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

Twixt

"Twixt" (2012, Francis Ford Coppola, American Zoetrope, Pathé) is a horror mystery film.

Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer) is a has-been horror writer doing the rounds of small town America in every bookshop that will take him. Upon visiting a strange little town with an odd 7-faced clock tower, he happens upon a local tragedy; the murder of 12 orphaned children at a hotel, previously famed for having Edgar Allen Poe (Ben Chaplin) stay for a night.

Hall becomes intrigued further when he learns of the recent murder of a young girl and then has a strange dream in which he passes into the land of the dead, where he encounters a female ghost who calls herself V (Elle Fanning). He decides to stay in the town longer to write a book based on its tragic history, telling the local sheriff, and budding mystery author, Bobby LaGrange (Bruce Dern, who I know best as Rumsfield from "The 'Burbs"), that he can share in the novel's credit if he helps him solve the mystery.

An unusually styled film with some creative cinematography. The dream sequences, although strange, are nicely designed and I enjoyed the use of colour. I found the scripting very strange and often hollow, though, but Kilmer seems to really enjoy the role and is good fun to watch.

I really enjoyed the premise of the film and, although it's oddly put together with split scene sequences and a very random low budget 'Lost Boys'-esque 'vampire gang' in the mix, it's watchable. It seems more like Mr Coppola was entertaining himself in the making of this film, and it doesn't fit too well together. More like a made-for-TV film with a hint of Arthouse about it, I wouldn't call it a work of art, but it's certainly not the worst I've seen and it's very visually pretty.

Image: Pathé

 

Hani

From Dusk Till Dawn

"From Dusk Till Dawn" (1996, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Dimension Films, A Band Apart, Los Hooligans) is a gore fest action/crime/comedy/horror from Rodriguez and Tarantino.

From the onset, the film appears to be about two criminal brothers who are on the run from the feds and police, and are also in the middle of a heist worth a lot of money if they can get to Mexico and meet their contact, Carlos.

The brothers are Seth Gecko (George Clooney), the smooth, arrogant and haughty 'leader' and his younger and more sinister brother, Richie Gecko (Quentin Tarantino), who is a volatile sex fiend, rapist, murderer and all 'round crazy person!

We meet the brothers as they attack a petrol station/liquor store clerk (John Hawkes) and his only customer, the local Ranger McGraw (Michael Parks) after Richie begins to feel a bit twitchy. I always remember this scene the best, as when I was younger I was particularly intrigued with the 'shot through the hand' bit. Gross!

They move on to a motel, leaving a mess in their wake, and extract the terrified bank cashier lady from their car trunk. And we get to find out just how crazy Richie really is!

Soon the guys need a ride, and some innocent looking 'friends' to help them get across the border, and so they kidnap an ex-minister, Jacob (Harvey Keitel) and his two children, adopted son Scott (Ernest Liu) and daughter Kate (Juliette Lewis). Jacob is having a crisis of faith after his wife died in tragic circumstances and has dragged his kids on the road with him in his motorhome...

After getting over the border, they head to a biker/trucker bar called 'The Titty Twister' which has a lurid and entertaining luminous sign, and wait there drinking 'whisky' (I'm Scottish, I can be snobby about what's whisky and what's not! Although, I drink bourbon myself...) while they wait on Carlos (Cheech Marin, who also plays quite a few parts in this film, I noticed!).

But this bar is not all that it seems, and there is a specific reason for it closing at dawn.... Everyone from the exotic dancers to the Machete dude (Danny Trejo) behind the bar are vampires... everyone except the clientelle, that is! When the feeding frenzy begins, our two murderous thieves, their kidnapped friends, a biker called Sex Machine (Cheech Marin again) and a Vietnam trucker called Frost (Fred Williamson) have to team together as best they can to try to survive.

Will anyone make it out? And when the hell will Carlos get there!?!

A tongue in cheek gorefest with some very 90s SFX and a lot of boobies. One of the sleaziest biker vampire movies on my shelf; it's just hilarious! And isn't it funny how vampire chicks suddenly get really ugly when they let their true nature show?

Danny Trejo makes an excellent vampire man in his little leather... whatever that was mean't to be! A vest? A tunic? Heck knows!

Clooney makes an excellent bad guy in this film, being both threatening and also likeable in that charismatic dickhead kind of a way.

Tarantino is terrifying as the psychotic rapist brother. He's a scary dude! I would not cross him!

Lots of body parts fly, there's a corpse guitar and a shed-load of corny, tongue in cheek violence (to go along with the truly Tarantino-esque beginning scene). Really, the vampires are entertaining and sure get an impressive kill scene, but damn it the humans are way scarier!

I'm sure this film has some kind of message, but all it says to me is that no matter how much of a jackass you are, vampires will eat you...? Oh, and rock music is awesome. And snakes are cool. Yep, deep film...

[Picture: Dimension Films & infinitecoolness.com]

Hani