Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 18th, 2006
Synopsis
After a very rough lovemaking session with her ethically dubious (to say the least) psychiatrist, KatieBird Wilkens (Helen Udy) knocks the sap down, chains him up, and proceeds to torture him, all the while recounting how she came to be a serial killer. Flashback to her childhood, and especially her adolescence, when her mild-mannered father (Lee Perkins) introduces her to the joys of killing. KatieBird (played in her teens by Taylor M. Dooley) develops her own unique way of dealing with her...victims: she wants them to hurt her, too.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 14th, 2006
Synopsis
Nigel has fled England and is living a loser existence in Copenhagen with a junkie girlfriend he doesn’t love anymore. Desperate for money, he takes on a job from a gangster known as the President. All he has to do is stash some stolen goods until they can be moved. But he begins an affair with Tanya, a prostitute also in the grip of the President, and, in true film noir fashion, he makes some stupid decisions and events spiral violently out of control.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 31st, 2005
The Mother Superior of a medieval convent is tormented by visions. Torn by her own desires, she sees herself confronted by Mary Magdalen on a throne with a demon by her side. Magdalen challenges the nun's beliefs that sex is bad, but this notion is reinforced by another vision, this one of a skeleton in nun's habit. The poor nun's torment is compounded by other visions of all sorts of carnal hell breaking loose.This is a real oddity. The writer/director is Nigel Wingrove, who, the case informs us, is the founder of Redemption Films. That outfit was one of the pioneers of deluxe re-issues of 70s Eurotrash horror and sexploitation, with plenty of nunsploitation tossed in. So here is a new exploitation film, very much a love letter to those earlier films, and is such an exercise in personal expression that it raises the question: can such a labour of love really count as exploitation. Then there's the problem of how wordy the script is. So while there is a fair bit of naked female flesh on display (apparently waxing was de rigeur in the Middle Ages), the rather stiff philosophizing takes up the lion's share of the screentime. The film is ambitious, and has some startling imagery, but doesn't scale the rarified heights of such tour de force efforts as School of the Holy Beast.
Audio
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 30th, 2005
Walking in on his wife and another man, J.M. (Barnes Walker III) blows his top and kills her with a baseball bat. He is subsequently horrified by his actions, and is unable to part with the corpse of his wife. He takes off to his sister's farm with the body, thinking he will be alone. But some nosy locals turn up, and more murders follow.The film's tiny budget is certainly apparent, and viewers will also face stiff performances and a slow pace. But there is plenty of atmosphere, a...d writer/director Brian Avenet-Bradley shows some real talent here, as well as in the such wordless sequences as the brutal flashback to the actual murder. The film's original title was Freez'er.
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on September 11th, 2005
In a future (or alternate) New York City plague by mutations and acid rain, a young man (Adam Plotch) falls for a strange woman (Talia Rubel). They begin a fractious relationship, and then it turns out that she's his sister, whom he thought had died ten years earlier. The relationship continues, however, and there are hints that their family is somehow connected to the problems besetting the city.Shot on video, this is the feature debut of director Miguel Coyula, and shows great promise. Viewers expecting Matrix-style thrillers will be disappointed, but the adventurous will be rewarded by a dark psychological drama played out against an SF backdrop, surprisingly well rendered given the non-existent budget.
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