No.229 : The Aftermath (1982)

 

The Aftermath at the IMDb

This would be an easy film to rip to shreds with its poor production values, terrible acting and shocking script but it was so rubbish that you can’t help but enjoy it.

We open in space with three astronauts returning fro a year long mission. They blame a radio malfunction for a lack of communication and possibly for one actor being on a different set than the other two. Their spaceship model judders along on its string as it makes the hazardous decent back to earth. They manage to crash in the sea, just outside of Los Angeles, the plan being lots of people will notice them and come out to help.

Sadly no one witnesses their spectacular crash landing which must have been a waste of the fifty pence spent on the special effects. One actor manages to escape the film by dying but the other two are separated as they swim towards the beach. Our hero, Newman, is first ashore and thinks he has found some help, but alas his sunbathers forgot the Factor 50 and are all burnt out corpses.

He soon ties up with injured comrade, Mathews, and the two set up a camp only to be attacked by some blokes in Halloween masks. As they fight them off we follow a parallel storyline which sees some brigands attack a group of clean looking survivors and kidnap the woman after killing the men and children. Their leader ‘Cutter’ likes to laugh diabolically and never misses a chance to do so. Meanwhile we learn the fate that has befallen mankind has led to an acute shortage of bras.

Our two astronauts, now shaved and in civilian clothes, split up and Newman stumbles into a museum where the curator gives out loads of exposition before expiring and leaving our hero in charge of a young boy, Chris. The two bond and soon meet up with the lovely Sarah whom we earlier saw escaping from Cutter’s busy hands. They carry out an attack on Cutter’s base and free a mother and her daughter and, for a while, a brave new start seems possible.

Alas, the production finds another vat of fake blood to spill to we are left to guess who will survive the film and will anyone in the whole exercise ever work again?

This was a gawd awful film with some of the poorest acting you’ll ever see. Different film stocks appear throughout - often in the same scene and characters fire shots in daylight that hit targets at night. The budget appears to have been blown on squibs and fake blood, as the sets, models and costumes are as poor as you will ever see.

The timeline doesn’t make any sense with the astronauts only a way a year yet the children have known nothing other than the poorly acted horror they inhabit. Pristine jeeps are abundant, but the city model is a burnt out shell. One big fight moves from the desert to the city rooftops which show no damage whatsoever.

Picking nits would be too easy however, in a film where you could pick out rhinos and still leave bigger stuff behind. 

The hero character ‘Newman’ was played by the same bloke who wrote the script and directed the film so it’s almost a proto ‘The Room’. The only minor talent on show is Sid Haig as the villainous Cutter who just laughs a lot and does some dry humping - a good way to easy fifty bucks I guess!

Not a film to recommend but if you have time to kill, find it on Amazon Prime for a few laughs and some outrageous bad behaviour!

THE Tagline : You’ll Be Lucky to Survive This!  52%

No.196 : The Signal (2007)

The Signal at the IMDb

There is another ‘The Signal’ out there dating from 2014 which has three times more votes than this one on the IMDb. We didn’t get where we are by being popular, so it’s the less seen one for us.

I went into this cold and thought it was a tonal mess. It was only when reading up on the film I see that the three segments or ‘transmissions’ were filmed by three different directors using different genres to tell their part of the story. I’m not sure what this approach added to the project, apart from confusion, as it was grating to see the film jump about the place with an in-cohesive narrative.

Anyway, we open with our heroine, Mya, getting out of bed. She keeps her bra on in bed but takes her knickers off. Fair enough. Mya is having an affair and is worried that she can’t get though to her husband to spin her lies due to a strange signal on her phone. The TV also displays strobing patterns and we suspect that this is ‘the signal’ of the title. And we’re right!

Mya heads home and meets up with her suspicious and controlling husband and his two friends. They are all pissed off that the can’t watch the game due to ‘the signal’ and tempers start to fray. Before long random people, including the husband's friend who happens to have a baseball bat, become homicidal maniacs and the killing begins.

Mya gets away but hooks up with a neighbour and the two head out to find that the city is aflame with murders happening all over.

The seconds transmission sees a couple setting up for a New Year’s party. Bodies have already begun to stack up with the wife either mental or in denial. This section is played for laughs and doesn’t sit well alongside the first which was straight out horror. This one goes on too long and there is too much farce on show with comedy clubbings, Vic and Bob Style.

The last section charts Mya’s journey to the station where she had agreed to meet her lover before the chaos started. Will she make it? Will ‘the signal’ be explained? And how come that disembodied head is talking?

This was a cheap looking, horror satire that overextended itself in terms of ambition and effects. Some bits were decent with others just looking plain daft. One chap gets his head cut off and it’s later reanimated so it can be interrogated. Good science! This was in the comedy section but it just looked daft.

If they had kept to the tone of the first section throughout this could have been a serviceable survival post apocalyptic thriller. Instead you were taken out of the action with the slapstick of chapter two and you also lose sight of your main character for 30 minutes which is never going to be satisfying.

You won’t know anyone in the cast but they were mostly serviceable and I liked Anessa Ramsey in the lead, despite thinking she was the waitress out of ‘Always Sunny’ for most of the film.

You could say this was a brave experiment in mixing genres but to me it was just a mess and a waste of time. A couple of good kills and getting hit by a frying pan is never going to sustain a 100 minute film.

The Tag Line : 3 Directors? More is less, 53%

No.154 : The Rezort (2015)

The Rezort at the IMDb

Don’t worry spelling pedants, the title is correct. The ‘Z’ stands for ‘Zombie’ and there are plenty in this British survival horror.

The film opens with a large and annoying media dump. For some reason all the clips are overlaid with static and a lot of jerky cuts. I guess this is to make you uncomfortable and edgey, but for me it was just irritating. I was worried that the whole thing was going to be a ‘found footage’ affair but thankfully it changed to a conventional film after the title card.

We learn that it has been seven years since an epidemic that caused the dead to come alive and eat the living. So far, so very predictable. Despite the loss of 2 billion people the government deem it appropriate to leave one island off the coast of Africa full of the undead, so that the rich can enjoy holidays shooting them up. It seems a daft concept, but is there another plan afoot that would explain, if not exactly justify the risk?

We meet the usual cavalcade of misfits who go through the orientation before being allowed out into the island. This obviously allows the viewer to know what’s going on and to anticipate the pitfalls, which come on plenty and often.

Strangely for a resort that caters for rich asshole hunters none of our crew want to be there. We meet a single women who was dumped at the alter and is using the non-refundable ticket herself. We also get some team gamers who won a competition and a dull woman and her Irish boyfriend who have less life that most of the island’s inhabitants.

 The big star is the enigmatic Dougray Scott who may be mysterious or he may have forgotten his script. We’re not sure why he’s there (bad agent?) but he does have a bigger gun than everyone else so we know he’s to be taken seriously.

As is the law for any futuristic theme park things soon go awry with one visitor’s attempts to steal some files for a refugee agency causing a virus to infect the system and quickly close down all the security protocols. They do this from an underground bunker that was nicked wholesale from ‘Westworld’.

Strangely the manacles on the zombies are computer controlled and once these are off the undead go on a neck biting rampage. Still it’ll be OK - the island zombies or ‘shufflers’ have been there for seven years and are slow - only fresh ones can run about a bit. Wait, were are these speedy zombies coming from? Is there an even more nefarious scheme in place? As our diminishing band of heroes trek across the island to safety we wonder if the plot is as obvious as first flagged and will we all learn to care just a little bit before the inevitable conclusion?

This was a decent slice of hokum but it offered nothing new to an already overloaded genre. The attempts to layer in a bit of social commentary were heavy handed with the blue teddy bear taking the role of the red coat in ‘Schindler’s List’. Obviously it would be hard to mirror that film’s level of gravitas when you have a bunch of Z listers running about screaming as a never ending hoard of zombies jump out from every corner.

Having Scott carry the film was a mistake as he had no charisma at all. He wasn’t burdened with any backstory at all and, although tasty with his sniper rifle, he had little to do except lead the chase to the exit - a path no doubt mirrored by all unlucky enough to see this dud in the cinema.

There was the fun of seeing every other theme park and zombie film ever made homaged with ‘28 Weeks Later’ getting a few nods along with ‘Jurassic Park’ and ‘Westworld’ - film and TV versions.

It was competently made but I had zero interest in any of the dull characters - apart from ‘Marty’ off ’Lead Balloon’ - wondered what he’d been up to!

The ending was clearly meant to make us think and revalue our own morals, but frankly when you set your film in a zombie theme park you are asking a lot of your audience if you want anything more than the odd grunt and lack of dribble.

Risible nonsense with a moral high ground that hardly befits the brain dead premise. ‘eat brainnsss?’ need to have one first!

The TAG Line -  World War Zzzzzzzz  45%

No.143 : The Gate (1987)

The Gate at the IMDb

When I was scrolling through the vast THE Movies to see database I stopped at this one as it starred Stephen (it’s a good name) Dorff who is usually good value. It was only after about ten minutes, that I realised that Dorff was playing the 10 year old hero in this 1987 horror. Who knew celebrities aged at the same rate as the rest of us?! Dorff was actually 13/14 when playing the role of Glen but looks younger. He must have had a big spurt later on, as he was in ‘Backbeat’ just 7 years later.

‘The Gate’ isn’t great, but it was better than I thought it was going to be at the 15 minute mark - it had all the hallmarks of an after school special, but it soon branched out into a master class of horror effects and teenage screams.

We start with Glen having a hell of a time - his garden is a nightmare and his tree house gets hit by lightening - but wait! It was only a dream! He gets up and finds men taking away a fallen tree in his garden and dismantling his tree house - was it a dream? Yes but a prescient one!

His McCann like parents announce that they are going away for the weekend and are leaving Al, Glen’s 14 year old sister, in charge. Glenn isn’t to go out as he’s been grounded due to nearly setting the house on fire due to his hobby of firing rockets - remember that for later. Al is told not to have a party so immediately we get a cut to the tamest teenage party you’ll ever see - plenty of 80’s hair and legwarmers though.

Glen is too busy investigating the hole left by the fallen tree in his garden with his nerdy friend Terry. They have found a geode worth loads of bucks and decide to dig for more - huge mistake! They find a biggie but this unleashes Hell, or at least loads of guys in demon suits, shot in forced perspective (thanks IMDb) - but for all the world it looks like stop motion.

Things get worse with a dead dog and a zombie in the wall - can the gate be closed or will hell reign of Earth?

This film was decent fun with plenty of nods to every teen and ‘summon the devil’ film that you’ve ever seen. There an early seen when words appear on an off brand Etch-a-Sketch - ‘Don’t read them out’ I thought. Of course they do and smoke starts billowing out of the gate!

The effects were good and I especially liked the demonic minions despite them being pretty ineffectual. The big boss at the end was less good as was the conclusion which was a bit pat.

It was well done however with almost the whole film taking place on one set. It felt claustrophobic without being limited, although I kept thinking that the parents would be mad when they get home.

The mostly young cast were fine with some frankly terrible dialogue to contend with. Most of the exposition comes from a heavy metal album sleeve so you knew it wasn’t meant to be taken too seriously. Dorff does well in his first major role and he kept the right side of being too cute. His sister and nerdy pal were worse, as was the ‘frat pack’ of beer drinking assholes who wandered in and out of scenes.

There were enough good bits to keep you interested and I especially liked Terry’s dance with his late mother which was then revealed to be with the family’s aged dog Angus.

There wasn’t too much gore, and it was more laughs than horror, but if you are looking for some mindless fun you could do worse than to open ‘The Gate’. Sorry.

THE Tag Line : You’ll Rate ‘The Gate’! 69%