Nightmare Castle

"Nightmare Castle" (1965, Mario Caiano, Cinematografica Emmeci) is a fun black and white Italian horror riddled with well trodden tropes and perfect for scratching a gothic horror itch. It's maybe not the best Italian horror of the time, but it's certainly worth viewing and will appeal to many fans of the genre.

Dr. Stephen Arrowsmith (Paul Meuller) is a mad scientist living in the grand ancestral castle home of his gorgeous and gothic wife, Muriel (Barbara Steele). Muriel, however, is having a steamy affair with their gardener, David. Upon catching the pair mid-embrace in the greenhouse, Stephen flies into a rage and beats the gardener before chaining both of them up and torturing them to death.

Using mad science (it's very different from normal science), Stephen then uses the blood of his victims to give his elderly servant, Solange, youth, turning her into the beautiful Helga Liné. Stephen and Solange then begin a relationship of their own, while the souls of Muriel and David are trapped in the castle by the their disembodied hearts skewered within an urn in the main hall.

To his dismay, however, Stephen learns that he was not Muriel's heir and that the castle has passed to her stepsister Jenny (also Barbara Steele) who currently resides in a mental institution. Seeing an opportunity, Stephen quickly marries the poor girl and drags her to the castle to live with him and Solange while he continues both his experiments and the affair with Solange.

Jenny begins to feel terrified, claiming to hear the spirits in the castle and beginning to take on the characteristics of her dear departed half sister. Finding Jenny's behaviour uncomfortable, and keen to declare her insane (but still married) so he can have his cake and eat it, Stephen calls for Jenny's doctor, Dr. Derek Joyce (Marino Masé) to the castle to treat her. However, the Dr. begins to suspect that there are supernatural forces at work and accidentally releases the vengeful spirits of the dead lovers to wreak havoc on those who wronged them!

Critics of the time considered this film to be too tropey. They threw around words like 'pedestrian' and 'obvious'. And while I can appreciate that the film certainly contains a lot of characteristics prevalent in many horrors from that period, it does so with a charm and clarity that many other films were devoid of. The drama between the characters is well achieved, and the strange and mostly undeveloped sub-plot of rejuvenating youth aside, the plot moves on at a good pace.

Barbara Steele gives us two very distinct characters with the sultry vixen Muriel being the antithesis of her nervous and pure stepsister, Jenny. We are also treated to a period clothing undressing scene that would put many a modern burlesque performer to shame.

The film also boasts some practical effects that still stand well to the modern viewer and a convincing entrance for our ghostly characters upon their release from the urn. While it's unlikely to have you shaking in your boots, it certainly has an ethereal and atmospheric charm that is exactly what I'm looking for in a gothic horror.

If you're looking for a Halloween warm-up film available to stream on Amazon you could do a lot worse than a visit to this drama-filled stately home set in Rome.

[Image: Cinematografica Emmeci]

Hani

A Cure for Wellness

"A Cure for Wellness" (2016, Gore Verbinski, Regency Enterprises, Blind Wink Productions, New Regency Productions, 20th Century Fox) is a psychological horror set in a luxury spa in the Swiss Alps.

An NYC financial firm sends a keen, young executive called Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) to a secluded spa to retrieve the firm's CEO, Pembroke (Harry Groener), in order to coordinate a merger. They also have some dodgy dealings to pin on someone, and if Pembroke won't be the man to go down, Lockhart will do.

Lockhart arrives at the spa to find that the staff will not let him see Pembroke. During his return to the village to decide what to do, his taxi has a horrific accident and he awakes to find that he has broken his leg and is 'recovering' at the spa himself. As he familiarises himself with his surroundings he becomes suspicious that there is something much more sinister going on than just outlandish treatments. He also meets a young girl called Hannah (Mia Goth), who has lived at the spa all of her life. Lockhart decides to dig deeper, but how long can he resist before he becomes just another of the sinister Dr. Volmer's (Jason Isaacs) patients?

A creepy, slow moving film with some action and a lot of unsettling scenes involving slimy eels. It's a sly plot with some plot-holes which dislodge the viewer slightly, but on the whole an intriguing and gruesomely distasteful concept.

The setting and styling have a familiar, old-fashioned vibe; "The Phantom of the Opera" meets "Dracula" but with a few elements of "Saw" chucked in there. The film is beautifully shot and the more disturbing scenes are truly imaginative and uncomfortable. However, the film felt overall too long, and the dreamlike quality of the storytelling made it feel longer still. There was certainly an element of style over substance, and the ending didn't fit with the rest of the build up and felt hokey and out of place.

Despite its shortcomings, the film is successfully interesting.

[Image: 20th Century Fox, et al]

Hani

Friend Request

"Friend Request" (2016, Simon Verhoeven, Warner Bros., Freestyle Releasing, Wiedemann & Berg Film, SevenPictures Film, Two Oceans Productions) is a supernatural horror centred around social media and a college campus.

Laura (Alycia Debnam-Carey) is a popular girl with over 800 social media friends. She lives off-campus with a group of pals and gets good grades. One day, she receives a friend invite from a reclusive girl in her class, Marina (Liesl Ahlers). Laura accepts the girl's request, seeing that she would become Marina's first friend... She even tries to connect in person. Big mistake. The girl becomes obsessed and takes very public umbridge when she is not invited to Laura's birthday dinner, vowing to get revenge on Laura for slighting her.

Laura gets freaked out and deletes Marina on social media. The next day news comes that Marina has committed suicide. Not just that, but she filmed it and the video has went viral about campus. In her death video, Marina publicly names Laura as the reason for her suicide. Laura's many friends begin to shun her and she soon suspects that she has been cursed...

The film has a good premise. Social media is the latest trend in horror lore, taking over from some of the older evil-technology films including the "Ring" series, etc... It does suffer from some bad scripting, some hammy scenes and a lot of tropes: of course the recluse is a goth, of course she is an orphan...

It's all very by-the-numbers, but is perfect for its target audience - teens who may just be getting into horror. As an established horror fan, it falls a little flat to me, but I don't believe I'm in their intended demographic. Whilst that does make the film suffer a little, it does deliver some good scenes and a strong, if flawed, message about being careful who you add on social media, and how much of yourself you put out there. You just never know what will be used against you.

[Image: Warner Bros., et al]

Hani

Crimson Peak

"Crimson Peak" (2015, Guillermo del Toro, Legendary Pictures, DDY, Universal Pictures) is a gothic romance film set in the late 1800s.


Edith Cushing knows that ghosts exist She knows this because when her mother died when she was a child she came back to cryptically warn Edith to "beware of Crimson Peak".


Years later, Edith (Mia Wasikowska) is a young, aspiring author struggling to have anyone take her seriously because she is a woman and writes ghost stories instead of love stories.She meets a dashing young inventor called Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and falls in love with him, but her father, Carter (Jim Beaver), intervenes, suspecting that Sharpe has dark, ulterior motives.


When tragedy strikes Edith's life again, she and Sir Thomas marry and she moves to England to live in his rundown stately home with he and his sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain). Edith slowly begins to notice that things are not as they appear and sees several disturbing spectres. She begins to dig into the Sharpe family history, and doesn't like what she finds...


Meanwhile, Edith's childhood friend and family physician, Dr. Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam) seeks Edith out...


This film is beautiful. Its colours, setting, costumes and styling are done with class and elegance. The ghosts are all menacing and eerily beautiful as well. And the fight scenes are violent and satisfying.
The plot had a lot going on and I wasn't overly engaged in it, but on the whole the beauty of the production made up for it. This film is not scary by any means and comes across as form over function.

Visually pleasing but not ground-breaking.

[Image: Legendary Pictures]

I LOVE this poster. It feels like an old Fulci poster. Stunning!

Hani

Ginger Snaps

"Ginger Snaps" (2000, John Fawcett, Motion International) is a teen werewolf movie.

Death obsessed, misfit sisters, Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) and Brigitte (Emily Perkins) are terrified of growing up, joining in with normal society and of getting their periods. They much prefer to pose as the recently, horrifically deceased for their school art project and rebel against society's norms (and bullies). Their lives are turned upside down, however, when Ginger is bitten by a werewolf on the first night of her first menstruation. Unfortunately for everyone else, this unlikely happenstance results in Ginger beginning to transform into a rather voracious and sex mad werewolf creature. Firstly she begins to find her sex vixen side by going to class looking like she's going to a goth nightclub, then she begins growing a tale and hungering for fresh meat.

Yep, this movie is not very classy but it has all the hallmarks of a great werewolf movie and is a fun film in general. Firstly, it's about two entertainingly misfit teens. These girls are just weird; creative and weird. Their relationship is something different from most siblings (they have a suicide pact for a start!). We also get to enjoy Katharine Isabelle (one of today's most diverse and entertaining horror honeys, in my opinion) doing what she does best; funny dialogue and gore. Thirdly, the effects are admirable and the plot is nice and quick and interesting.

There's little nods to American Werewolf, the Howling and other sub-genre favourites and the soundtrack caters right into my tastes: Hatebreed, Machine Head, Killswitch Engage and yes, I'm even fond of a bit of Cradle of Filth now and again.

The characters are good. I care about them. They're real. Even the whacky mum is adorable.

So while, yes, it's not classy horror fare and it's definitely catered more to the teen gore shelf, "Ginger Snaps" is a gory, violent and sassy lycanthrope film that captures some of the anxieties of the teen girl going through "changes" in a tongue-in-cheek, blood spattered way.

[Image: Motion International]

Hani

The Wax Mask

"The Wax Mask" (1997, Sergio Stivaletti, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Cine 2000, Mediaset, France Film International, Italian International Film) is a wax museum film.

Fulci died making this film and so I'm not 100% sure how true the end result is to his script, but it is indeed a lot of fun to watch.

With a kind of incidental Steampunk style (incidental because, as far as I'm aware, there was no such genre as 'Steampunk' in 1997), The Wax Mask tells a tale set in 1900s Paris. We see a couple brutally (and hilariously) butchered by a man with a clawed metal hand. We also see a young girl, their daughter, cowering under the bed.

Years pass and said young girl is now a costume maker working at a wax museum. The museum has gained some disrepute due to its gory collection of sculptures and, after the death of a young man who was dared to stay the night, the museum becomes more and more creepy.

It's fun, gothic and a little gory. The effects are nice and the props are awesome. The story is a little average as far as wax museum films go, but there's a nice added Frankenstein element which is fun. 

I'm not a huge fan of the ending, however, which seemed a little diverted from the rest of the film's styling, and I think I prefer the Italian version with the subtitles to the dubbed English, which can make the acting seem a little odd.

All in all, worth your while, but not a great representation of Argento, Fulci or Stivaletti.

[Image: Cine 2000]

 

Hani