HALLOWEEN HORROR: Digging Up The Marrow (2014)

Known for horror movie series like Hatchet and Frozen, director Adam Green (playing himself) receives a wad of information in the mail from a fan who claims to have discovered real monsters.

Green decides this would be a brilliant subject for a documentary and heads out to meet the mysterious William Dekker (Twin Peaks' Ray Wise) and hopefully get a chance to see these so-called monsters.

Dekker spins him yarns about a subterranean world - accessed through holes in the ground usually found near cemeteries - called 'the Marrow', populated by an assemblage of deformed creatures.

Shot in a mock-documentary style (with swatches of 'shaky hand-held camera footage'), the film follows the childishly-excited Green and his sceptical cinematographer, and long-time collaborator, Will Barratt (also playing himself) as they interview Dekker and are then taken on a series of night-time reconnaissance missions, staking out an alleged Marrow entrance.  

Along the way, there are several cameos from known-genre figures (such as Kane Hodder, Mick Garris and Green's ex-wife Rileah Vanderbilt) who don't get what he is trying to achieve with this documentary and generally dismiss Dekker as a potentially-dangerous nutter or a con man.

This is more than a simple "what if monsters really existed?" movie, as a key element in the tale is that that question is being tackled by a horror movie director whose career is based on creating terrifying creatures.

The mockumentary is joyously incomplete, dangling plot threads that are never truly explained (such as the chronology of whatever is in Dekker's locked storeroom), but that's life. And the movie's brilliant ending justifies wholeheartedly why Green left his magnum opus unfinished.

I get why some people don't grok this. They're wrong. But I get it. Digging Up The Marrow is a slow burner, building up to its kick-in-the-teeth third act. Sure, there's a pretty terrifying jump scare about half-an-hour in, but the bulk of the film is about building atmosphere and creating a world.

I can only imagine that a lot of people - coming off the back of the Hatchet franchise - were caught off-guard by how subtle and intelligent Digging Up The Marrow is.

Thematically it owes a lot to the more-grounded tales of HP Lovecraft's oeuvre (particularly his "ghouls") and, of course, Clive Barker's Nightbreed, but the documentary style gives it a verisimilitude that is only undermined by the presence of such a recognisable actor as Ray Wise in a lead role.

Wise is superb, wholly convincing as the shady and driven Dekker, and I understand why Green cast him - to stress that this is 'make-believe' and not an attempt at a Blair Witch-style hoax. Yet I can't help but wonder how the film would have been received if Green had gone down that route with an unknown actor as Dekker.

In reality, Digging Up The Marrow came about because of a fortuitous confluence of events in Green's life. First, he received a highly detailed package of notes from a fan claiming to be the real story of Green's creation, Victor Crowley (from the Hatchet series).

Later the film director met artist Alex Pardee who gave him a booklet of illustrations for his exhibition Digging Up The Marrow that told the story of detective William Dekker commissioning him to draw creatures he'd encountered in his investigations of the Marrow.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Countess Dracula (1971)

In 17th Century Hungary, the elderly and recently widowed Countess Elisabeth Nádasdy (Ingrid Pitt) discovers she can temporarily restore her youth and libido by bathing in the blood of young virginal women.

Initially, her secret is only known to her castellan Captain Dobi (Nigel Green, a familiar face from such classics as Zulu and Jason & The Argonauts), who has loved the countess from afar for two decades and sees the death of her husband as making way for him, and her brainwashed nurse, Julie (Patience Collier).

At the reading of her husband's will, the Countess finds herself attracted to a new arrival, Lt. Imre Toth (Sandor Elès, who has an air of Jonathan Rhys Meyers about him), the son of her husband's wartime colleague and heir to the Count's stables and collection of valuable horses.

Unfortunately, the will divides the late Count's estate between the Countess and their daughter, Ilona (Lesley-Anne Down, of North and South, and Dallas), who has yet to arrive back from a stay of many years in Vienna.

Thus, the Countess instructs Dobi to kidnap Ilona on her return to the area, and she is bundled off as a prisoner of mute woodsman Janco (Peter May), who's not the sharpest tool in the box but still manages to thwart her multiple escape attempts.

In the absence of the real Ilona, the de-aged Countess assumes the role of her daughter and seduces cavalry officer Toth.

However, because her dark magic never lasts longer than about 48 hours, the Countess finds herself switching between the 'characters' she plays in the castle, while also charging Dobi with finding her fresh victims.

The wise old librarian Grand Master Fabio (Maurice Denham) quickly becomes suspicious and starts to investigate the goings-on in the castle, but this comes at a cost.  

However, his downfall opens the eyes of Toth, just as the castle is forced into "lockdown" by the Chief Bailiff, Captain Balogh (Peter Jeffrey), who concludes that the person responsible for the recent spate of murders could be among the Countess's staff.

Blackmailed into staying, Toth is forced to go through with the planned wedding to the fake Ilona, but the Countess needs another bath of blood to maintain her looks and energy for the honeymoon.

With no visitors coming to the castle, the jealous Dobi has to retrieve a virgin for exsanguination so his unrequited love can find some kind of happiness with a younger man.

Guess who he brings back?

A solid, if ultimately unremarkable, slice of Hammer Horror fare, with music from Harry Robertson of Hawk The Slayer fame, this is a creative compression of the legend of the real Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory, a real 16th Century serial killer said to have bathed in the blood of her victims.

Of course, the Countess isn't a classic cinematic vampire - there are no fangs on display, and she doesn't drink the blood, but rather uses it as skin cream - so the title Countess Dracula (shoehorned into the dialogue right at the last moment) is a slight misnomer. 

Mainly enjoyable for the charms of Ingrid Pitt, the film certainly improves the closer it gets to its climax, but to modern eyes one can't help thinking that with some judicious trimming of the fat this could have made a really good hour-long shocker.

I went into Countess Dracula pretty certain I'd seen it before, but as the tale unfolded, the more convinced I became that it was actually 'new' to me and I'd simply conflated it with the many other 'boobs and blood' vampire films I've sought out over the years.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Crimson Peak (2015)

At the turn of the 20th Century, American heiress and aspiring author Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) is swept off her feet by impoverished English baronet Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) and whisked back to Cumberland to live in the ancient and isolated Allerdale Hall, with Sir Thomas's sinister sister, Lucille (Jessica Chastain).

The house is crumbling, sinking into the red clay that was once their family's fortune, and it soon becomes clear that Sir Thomas and Lucille have ulterior motives for bringing Edith into their bosom.

Cut off from the nearby community by snowstorms, and not realising that her childhood sweetheart Dr Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam) has pursued her across the ocean, Edith struggles with her failing health as she tries to piece together the mysterious backstory of the Sharpe family.

The Sharpe siblings' scheming is rather predictable, almost clichéd, but Crimson Peak is also a Gothic ghost story told through the lens of an adventure movie, where the monstrous ghosts are really just "metaphors for the past" - as in Edith's own novel.

Although sold to the public as a Guillermo Del Toro horror story, with all the shudders that implies, Crimson Peak is more about the family drama and Edith's entrapment than any of the supernatural gore and special effects.

The spooky elements come across as more exciting than frightening. Even the odd jump scares are delivered with such class that they don't feel cheap.

For the little impact the ghosts have on the action, they could almost be dismissed as hallucinations brought on by Edith's deteriorating state of mind - except for the fact that on a couple of occasions they appear to be seen by others.

Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain stand out as the Sharpes, the dark heart of this tale. Hiddleston outdoes his Loki, alternating between sympathetic, scheming, and conflicted, while Chastain just gets increasingly more bonkers as the plot unravels.

Although there really isn't much depth to the film, Crimson Peak is visual masterpiece, from its A-list stars, to the Victorian costumes, and the stunning set design of Allerdale Hall, which is almost a character in itself.

In truth I wish more time had been spent exploring the haunted mansion, as we are only given tantalising snippets of its many halls and rooms.

As with the rest of the film, you come away feeling you've only glimpsed a fraction of what was there, and are left wanting to know more.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: The Pool (2014)

Having lost his job at the bank, Lennaert (Gijs Scholten van Aschat), an overenthusiastic outdoorsman, takes his wife, Sylke (Carine Crutzen), their sons Jan (Alex Hendrickx) and Marco (Chris Peters), his future business partner, the recently divorced Rob (Bart Klever) and his daughter, Emilie (Jamie Grant), on a hiking trip deep into the woods.

After a long search they find an idyllic camp site - in a fenced off area - by a small lake, far away from any sign of civilization.

Their first evening goes well, and following a hearty meal, Rob shares a folk tale about people disappearing in the region.

The next morning, all their fresh supplies are spoiled and their gas canisters are empty.

From there, things just get worse.

Despite using Len's high tech digital compass any efforts they make to head back to their car, or simply get away from their campsite, results in them appearing on the other side of the pool.

Then their tinned food is ruined, forcing them to hunt for edibles. 

Jan starts hearing voices and having strange dreams about the pool, while Len has visions of an ethereal beauty (Evil's Katja Herbers) in the woods, who claims she can help him get out of his current predicament.

As the situation escalates, deceptions and hidden passions are brought to light, tempers fray, and violence flares.

The Pool (aka De Poel) is an excellent 76-minute Dutch horror that's superficially Blair Witch Project meets Lord Of The Flies.

The disintegration of the family units is powerful stuff, with the tension ratchetting up as their disastrous camping trip goes from bad to worse, aided by the subtle infusion of supernatural prodding.

What starts off as simple uncomfortable family friction is manipulated into something deadly.

Having deliberately entered an area of the forest where they were not supposed to be, the families have fallen under the spell of a mysterious supernatural entity, the vengeful ghost of a woman (possibly a suspected witch?) drowned in the lake who is seeking her own freedom.

A solid, if slightly predictable and not wholly original, the film is carried by some excellent performances, particularly from Gijs Scholten van Aschat (who co-wrote The Pool with director Chris W. Mitchell).

Len's mental collapse is central to the plot, and drives many of the beats in the script.

My only slight disappointment is how little we see of Katja Herbers, but it's for a good narrative reason and makes the ending that much more powerful.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Hatchet (2007)

Before he made Sexy Nightmare Slayers, Adam Green first became a big name in geeky households through his wonderfully OTT homage to old school slasher horror, Hatchet.

A simple set-up sees a gaggle of potential victims stranded at night in the Louisiana swamps when their "ghost tour" boat runs aground.

Lost, cold and wet they soon discover they are not alone and that the area's mythical bogeyman, Victor Crowley (Kane 'Jason Voorhees' Hodder), is after their blood.

Taking the best of the supernatural slasher genre and blending in some almost Scooby Doo-like humour - along with the requisite quotient of boobs and blood - Green drowns his audience in Grand Guignol levels of gore and mutilation that are so far fetched as to be shockingly humorous.

As much a comedy as a horror film, Hatchet is pure entertainment for horror groupies. It has no deep message or hidden subtext; it just aims to shock and amuse in equal measure by balancing each moment of graphic violence with a cheesy joke, witty one-liner or amusing pratfall.

Emphasising the movie's role as a loving, but light-hearted, homage to movies like Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday The 13th, Halloween, Candyman etc we are teased with all too brief cameos by the iconic Tony Todd and Robert Englund.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer fans (well, the males anyway) will also be delighted to know that Mercedes McNab (aka Harmony Kendall) not only has a large role in this as aspiring softcore porn actress Misty, but also spends at least a third of her time on camera topless.

Yes, it's that sort of film!

There's not enough originality in the personality of Victor Crowley - a Jason Voorhees-like mutant child bullied by his peers then accidentally set alight during a Halloween prank (viz. The Burning), who comes back "from the dead" (Freddy et al) with the powers of superhuman strength and indestructibility (Jason again) and a desire for revenge against mankind - but I don't think that's the point.

For me Green is simply trying to reclaim the genre, take it back to a halcyon age - but with a 21st Century budget and effects - to prevent its continued Twilightification. He's making "horror" truly "horrible" again, reclaiming the genre prerogative of  making the antagonist the audience draw, but without sinking to the sickening depths of the torture porn sub-genre.

Even the ending, while by no means original, is still perfectly in-keeping with the old school vibe of the piece... and obviously left the barn door open for Hatchet 2!

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Honeydew (2020)

 

Botany student Rylie (Malin Barr) and her waiter-cum-actor boyfriend Sam (Sawyer Spielberg, son of Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw) are travelling across New England, so she can research an outbreak of an ergot-like fungus called "sordico" that has been devastating local farms.

After their attempt to camp in a field is interrupted by the land owner in the middle of the night, they find their car won't start and so have to walk to the nearest property in the hopes of being able to call for assistance.

They turn up at the home of eccentric old farmer Karen (Barbara Kingsley), who lives in a rundown house with her brain-damaged son, Gunni (Jamie Bradley), who passes his time watching Popeye cartoons or staring at static on the TV.

Karen phones a neighbour to come over and help, but he never turns up and so the young couple are forced to share an awkward evening meal with Karen and Gunni, before the strange old lady shows them to a basement bedroom where they can pass the night.

Despite his medically-necessary dietary regime, Sam can't settle and so goes back upstairs to eat some more.

He is surprised by Gunni, who seems to be trying to tell him something, but then Sam passes out and has a Popeye-themed hallucination about his stomach condition.

Upon waking, he can't find Rylie - or Karen - and starts to search the house and its environs, but wandering into a barn he is ambushed and drugged.

Written and directed by Devereux Milburn, Honeydew is Texas Chain Saw Massacre family dynamics seen through a David Lynch or League of Gentlemen lens, with the extended sequence of Karen's hospitality to her guests being a marvellous, nerve-testing, exercise in the horror of the peculiar and uncomfortable.

Milburn clearly likes to push his audience as far as they can comfortably go, then push them a bit further.

No matter how bizarre the behaviour of the strange hostess - and her son - gets it feels so real and genuine, there is clearly something going on that the young guests aren't privy to.

While there is shock and gore in Honeydew, the best weapon in its arsenal is discomfort. 

From the start, this atmosphere is accentuated by unusual sound design and experimental split screen, which could be construed as affectation, but if you allow yourself to be drawn into this nightmare, it can be genuinely unnerving.

Having taken a reasonably cliché set-up - and some very on-the-nose foreshadowing of the cause of the madness ahead - the writer/director puts a impressively disturbing spin on things.

Even when you think the action has moved into more familiar captivity tropes, matters continue to unfold in dark, weird, perverse, and unexpected ways. 

For a moment, Devereux Milburn lulls you into thinking Honeydew might turn out to be standard Hollywood horror fare after all, but then he swiftly pulls the rug from under your feet.

But then the frights aren't over. 

The bleak denouement seems to go on and on (but in a good way), and the more you dwell on what is happening before your eyes the more it'll get under your skin.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: It Follows (2014)

What joy to find an original horror film, one that is not a creatively-bankrupt sequel, tired 'found footage' or "based" on some bullshit 'true story'.

Writer/director David Robert Mitchell's It Follows is a beautifully languid take on the familiar slasher film trope of "avoid teenage sex", turning it on its head and giving it a retro-modern style, thanks to its Detroit locations and fantastic score by Rich Vreeland (aka Disasterpeace).

The closest touchstone I can conjure is the idea of the original Nightmare On Elm Street but as directed by David Lynch.

Carefree Jay (Maika Monroe) is a 19-year-old girl dating the seemingly-normal Hugh (Jake Weary), but after they have sex for the first time things turn weird.

Hugh kidnaps Jay to an abandoned parking garage and explains to her he has infected her with a supernatural STD... she is now cursed to be forever followed by an unrelenting, slow-walking, shape-changing creature (that only those infected with this curse can see) that will methodically hunt her down unless she can pass the curse on to someone else.

However, once "It" catches up with the infected person and kills them, it then turns its attention back to the person who passed the curse on to them and so on, working its way back down the chain of infection.

Death, it seems, is inevitable and can only be delayed.

Once back home, Jay enlists her younger sister, Kelly (Lili Sepe) and their friends - which includes the hormonally-driven Paul (Keir Gilchrist), who has been crushing on Jay since they were kids - to keep her safe from her unseen stalker.

It Follows isn't perfect, and occasionally slips off the rails so you catch yourself thinking "waitaminute, that doesn't make sense", but generally you'll get swept up in the verisimilitude of the scenario, the dream-like aesthetic, convincing teenage portrayals and the atmospheric settings (accentuated by the John Carpenteresque soundtrack).

What also makes a pleasant change is we aren't spoon-fed explanations for what "It" is and why it does what it does. There is no way for the protagonists to discover this, so why should we. It is pure nightmare/urban myth fodder from start to finish.

The old school Elm Street comparison continues with Paul's pragmatic scheme to kill the creature - even though, ultimately, it kind of backfires and they have to resort to a more direct approach.

The ending is left open - again, this reflects the protagonists lack of solid evidence for what has occurred - but that doesn't mean It Follows needs a sequel. We don't need to know who created this curse. The horror works so much better with not knowing.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Old (2021)

Old was 2021's horror offering from the twistmeister himself, M. Night Shyamalan, only it's not really a twist - the central conceit revolves simply around something that happens to a gaggle of holidaymakers.

A disparate group of vacationers on an island break are directed to a secluded beach by the hotel staff, hidden beyond a cliff line of  strange rocks.

Only once there, strange - and often gruesome - things start to happen.

Quite quickly they deduce that there is something about the beach - probably the rock formations - that is distorting time, so that they all age about a year for every half-hour they spend on the beach.

Unfortunately, it's seemingly impossible to leave as well, as trying to pass beyond the influence of the mysterious rocks is like a diver suffering the bends, on land this means splitting headaches and staggering back onto the beach, at sea - trying to swim out against the current - this is much more fatal.

Although cuts, and other such wounds, heal themselves rapidly the adults eventually develop physical infirmities associated with old age.

But for the children the change is much more dramatic as their bodies grow and develop, while their mental age remains as it was.

Let's be honest, as if often the case with a Shyamalan horror film, the set-up for Old is genuinely intriguing, but at 100 minutes (plus almost 10 minutes of credits) you can't help feeling this would have worked way better as an hour-long episode of the Twilight Zone.

Written and directed by Shyamalan, based upon a graphic novel (Sandcastle) by Pierre-Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters, the story gets to the meat of the action quite quickly, but because there are so many players on the beach it feels like it takes unnecessarily long to work through everyone's story arc.

Shyamalan also takes the odd decision, given that this is a 15-certificate horror movie, to not show several grim incidents that happen in the first half of the movie, instead relying entirely on the reaction of the other characters.

Therefore, for instance, we get the bizarre sequence where someone declares "the dog is dying" (one of the people brought their pet dog to the beach), people 'ooh' and 'urrgh', but we never see what it is they're looking at or how the area's special qualities actually affect the dog... nor is it ever seen (or mentioned) again.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to see a dog suffering from rapid onset ageing, but if you're going to write it out of the story so drastically, why bring it in in the first place?

If there is a message in Old, it's about not wasting your allotted time on Earth, carpe diem and all that.

There is a neat wrap-up to the narrative, and a major sci-fi infodump explaining what's going on and why, but the ultimate resolution feels a bit clumsy. While by no means a 'happy' ending, again it's a  decision that doesn't gel totally with the body horror vibe that Old gives off.

A darker, more shocking end might have given the story weight, with the horrific suggestion that it could still happen to others in the future.

HALLOWEEN HORROR: Trailer Park Of Terror (2008)

Trying to escape her trailer trash life, Norma (Nichole Hiltz) has got herself a townie boyfriend, only the local bullies accidentally kill him and so Norma storms off, strikes a deal with The Devil (who bears more than a passing resemblance to Stephen King's Randall Flagg aka The Walkin' Dude aka The Man In Black), returns to the trailer park, kills everyone and burns down the park with herself in it.

Twenty years later a minibus of juvenile delinquents, returning from Bible camp with their chaperone, Pastor Lewis (Matthew Del Negro) crashes in a rain storm and they seek shelter in the seemingly abandoned trailer park.

However, they are greeted by Norma, who offers to put them up for the night and that's when they discover they are in the Trailer Park Of Terror (bwahahahahaha!)

This 90-minute horror starts off promisingly enough, but once the ghost-zombies start to arrive it degenerates into a very by-the-numbers gorefest - with the "final girl" telegraphed from the moment she appears, as the only one of the young reprobates with any degree of personality and charm.

A strange brew, borrowing elements from sources as diverse as splatterpunk and Nightmare On Elm Street (several of the kiddies are offed in ways appropriate to their single character-defining quirks), things further spin out of control with musical numbers (courtesy of an annoying zombie with a guitar - a gimmick that grows old very fast) and a strange demolition derby climax!

By letting the story initially unfold chronologically, thus letting us see the inciting incident that creates the supernatural horror (facts usually discovered in the course of horror film, rather than at the start), I thought Trailer Park Of Terror was going to put a new spin on this kind of "teenagers trapped in the middle of nowhere by flesh-eating monsters" movie.

Sadly it doesn't and even the half-hearted attempt at a twist ending is fumbled. Apparently the movie was based on a comic book series and clearly this ending was a stab at leaving the door open for a sequel.