The Haunting review (1963, dir. Robert Wise)

I pray the poor soul chancing upon this despair-smirched scrawl forgives the quality of my record. It has been four nights since last I slept. Frequent opium use has afforded little respite to my fractured sanity. I write in scarlet ink with only the flesh-coloured light of a gibbous moon. When my eyes do close I see only the vague outline of the ‘thing’. Its writhing torso accompanied by mournful ululations and discordant gibbering.



My tale starts with an invitation. A simple letter on the morning mat of an ordinary day. To sojourn in the notorious Hill House. A house born bad. I smirked and discarded the wretched thing there and then. But my old friend Dr Markway was dogged. “An experiment of tremendous important to science,” he persisted. “Vital to the disproval of parapsychological disturbances.”
I humoured him. “I’ll go. But do not expect results. Stuff and nonsense!”

A couple of days later and I ground my Plymouth Fury up the gravel drive. Hill House filled the windscreen, squatting vilely ahead. On entering I greeted Markway and the other lab-rats. I was shown to a grand room and I unpacked before we reconvened for dinner. Luke was brash and cynical, not unlike a gameshow host. Theodora was haughty and mocking in contrast to Eleanor whose demeanour was timid and mouselike. A more diverse group I could not have imagined. Markway knew what he was doing.

Now I am required to still my own hand in order to drive the ink over the page. It vibrates from memory of a primal horror witnessed over those next few nights. The booming reverberations, the gnarled forms, the mutilatedscreams. Onslaughts on reason combined in a fetid rash of terror. I saw, or thought I saw, things that were not meant to be.

And the locus of these events was Eleanor herself. Harried and hunted by a beckoning entity. I collapsed to my knees, shrieking that I could take no more. Without shame I fled, screaming as a babe, to leave the others to what fate had deigned for them.

I heard no more til many years later I learned of a cinematographic reconstruction of the ‘events’. Summoning courage from an untapped seam within, I inserted the ‘DVD’ into my digital-video display construct. My part in proceedings had, perhaps understandably, been excised. And I am convinced some of the events have been reduced in tone and intensity. Nevertheless the film was subtle, refined and rollickingly exciting. The director has employed a devilishly inventive mise-en-scène to suggest much almost without showing anything. A host of perspective tricks and vertiginous moves accentuate the fear. What remains is one of the scariest psychological horror films available to man. See it, if you be brave, and make up your own mind! And please do not confuse with the bastard remake of latter years!

I must go now. The electricity has been switched back on.

Grindhouse Trailer Classics 3 review (DVD, 2011)

If you weren't lucky enough to frequent a certain type of picture-house of the 60s, 70s and early 80s, you've lost your chance to experience the true Grindhouse effect in all its filthy glory.

The next best thing is the Grindhouse Trailer Classics collection!

This feature-length collection of cinematic previews has it all - nudity, ninjas, violence, sexual deviancy, samurai, sadism, exploitation, drug-use and cult favourite, John Saxon! As you'd expect (perhaps even demand), dirt, scratches and clicks blight the video and audio, enhancing the sense of decay and depravity. The colours are as garish and vibrant as they ever were. And the majority are voiced by the instantly recognisable basso profundo of Paul Frees.

Leading your clammy, shaking hand in to this wonderful, lost world is critic and cult-film expert Kim Newman. A gloriously enthusiastic and informed voice in the obscure and esoteric, even Newman is a neophyte to some of the weirdness here. Additionally, his passionate explanation of Grindhouse can be found in the extras section of the disc to help define the experience for the uninitiated.

Nucleus Films have curated a museum of the very strangest previews you will perhaps ever see. To find fault with these trailers on grounds of quality or content would seem a little churlish. These films are no less valid for not being “art-house” or “worthy”. In a lot of these trailers many you'll find a subversive aesthetic missing from most contemporary cinema. In an age when film-makers were pushing boundaries of acceptability, a cinema of fun and excess grew and flourished.

I find an amateurish but passionate film more interesting than a technically perfect, safe piece. What isn't exciting about beautiful Cannibal Girls pick-axing victims to the sound of bells ringing to warn patrons of excessive destruction and eroticism? You'd peek wouldn't you? Superchick may be something of a male fantasy, but isn't an ass-kicking woman more invigorating than a passive, screaming victim? Aren't budgetary constraints the mother of invention? Dogs trained to rob banks? I fear some of these trailers may be superior to the films they are selling!

Admittedly there are some troublesome trailers here for modern sensibilities. A film about the first black CIA recruit tackles racial politics of the time whilst still portraying other black characters as hoods and pimps. Nazi Love Camp 27 risks treating the holocaust as sexual fantasy, though seems to have an admirable budget compared to other films here. And rape seems to be a recurrent narrative device, always used as a prime motivator for revenge and violence on the perpetrator. Whether this in any way excuses its use is up to the viewer.

Grindhouse Trailer Classics 3 is released on December 5^th through Nucleus Films. Personal favourites include Linda (possession, nudity, crazy make-up and crabs!), Black Mama/White Mama (inter-racial revenge violence meted out by some of the feistiest women you'll ever meet) and the very curious The Doberman Gang. This extensive and impressive assortment achieves the original intent: to titillate and excite the viewer into seeking out the full feature. Treat yourself to a trip back in celluloid time to a cinema filled to bursting with degradation, sleaze, deviancy and excess. I guarantee there are things here you simply won't experience anywhere else. And that can't be a bad thing.