhorn, Zopix Company) is a shipwreck-cum-Nazi-zombie-survival movie.


Captain Ben Morris (John Carradine), his crew and his passengers are involved in an accident when travelling across sea. They are forced to abandon their wrecked boat and the survivors find their way onto an nearby island.


They are shocked to learn that the island is not completely uninhabited when they meet a reclusive SS Commander (Peter Cushing) who warns them to leave the island as it is dangerous.


Unable to heed his warning, due mostly to the fact that they lack any means of escape, the survivors find that they are being hunted by a swarm of undead Nazi super-soldiers created during WWII. The Commander had purposefully sunk his ship containing them, trapping himself on the island in the process. But, being zombies, the creatures have been lying dormant in wait of fresh victims...


A slow moving film that lacks the strong plot necessary to keep up momentum, but managing to be entertaining in its sheer silliness and feature a very cool setting. The zombies seem to be mostly aquatic and we are treated to many scenes of them slowly rising from the shallows to trap their victims, walking underwater and jumping into unused swimming pools. They are also decked out in Nazi uniforms and wearing dark goggles which protect them from the dangers of daylight.


I would have enjoyed a little more of both John Carradine and Peter Cushing in this film, but despite their relatively short screentime the film is still engaging thanks to our cast of hapless, squabbling tourists and final girl, Rose (Brooke Adams).


A slow film that does not deliver much in the way of gore or scares; most of the action is off-screen. However, the film is well made, enjoys some good underwater scenes and is nonetheless a good yarn worth checking out. Even if it's mostly just for the begoggled zombies.

[Image: Zopix Co.]

Hani