Psychomania Review
Psychomania is a very, very odd 1971 British horror movie. When I first saw it years ago as a teenager, I’ll be honest, I thought it was terrible. Now, I think it may be a work of genius. I was lucky enough to see it in London a couple of years ago as part of a 1970s British horror season. Before it, in a double-bill, they showed one of Hammer’s Dracula movies that elicited a hushed respect. As Psychomania began it was interesting for me to watch the audience, and see fidgeting break out, whispering and early tittering giving way by the mid-point of the film to open giggling. Tom, the suspiciously posh leader of the aptly named Living Dead biker gang, might be very unthreatening, but he’s got two things going for him. A gang of mainly morons who’ll do anything he says-even kill themselves to come back as law breaking zombies, and a mother who made a pact with the Devil so can handily arrange this for him. It’s hard to know where to start with describing the film, it simply emanates strangeness. The opening credits play over what looks like a montage of some drug hazed motorcycle proficiency test video, all the deaths( and there are lots of them) are bloodless, while the suicides come off as unintentionally hilarious. Like most horror movies of this period- see The Wicker Man and Blood on Satan’s Claw for further proof, there is a folksong sing-along segued in, amusingly to Tom being buried upright on his motorbike. Beryl Reed, (who seems far too Cockney to be Tom’s mother, unless she bundled him off to a public school at a very early age- “allo, darling”), George Sanders(who killed himself after making this), and Robert Hardy, trying out a very odd Northern accent help proceedings along. There’s a strange emphasis on words, and fake gravitas applied to questions-“you’ve been in the locked room again.” The soundtrack is gothic religious synthesizers predating Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom by a good fifteen years, and the end, although signposted is still a great-‘what the hell just happened ’ moment. I also like to think that James Cameron got his police station invasion scene in The Terminator from this, even if he didn’t. All in all, this needs to be experienced( and I do mean experienced rather than just seen). Personally, I get fonder of it every time I see it. 7/10
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
The Children DVD Review
The Children (2008)
Yet another great little British horror movie, with more scares per minute than most Hollywood product have in their entire running time. Unlike the previously reviewed Isolation, this revolves around a situation so mundane, it gives an added frission once events start spiraling out of control. Basically two upper middle class( and because of it, slightly annoying in their perfectly contented lives, although still realistic), sisters, with their husbands and children gather for a Christmas holiday, in an idyllic but seculded, snow covered country house. Things start small with the usual family disagreements. The eldest child, and heroine to an extent, is Casey, the teenager who’d rather be at a party with friends than here playing happy families and babysitting. Hannah Tointon gives her a great believability, swinging from selfishness and burgeoning sexuality- (that skirt can’t get much shorter, and her tattoo is a secret kept from her parents), to a mother defending fighter when the chips are down. Also her mother still calling her Mouse, shows she’s not so long from childhood herself, a point brought home in the chillingly open ending. The other children start getting sick starting with the youngest- they range from about six to ten in age, from some unseen virus. Cleverly this echoes one of the mother’s fears about illness, and the other husband’s get rich scheme about shipping Chinese medicine. The director also plays on audience expectations that it’s actually difficult to tell when a child turns psychotic, as any family is an environment of controlled chaos, with potential ( and some life-threatening), accidents lurking around every corner. There are many subtle touches among the later carnage, such as the children playing with, and later hanging up the cat’s collar in their camp- an uneasy sign that they have slipped into psychosis. Once in full swing, this also contains several scenes of child death ( normally through self-defense by adults), that you could never see this being green-lit in America, where this is taboo territory above all else. Although it is not gloated about, but handled in the matter of fact way of survival, of not just the fittest, but the most vicious and sneaky. This is worsened by the children still acting as though they’re only playing games. The ending, with the appearance of all of the other (neighborhood?) children in the woods, may be unrealistic, but then again, does explain why the emergency services haven’t turned up. This could be a nationwide pandemic, or even a localized outbreak, and perhaps a 28 weeks later expanded scope sequel is needed. 9/10
Yet another great little British horror movie, with more scares per minute than most Hollywood product have in their entire running time. Unlike the previously reviewed Isolation, this revolves around a situation so mundane, it gives an added frission once events start spiraling out of control. Basically two upper middle class( and because of it, slightly annoying in their perfectly contented lives, although still realistic), sisters, with their husbands and children gather for a Christmas holiday, in an idyllic but seculded, snow covered country house. Things start small with the usual family disagreements. The eldest child, and heroine to an extent, is Casey, the teenager who’d rather be at a party with friends than here playing happy families and babysitting. Hannah Tointon gives her a great believability, swinging from selfishness and burgeoning sexuality- (that skirt can’t get much shorter, and her tattoo is a secret kept from her parents), to a mother defending fighter when the chips are down. Also her mother still calling her Mouse, shows she’s not so long from childhood herself, a point brought home in the chillingly open ending. The other children start getting sick starting with the youngest- they range from about six to ten in age, from some unseen virus. Cleverly this echoes one of the mother’s fears about illness, and the other husband’s get rich scheme about shipping Chinese medicine. The director also plays on audience expectations that it’s actually difficult to tell when a child turns psychotic, as any family is an environment of controlled chaos, with potential ( and some life-threatening), accidents lurking around every corner. There are many subtle touches among the later carnage, such as the children playing with, and later hanging up the cat’s collar in their camp- an uneasy sign that they have slipped into psychosis. Once in full swing, this also contains several scenes of child death ( normally through self-defense by adults), that you could never see this being green-lit in America, where this is taboo territory above all else. Although it is not gloated about, but handled in the matter of fact way of survival, of not just the fittest, but the most vicious and sneaky. This is worsened by the children still acting as though they’re only playing games. The ending, with the appearance of all of the other (neighborhood?) children in the woods, may be unrealistic, but then again, does explain why the emergency services haven’t turned up. This could be a nationwide pandemic, or even a localized outbreak, and perhaps a 28 weeks later expanded scope sequel is needed. 9/10
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