However, all that comes later. First the film introduces us to our crew: Bill (J.D. Brown), the awkward tech guy, who is trying to pick up the obviously uninterested medium Sandra (Tabetha Ray). Mike (Tim Cronin) and Andrea (Natalie Jean) have been together a long time and even moved in together, and Mike has a special plan for Andrea in addition to the weekend shoot. Too bad for him Andrea is trying to make time to be alone with lothario cameraman Tim (Adam Huss). The first act of the film is mostly concerned with establishing these characters’ relationships to each other and Tim’s seemingly endless supply of inappropriate one-liners. The cast is likable enough for the most part, but there are still maybe a few jokes too many before the action kicks into gear.
Anyone familiar with Cross Bearer will probably guess that the violence in the film will stand in stark contrast to its humor, and they would not be wrong. Once one of the crew becomes possessed and the killings begin, Ahlbrandt pulls no punches. The practical effects in the film are gruesome and occasionally cringe-inducingly realistic. This dedication to old-school makeup and effects is seriously refreshing given how many low-budget filmmakers rely on cheap (and cheap-looking) CG effects. The sound issues that were a minor distraction in Cross Bearer are entirely absent here, and while The Cemetery doesn’t have quite the same visual flair as that film, it still looks very good. There’s nothing here that hardcore horror fans haven’t seen before, but everything is done very well. The Cemetery confirms that Ahlbrandt is a talent to keep an eye on.
Champagne for Breakfast (1980)
Originally published on Daily Grindhouse 4 March 2015
Chris Warfield was a film and television actor who was mostly active in the 1950s and 1960s, when he appeared in such series as Perry Mason, The Outer Limits, and Lassie, and films including Dangerous Charter (1962) and Diary of a Madman (1963). He began producing films in the late ’60s, and directed just over a dozen features in the ’70s and ’80s, working in both softcore and hardcore adult films. Vinegar Syndrome previously released two of Warfield’s features in a Peekarama double-feature disc that has been one of the highlights of that line so far: Purely Physical (1982) and Cathouse Fever (1984). Now they have released another of Warfield’s hardcore features as a standalone disc, 1980’s Champagne for Breakfast. The film looks great, but how does it compare to the films on the Peekarama disc?
Champagne (Lesllie Bovee) works in marketing at a cosmetics company, and as the film opens she gets an impressive promotion. Her co-worker Peggy (Bonnie Holiday) is obviously jealous, and takes a moment to make Champagne uncomfortable by forcing one of her male clients to service her on the board room table, encouraging Champagne to make the most of her new position. Instead, Champagne decides to take a couple of weeks off, and contacts a temp agency run by Gladys (Kay Parker) to hire a bodyguard. Harry (John Leslie), a very traditional macho man, bails on a job interview where he is tricked into a threesome by “a couple of lesbians” (Kandi Barbour and Dorothy LeMay), and happens to walk in on Gladys taking the call for Champagne’s bodyguard. After some lively coaxing (i.e. sex on Gladys’s desk), Harry convinces Gladys to send him in for the interview, but there’s a hook: Champagne wants a *gay* bodyguard.
With a little extra swish in his walk and a light lisp, Harry nails the interview and soon is on the job chauffeuring Champagne around San Francisco to various trysts, then providing her with deep tissue massages in between encounters. Needless to say, eavesdropping on Champagne having sex makes it hard for Harry to keep up his gay deceit, and when he’s not trying to convince his angry brother-in-law Stanley (Paul Thomas) to give Harry his share of their business’s profits, Harry is sneaking out for some female company. It’s only a matter of time before Champagne finds out the truth about Harry, but can he keep his hetero habits hidden for the full two weeks of the job? And more importantly, can he do the job without falling in love with his intelligent, beautiful, sexually adventurous boss?
Champagne for Breakfast was clearly a relatively big-budget production for an adult film of its era. Shot on 35mm, the film looks comparable to a studio picture of the same era, and the cast is great. Lesllie Bovee is particularly good as Champagne, a light, fun part, but one she seems born to play. She and John Leslie have good on-screen chemistry, which is good since they have to basically carry the entire film themselves. The Three’s Company-lifting plot is mostly played fairly low-key—thankfully, Leslie), doesn’t go all-out cartoon camp with his “gay” act—but Harry’s homophobia provides a jarring note of mean-spiritedness in what is otherwise a very light comedy mostly focused on Champagne’s sexual exploits. He angrily storms out on the girls trying to have a threesome with him, and later when Champagne hires a male prostitute (Jonathan Younger) for Harry, Harry punches him in the face in a panic. It hardly makes him a character to root for, and it’s especially out of place given Champagne’s own tentative experimentation with another woman (Candida Royalle). It’s tough for an audience watching today not to think Champagne clearly deserves a lot better than Harry.
Dated sexual politics aside, Champagne for Breakfast is worth a look. Vinegar Syndrome restored the film in 2K from its original 35mm negative, and the disc includes both hard and soft trailers for the film as well as alternate scenes from the R-rated version of the film. The film looks great, with vibrant color that really pops off the screen. Luckily for anyone who wants to check out more of Warfield),’s films, Vinegar Syndrome will be releasing a Drive-In Collection double feature of two of his softcore features in April. If the previous Peekarama disc and this release are any indication, that will be a release well worth checking out as well.
Cherry Tree (2015)
Originally published on Film Monthly 8 January 2016
One of Hammer Films’s first productions after its 2000s resurrection was David Keating’s Wake Wood, a tale of grieving parents who make a bargain to bring their daughter back to life. It was fairly well received, but did not receive much attention here in the States. Keating makes a return to British occult horror with his latest feature, Cherry Tree, which while not produced by Hammer displays a clear influence from the films of their 1960s heyday. Unfortunately, this updating of familiar UK horror tropes does not quite measure up to its predecessors.
Faith (Naomi Battrick) is a teenager struggling to get by in school. She has one friend, the similarly antisocial Amy (Elva Trill), but she spends a lot of time being bullied by the older girls on her field hockey team. Worse, her father Sean (Sam Hazeldine) is fighting a losing battle with leukemia. When he gets a grim prognosis, Faith is approached by her field hockey coach Sissy (Anna Walton) with a possible solution. Sissy is not only the school’s field hockey coach, but also the head of an ancient coven of witches who perform their rituals in a chamber deep beneath the earth among the roots of an ancient cherry tree. Sissy explains that her powers can cure Sean, but in exchange Faith must do a favor in return: bear a child for Sissy. Desperate to save her father, Faith agrees, but no deal with the devil ever goes according to plan.
Cherry Tree manages to conjure up some creepy atmosphere with its recurring imagery of centipedes and the simple, rough-cut masks of the coven. But unfortunately, the story just doesn’t make a lot of sense. There’s no build-up to Faith’s sudden acceptance that witches and magic are real–it’s literally handled in a single scene, when Sissy lays it all out for her in one big information dump. Still, the film is mostly solid until it reaches the (spectacularly unconvincing) scene of Faith giving birth. The final act is badly rushed, and major plot points are left totally unexplained. The entire film runs a brisk 85 minutes, so it is possible some of the conspicuously absent connective tissue in the story may have been left on the cutting room floor.
The best parts of the film are the impressively gruesome and well-designed practical makeup and effects, which is always good to see in a modern horror film. One of the monster designs in particular in the film’s climactic finale hearkens back to prime Hammer. Here too, though, the film stumbles at the very en
d with a terribly shoddy CGI effect so out of place that it seems spliced in from another movie. Cherry Tree is an intermittently worthwhile throwback to classic UK horror with a good cast and some strong effects work, but it sadly has too many hugely distracting flaws to stand alongside its influences in the British horror canon.
Cherry Tree Lane (2010)
Originally published on Film Monthly 2 February 2013
UK director Paul Andrew Williams first gained the attention of worldwide horror audiences with his 2008 feature The Cottage, a mix of crime comedy and slasher film. Many fans were charmed by Williams’ patchwork monster of a film, although others found both parts of the film somewhat lacking. Williams had a story credit on Tom Shankland’s excellent 2008 “killer kids” movie The Children, but his next film as director is 2010′s Cherry Tree Lane, which is just now seeing a US release. It should not come as much of a surprise that Cherry Tree Lane had a difficult time finding a US distributor to call home, given how grounded it is in British culture. But is it still worth a look?
Christine and Michael (Rachael Blake and Tom Butcher) are a married couple in their early 40s and parents of high-schooler Sebastian (Tom Kane). Michael comes home one evening and has an uncomfortable dinner with Christine. Their relationship problems seem to be nearing a boiling point: Michael keeps wanting to turn the TV on to avoid discussing anything of importance with Christine. Their dinner is interrupted by the sudden appearance of three young thugs looking for Sebastian, and before they know it they find themselves taped up and held at knifepoint.
The teens are led by Rian (Jumayn Hunter), acne-scarred and reptilian, who keeps Christine on the couch with him and makes increasingly invasive demands of her. Keeping Michael on the floor is Asad (Ashley Chin), much less tightly wound than Rian and obviously uncomfortable with the way Rian is handling the situation. Once Michael and Christine are subdued, Rian sends Teddy (Sonny Muslim) out into the rest of the flat to find Sebastian’s room, and then out to empty Michael’s bank accounts after they find his wallet. The trio is waiting for Sebastian to come home, and a ticking clock is constantly running– the film opens at “7:52 p.m.” and Sebastian is due home at 9:00, and the events of the film are played out in roughly real time.
Williams makes the interesting choice of shooting Cherry Tree Lane in 2.35 aspect ratio, a very wide screen image typically associated with Spaghetti Westerns and John Carpenter films. This is particularly unusual given that the entire running time of Cherry Tree Lane takes place in a single interior setting, and Williams rarely uses any close-ups or tight compositions to give the film any kind of claustrophobic feeling. Instead, the film uses wide shots with its characters often at a distance, giving the early scenes a tone of dispassionate observation that carries over into the home invasion. Williams seems to be interested in the concept of “the banality of evil,” giving his cruel teenage antagonists little more to do than talk on the phone and watch television.
Unfortunately, this does not exactly make for compelling viewing. There’s little tension until later in the film when the time is nearing 9:00, as the three teenagers make short work of Michael and Christine. Thirty seconds after they’re in the door, the kids have both adults completely tied up and helpless. The characterizations of the couple and the teenagers are also vague, giving the audience very little to empathize with on either side. Despite Asad trying to treat Michael with some kind of decency, the teenagers are basically faceless monsters. This makes Cherry Tree Lane a generic “home invasion” thriller without much to differentiate itself from any number of other similar films. Worse yet, the film ends at what feels like the point it should be moving into its climax, making it feel unfinished. Fans of recent UK horror will want to check it out, but compared to other genre efforts from the UK, Cherry Tree Lane comes up short.
Child Eater (2016)
Originally published on Film Monthly 31 March 2017
In a recent review for the movie Bloodrunners, I lamented the lack of ambition of too many independent horror filmmakers. While I do believe that lack of ambition is a problem for the genre and independent film scene as a whole, I also must recognize that there are pleasures in seeing familiar material well-executed. It’s admirable to see filmmakers whose reach exceeds their grasp, but not every movie has to break brand new ground in order to justify its existence. Movies like Babysitter Massacre and The House with 100 Eyes take the basics of the slasher and “found footage” horror films respectively and give those forms a little something extra to make them stand out from their peers. Finding these movies can be just as satisfying as finding those ambitious wild cards that seem to come out of nowhere. Debut feature filmmaker Erlingur Thoroddsen’s Child Eater fits comfortably in this category: It’s a solidly constructed, unpretentious horror show that delivers genre thrills without much fuss.
Helen (Cait Bliss) is a twentysomething living in a small town with her father (James Wilcox), who is the local Sheriff. She works at a diner but needs more money, so her father sets her up with a babysitting gig. The downside is that Matthew (Weston Wilson), the single father who has just moved to town with his son Lucas (Colin Critchley), lives in a house tied in local lore to a string of gruesome murders. Twenty-five years ago, Robert Bowery (Jason Martin) began abducting children, taking them to a small theme park in the nearby woods, and eating their eyes in hopes of restoring his own failing eyesight. Ginger (Melinda Chilton), the only one of Bowery’s victims to survive, believes Bowery has awakened to kill again. When Lucas disappears from his home under Helen’s watch, she and her sort-of boyfriend Tom (Dave Klasko) set out for the abandoned park to find him. Needless to say, they get a lot more than they bargained for.
Child Eater is pretty straightforward. It takes just enough time to set up its characters and their relationships and conflicts before jumping into the action. Thoroddsen makes excellent use of his locations, including the large old farmhouse where Matthew and Lucas live and most notably the grounds of the old theme park. Unlike many independent creature features, the titular monster here gets a fair amount of screen time without wearing out its welcome. Bowery’s design is simple but effective, incorporating a bit of Nosferatu‘s Graf Orlok with a more hulking physical presence. The practical effects are a refreshing change from low-budget indie horror’s over reliance on distractingly bad CG, and Thoroddsen is not shy about splashing that blood and gore around. What may be most impressive about the film’s approach, though, may be Thoroddsen’s willingness to allow creepy scenes and scares to play out mostly without the assistance of shrieking soundtrack cues. There are a few moments punctuated by loud noises, but many times when almost any other film would be telling you to jump out of your seat with its soundtrack, Child Eater trusts seeing its horrors on display are enough.
This commitment to being a well-constructed horror show above anything else gives Child Eater a throwback feeling without being overtly “retro” in any obvious way. Its low budget origins mostly show through in the acting–the cast is mostly just fine, but there are no star-making breakout performances here–and in some small issues in the textures of its digital cinematography. Neither of these issues are particularly distracting, though, especially when the overall craftsmanship of the film is so sturdy. It’s not the kind of movie that changes the game, and it probably wouldn’t change anyone’s mind who isn’t already interested in horror, but Child Eater is a strong debut for its writer/director and well worth a look for horror fans seeking traditional genre thrills ably delivered.
Children of the Night (2014)
Originally published on Film Monthly 18 November 2015
The vampire, one of cinema’s oldest monsters, is damned hard to make interesting in the twenty-first century. Since the silent film era, legions of filmmakers have tried to present different takes on the vampire mythology, and the monsters have enjoyed a cyclical popularity that most recently took the form of the Twilight phenomenon. That’s not to say that there haven’t been some very worthwhile vampire fil
ms over the last several years, but finding novel ways of approaching such a well-established monster–and making it work in a story that is engaging–is obviously a task outside the reach of many horror filmmakers. It’s always refreshing to find a film with a unique take on familiar material, and writer/director Iván Noel’s Limbo (released on Blu-ray and DVD in the U.S. as Children of the Night) brings a novel approach to the standard vampire tale.
Journalist Alicia (Sabrina Ramos) receives a message from Erda (Ana María Giunta) pleading with her to come visit Limbo, the childrens’ shelter Erda runs. The children there all suffer from what Erda first suggests is a disorder characterized by extreme sensitivity to sunlight. Erda explains that some children have been dying and wants Alicia to investigate and tell their story, but it’s not long before Alicia realizes the children aren’t sick–they’re vampires. For many years, Erda has been taking in young victims of “careless” vampires, immortals trapped in young bodies. Siegfried (Toto Muñoz), one of the vampires, was a friend of Alicia’s when she was a girl and wants to pick up where they left off, which makes Alicia understandably uncomfortable. While spending time with the kids, Alicia discovers that they are being attacked by a group of men who stalk the grounds and grab the kids when they’re out feeding. She’ll have to choose a side, but the situation may not be as clear-cut as it seems.
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