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Bloody New Year (1987)
This film sums up everything I love about low budget horror. It has heart.
The thing I love most about horror films is watching something that might not have the best budget, or be the most glossily produced, but where you can see that there's someone, somewhere involved in the production who deeply cares about what they're doing and is trying to make the film great. Bloody New Year is one of the best examples of this I've seen. It has this heart and care in abundance.
In particular, the reason I rate this film so highly, is through the lens of someone who loves low budget horror films made by someone who cares, and in that capacity, this is one of the best examples around.
In comparison to other horror films, the actors know how to do their job, and fill their roles brilliantly, and actor Mark Powley risks his neck doing one stunt without safety equipment. Obviously actors shouldn't have to do that, but it feels like it represents the effort these actors put into their roles in this film. It stands head and shoulders above some other horror films, even better known ones, that often have examples of acting that is sometimes laughable, like the infamous scene with Rachel Howard in Friday the 13th part III. You don't get that here. You have scenes with people like Suzy Aitchison, who's expression at one crucial point was used in much of the film's promotion, because she just sells what's going on with just a look. It's a great example of horror makeup and acting working together, and I can't think of many examples which match it.
In terms of the effects and makeup as well, there is real care taken over them. The film does not have the greatest budget, of course, and you can sense the frustration at certain points, as if they would have loved to have made certain shots just a little bit better. There is a scene, for example, where one of the supernatural foes reaches out of a wall. Initially it looks like a regular wall, and afterwards, they cut to an actual wall (I should say 'back of a lift') and all of that is perfect. Once the figure reaches out of the wall, it becomes apparent that it's stretched plastic with paint, as the paint peels off as soon as the material stretches, and it's something that could be pulled off much more easily today, but you can just see how hard they have tried to make that one fairly quick shot work, and it honestly does. So many things with the film hinge on strange happenings, and then things going back to normal, that you can sort of 'roll with' the idea that the assailant is just causing all the paint to fall off, only to have the wall healed moments later. This sort of heart shows through in many of the effects and deaths in the film, and there are so many of them as well. That scene with the wall was over in moments. It wasn't overused. And despite having so little screen time, people visibly put so much effort into making it look right. That is the reason I love this film, in microcosm.
One of the key people who cared so much about this film was the director, Norman J Warren, and that really is key to the whole thing. You can see the love he had for this film, even though he was so upset with how production had gone. I would so dearly love to see the sort of film he could make with proper support and funding, but apparently the way the film was treated by the producers saddened him so much he was dissuaded from making any more films. He has said he felt like he had given up by the second day of the dub, but the passion he clearly had is still visible in the film. In particular, he mentioned the music and sound design, and I really feel like that's an area where so many horror films are lacking. There are so many scenes and effects and set-pieces that aren't 'milked', but just used to contribute to this feeling of horror and disorientation and then that's it. There is a scene with objects coming to life in the kitchen, and so much care is put into shots that are on screen for as little as a second, and that just carries through the whole film.
The film has been negatively compared to old episodes of Dr Who, but I want to make that comparison a positive. At certain points it does almost feel like Ace and Sylvester McCoy's Doctor could wander in, and it has a very similar vibe. It helps that every aspect of it is soaked in a very British feeling from that time, down to the nettles and flowering gorse the actors pass by in the wonderful Welsh shooting location of Barry Island. It is so clearly a product of that time, and the almost visible struggle of trying to make effects work on an all too limited budget just adds to the 'whovian' feel. The main difference being, this feels like there is far more care taken than similar contemporary Dr Who episodes. It feels very similar to 'Curse of Fenric', which came out a couple of years after this film, but again, it seems like so much more care and effort was put into Bloody New Year.
It's also been accused of ripping off parts of multiple other films (Evil Dead, The Beyond, Shock Waves, Dawn of the Dead) which I absolutely do not buy. You'll almost never find a film that doesn't have elements that are similar to other films, particularly in a genre film, and the parts that are supposedly derivative don't feel in the least bit related to the previous works, to my eyes. I do not think for a moment that Lesley seems like Cheryl from Evil Dead, and I honestly struggle to see the comparison. If it's nothing more than 'a character gets possessed', then you may as well say Evil Dead rips off The Exorcist. What this film does is incorporate multiple ideas in a plot that doesn't feel at all reminiscent of other films before it (again, it's older than the Dr Who episodes to which it feels more related.)
In short, this film has all of the charm of a restricted budget horror film where you can 'see the strings', but even that is too harsh a criticism, give that there are scenes with levitating knives, for example, where you very specifically *can't* see any strings, or even the slightest glint of fishing line, despite the shot only being visible for a second. I really wish we had the chance to see more films from this director, as I feel like he could have made some wonderful horror over the years if this production had not upset him so much.
Puppet Master: The Legacy (2003)
This is not a film. It is clips from previous films, and doesn't even include the original
When you look at the average score for this movie, you need to remember who has actually reviewed it. We are the people who watched SEVEN Puppet Master films, and then went 'you know what? I want to watch another Puppet Master film'. The bar for us to review this is set exceptionally low.
So why is it so badly reviewed? Because it's not even a film. It's a handful of scenes, abysmally acted and shot, cut together with clips from the previous films. It's a clip show, but they don't even include clips from the actual original film. There literally isn't even a film here to review.
The Toymaker (2017)
A dissapointingly lazy film in every possible respect
Oh, it's just so, so, so bad. There's over half an hour of trying to rip off the opening of Inglourious Basterds, but with appaling acting. This in a film that is supposedly about a haunted doll. It is the third film in a series that seems to have no particular interest in ensuring that there is anything here that is good quality, at all. There's basic mistakes, the supposedly German accents go wandering all over the place to the extent that any competent director would just have told the actors to stop and try the scene again. There is no care or quality in the special effects, or make-up. The 'old toymaker' makeup is, in particular, staggeringly poor.
I really need to stress, this is not a film or series of films that are entertainingly bad. This is a film that thinks you are an idiot and they don't even have to bother putting any effort in, as you'll watch it regardless.
Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994)
Scattered good ideas, but awful pacing
Phantasm II had terrible pacing, and this third film doesn't seem to have improved on that any. It starts off as if it's going to be promising, and then it swiftly jumps back to the same slow road movie idea, and then takes a bizzare turn into being a dark version of Home Alone for a bit. It very much feels like these films have some good ideas, which are then thrown into the same film, almost randomly, never mind if they add to a coherent narrative, or even belong in this film at all. A dark horror version of home alone, for example, just four years after Home Alone came out, could have been a fantastic idea (for audiences who've not seen "3615 code Père Noël").
Imagine a dark version of Home Alone, mixed with Phantasm, and how good a film that could have been. Tim setting lethal traps to stop looters, and then having to defend his home against the Phantasm monsters, Lurkers, flying death-balls, and the Tall Man who just keeps reappearing, with Mike mentoring him with the experience of being a badass monster fighting kid in the original. That is the film I want to see.
Then we get Rocky and Tanesha introduced, who are two more characters who feel like they could have been another entire film idea that just gets thrown into this film, only to have one of them killed off almost immediately. This makes it one of very few films to actually have two women of colour passing the Bechdel test, though the characters do feel a bit like they've wandered in from a blacksploitation movie.
Reggie is still written as what was clearly intended to be a sort of 'hound-dog' character, which, in reality, makes him pretty much a sex offender, lying and manipulating a woman into bed with him, and only stopping his advances when he's physically restrained.
Tim is essentially a stand-in for what Mike's role was in the original, being the unexpectedly capable kid, who, lest we forget, straight up murders a man in cold blood in this film. Henry's stuck down a pit when Tim dispassionately guns him down.
Overall, the whole thing feels like they started brainstorming ideas for the plot, and then just decided to cram them all in, regardless. Once again, in not sitting with any idea long enough to do it justice, there's a great moment where Rocky swings at dead Edna (Deadna) and she ducks, just as Reggie gets up, so she smacks him in the face. Thing is, the whole thing happens in the blink of an eye, and I had to rewind to make sure I saw what I thought I saw.
Robert (2015)
Feels more like an awkward dinner party than a horror film.
I like an awful lot of terrible horror movies. There's often some charm, or fascination, or humour, or you can see that someone, somewhere in the production has really tried their best. This film simply has none of that. The writing falls flat, and the acting is worse. On top of this, the editing, even the sound design does absolutely nothing to help. Every line has a near full second pause before and after, for some unfathomable reason. I can only imagine they had a time requirement they had to hit, and cutting it to make the dialogue sound like the actors were actually listening and responding to one another's lines would have made it all too short. Honestly, there's hardly any actual content, and every part of it feels awkward and drawn out.
This feels more like being stuck at a dinner party where the hosts are having a blazing row than it feels like watching a horror movie. Just scene after scene of stilted, domestic awfulness. Only without the realism.
There's almost no special effects, certainly none that are remotely convincing or with any effort put into them. The doll gently repositioned while it's out of shot, even the doll itself is really more of a head, with a completely disproportionate thrown together body.
I've seen comments talking about how it's an indie film and shouldn't be judged too harshly, but I've seen indie youtube shorts made with either better acting, production values, effects, or honestly, just effort. The whole thing just comes across as lazy, and passionless. Honestly I'm kind of curious as to the process of this film being made, it's such an abject failure.