BLOOD SURF/IT'S ALIVE/A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT: A TRILOGY OF RANDOM MINI HORROR FILM REVIEWS BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
BLOOD SURF. (2000) DIRECTED BY JAMES D.R. HICKOX. STARRING DAX MILLER, JOEL WEST, KATE FISCHER, TARYN REIF, DUNCAN REGEHR, MATTHEW BORLENGHI AND MAUREEN LARRAZABAL.
This is a fun horror movie about some of the dumbest people you've literally ever seen. A bunch of young entrepreneurs and 'extreme sports' fanatics fly to a tropical island where they're planning to carry out the stupidest plan ever in the history of stupid plans. And trust me, there've been a few...!
They're going to chuck 'chum' in the water to attract sharks, just like in the movie JAWS. Then, when the sharks come, the two members of the group who practise extreme sports will surf through the pack of hungry, angry sharks with the intention of beating them back to shore.
The other two members of the group will be filming all of this malarkey with the intention of making a big money-spinning documentary for television. F***ing hell. These young 'uns haven't a brain cell between them.
Anyway, they do actually carry out their ridiculous plan, even though they've all seen JAWS (we hear them discussing it) and they know what happens in it. They have the grave misfortune to encounter a giant pissed-off saltwater crocodile during their adventures, however, who makes the sharks look like Teletubbies in comparison...
This film has everything. Boobs, camel-toes(!), sex from behind, bandits with rape on their minds, a Quint-esque salty old sea dog seeking revenge on the monster that killed his boat passengers and, of course, the crocodile itself. It looks like a child's toy but it knows its onions. It only kills the stupid or nasty people and it's something of a matchmaker as well, as you'll see when you watch the film. Who's a clever matching handbag and shoes, then...?
IT'S ALIVE. (2009) DIRECTED BY JOSEPH RUSNAK. BASED ON THE 1974 FILM BY LARRY COHEN. STARRING BIJOU PHILLIPS, JAMES MURRAY, RAPHAEL COLEMAN, TY GLASER AND JACK ELLIS.
I really enjoyed this film, even though you could drive a whole convoy of trucks through the plotholes. A remake of the 1974 film, it's the story of a young woman called Lenore Harker (somebody loves his horror fiction...) who drops out of college to have her baby and move in with her Baby-Daddy Frank and his crippled younger brother Chris.
(There was no real need, incidentally, for the wheelchair storyline, as Frank and Chris's parents, who died in the same accident that crippled Chris, have no bearing on the storyline whatsoever.)
Any-hoo, it turns out that Lenore and Frank's baby is an evil baby with a taste for human and animal blood and flesh. A possible explanation is given towards the end of the film, but it's not a very likely story. At least Rosemary from ROSEMARY'S BABY was raped by Our Lord Satan. What's Lenore's excuse for bringing a cannibalistic little killer into the world through her birthing hole? Although actually, it was a Caesarean section but whatever...!
The baby starts killing people right from the first day it comes into the world. We don't get to see a close-up of it till the end of the film but it certainly cuts a murderous swathe through the people it encounters, having a particular taste for the blood of health professionals and the police. It's all a bit ridiculous, really, but it's good gory fun to watch and the ending is genuinely moving.
Remember the British drama series BAD GIRLS, a brilliant prison drama from the 'Noughties? Well, Jim Fenner the crooked prison guard, played by Jack Ellis, turns up in IT'S ALIVE as a psychologist who's supposed to get the truth about some grisly murders out of a shell-shocked Lenore, but he's not very good at it and his accent is quite unidentifiable.
Speaking of 'shell-shocked,' I'll never forget the nasty piece of work that was Jim Fenner riding the prison top dog Shell Dockley while his wife, also 'shell-shocked,' as it were, listens in horror on the other end of a phone line. Bet Jim was in the dog-house when he got home that night...!
A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT. (2014) DIRECTED BY ANA LILY AMIRPOUR. STARRING SHEILA VAND, ARASH MARANDI, DOMINIC RAINS, MOZHAN MARNO, MARSHALL MANESH AND MASUKA THE CAT.
This extraordinary and very different horror film is set in Iran and peopled with Iranian actors, although it's actually filmed in Southern California. You'd never guess to look at it, though. It has such an Iranian feel to it, hardly surprising as it's filmed by an Iranian lady director and it's been described as 'the first Iranian vampire western.' Yeah, what they said...!
The film brings together a handsome young Iranian man called Arash and a solitary young woman with no name who is clearly a vampire. They meet by chance on the deathly-quiet streets of their town at night and form an instant connection.
Arash's life isn't up to much. His mother is dead and his father is a heroin addict who needs nearly as much looking after as a baby does. When he meets this Girl, he's immediately attracted to her. She's beautiful, the quiet type, and different to the women he's known in the past. Why wouldn't he fall head-over-heels in love with such a creature?
The Girl is mesmerising to watch. The scene where she meets the Pimp on the street and then goes home with him (the Pimp thinks he has sex coming, the poor deluded bastard!) are some of the best horror scenes I've seen anywhere.
The way she appears from nowhere and stands silently on the near-empty streets, shrouded in the black chador of the women of Iran, is superbly creepy. Ever seen a vampire on a skateboard, by the way? No? Well, you will now...!
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment