Archive for the ‘Elite’ Category
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Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 25th, 2003
Synopsis
The plot unfolds with the logic of a nightmare, thereby defying linear description. Roughly,what happens is that a group of teens stage a violent escape from a rehab centre, and wind upat the house of our heroine (Lizzy Mahon). Here reality breaks down completely, as Mahon andthe others are tormented by one supernatural event after another, all of which seem to havesomething to do with the actions of Mahon’s father and grandfather. There are many strikinglybeautiful and/or …
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 2nd, 2003
Synopsis
Two couples looking for something to do on the weekend decide to drive down to BeavertailLake and look for a UFO that supposedly landed there. (There’s a $100,000 reward if they findevidence.) Along the way, they squabble, meet odd characters, and get lost in the woods. Thisis another film with improvised dialogue. Improv is a tricky form to get right in films. It worksin films like Best in Show and The Blair Witch Project because a) the very forms of thosenarratives (pseud…
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 11th, 2003
Synopsis
Kate Davis (Chantal Contouri) is, unbeknownst to her, a descendant of Countess Bathory. Aninternational cabal of vampires kidnap Kate, take her to their industrial blood farm (wherepeople, called “blood cows,” are milked and the product is place in milk cartons). There Kate issubjected to extensive psychological conditioning, the purpose of which is to make her reclaimher heritage. The concept is interesting, taking the idea of the vampire as the upper class bleedingthe low…
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on February 10th, 2003
Synopsis
The story is essentially “The Tell-Tale Heart”: our protagonist, obsessed by an old man’sugly eye, kills him, buries him under the floorboards, but then loses it when he thinks he stillhears the beating heart. The short feature has a lot of affection for Poe (despite misspelling hismiddle name) and actually uses much of the actual prose from the original story, before divertinginto slapstick silliness. Not all of the jokes work, but the care and imagination that went into the…
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 30th, 2002
Synopsis
Jennifer (Camille Keaton) leaves New York for a summer in the country. Four low-lifes rapeher, beat her, and leave her for dead. She strikes back most violently. This is the nec plus ultraof rape-revenge films, the yardstick against which all others are measured. The gang rape isharrowingly brutal, and goes on for almost half an hour. The film is cheap and raw, and has itsflaws, but is also searingly powerful in the unflinching realism of its violence. For this, and forits …
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Disc Reviews by Jeremy Frost on August 8th, 2002
Synopsis
A young woman is interviewed by an eccentric couple for the position of babysitter. She gets the job, but soon discovers that the house is even stranger than she at first thought. Then there’s the baby, a monstrous little troll who is flat-out dangerous. If David Lynch had been making horror films for Universal in the 30s, the result might have been something like this. A labour of love (filmed over three-and-a-half years), and complete with a cameo by Forrest J. Ackerman (re-creating the Ed…
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Disc Reviews by Jeremy Frost on March 12th, 2002
Intro
There have been numerous DVD releases of this classic, ranging from the bottom of the bargain basement to versions with newly shot footage (a mistake). This is likely to be the definitive edition for the foreseeable future.
Synopsis
The premise is beautiful in its simplicity: trap a group of people in a farm house and surround them with flesh-eating zombies. The siege concept is no doubt influenced by the climax to Hitchcock’s The Birds, but here is expanded to take up the entire…
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Disc Reviews by Jeremy Frost on November 10th, 2001
Intro
Okay, I hope you’ve read further than the ratings. These ratings reflect what this film would have when compared to mainstream films, and such comparisons are unfair and misleading. In terms of sheer enjoyment, as experienced by those (myself included) who have a real love for the truly bizarre, this film should get an overall rating of four-and-a-half stars. The reason for this can be summed up for cult movie lovers in two words: Doris Wishman. She is the director of (among others) Bad Girls Go To…
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