Leguizamo, Baker and Joy

There’s only one movie that you’ve been waiting for if you’re in the know: George Romero’s 4th in his zombie trilogy, Land of the Dead. It was rushed out to a summer deadline when Doom fell behind schedule, but now the director’s cut is out on R1 DVD, a few minutes longer than the cinema release. There’s only one significant added scene, and the rest of the changes consist mainly of added gore effects.

The whole movie is still too short and too glossy (particularly in comparison to the previous entries in the series), while not quite upbeat enough to appeal to those who liked the Dawn of the Dead remake for example, but for fans of smart and serious horror movies, this is your ideal Christmas present. The DVD extras are great but too short (‘home movies’ by stars John Leguizamo and Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright are very funny) and there’s a commentary by George which still leaves room for another special edition once all the fuss has settled down.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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DIY with Cecile De France

Alexandre Aja’s Haute Tension (released in the UK as Switchblade Romance for some reason) is an intense and striking horror thriller, reminding me of the old Robert Fuest movie And Soon The Darkness, as two young girls wander about the French countryside, but it soon becomes painfully clear that what he’s doing is relocating ’70s US rural backwoods horror to an equivalent Gallic setting.

In particular, he takes Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre aesthetic and mixes it with an FPS-style array of weapons to beat the cast and audience to a gory mess. As you might have read, there’s an outrageous twist in the last ten minutes which stands the whole story on its head. Looking back, it makes no sense, even though it can be seen coming to some extent, and it also seems to have annoyed a few people in terms of the implications for the movie’s sexual politics.

Still, you shouldn’t let that put you off seeing the movie, as it’s nicely shot by Maxime Alexandre and beautifully paced. Cecile de France is excellent as the heroine, Maiwenn Le Besco screams well and Philippe Nahon cuts a frightening figure as the bloke in overalls with an extensive array of tools, even if it can hardly be called acting. And don’t worry about the subtitles as there’s virtually no dialogue.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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One of the best low budget horror movies of recent years was Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers. Marshall’s follow-up, The Descent, is now out on R2 DVD, and proves that he’s got an undeniable talent.

His first movie was criticised for being too blokey and too comic, so now he’s made a movie with an almost entirely female cast and only one joke as far as I can remember. The story involves one of the women suffering a personal tragedy, and attempting to recover by going caving with her friends (doesn’t sound too clever to me, and funnily enough…) Not only are the underground scenes horribly claustrophobic, Marshall then adds a bunch of albino subterranean cannibals into the mix and throws the gore around with abandon.

Fortunately for the sensitive viewer and the BBFC, it’s all a bit dark and very snappily edited, but it still turns the tension right up to 11. Special mention for the score by David Julyan, which starts off like a tribute to Carpenter/Morricone’s The Thing but eventually becomes a powerful and moving factor.

The ending is downbeat and a bit incongruous in tone – although I like it more the more I think about it – and the attempts to make Scotland look like the USA don’t really convince, but Marshall deserves your support so get this and frighten yourself. (Unfortunately the US release has been delayed due to the appearance of The Cave, a big studio movie with a similar plot; fortunately this doesn’t seem to be harming word of mouth for Marshall’s movie.)

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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Although George Romero wasn’t involved, he appears in the special features on Effects, made by most of his associates in Pittsburgh in 1980 and missing since then (I’ve been looking for it since reading a glowing review in Cinefantastique about 20 years ago).

Joe Pilato from Day of the Dead stars as a cameraman recruited for a low-budget movie which turns out to be a snuff movie. The mad director is nicely underplayed by John Harrison, formerly Romero’s composer and editor but now more famous as the director of TV’s Dune, and other Romero regulars like Tom Savini fill out the cast and crew. It’s clear that the budget didn’t really match the ambition of the exercise, but it’s a neat and undervalued movie as far as these things go.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

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Romero completists will also have noticed the R1 release of Season of the Witch, made in the aftermath of Night of the Living Dead.

It’s one of those movies that I’ve tried to like for years, but it’s horribly dated, telling the story of a neglected wife who turns to witchcraft as an alternative to her boring marriage. It has a sort of Bergman attitude mixed with a swinging sixties vibe, and if you think that sounds hideous, you’re right. The editing’s great, but that’s the least you expect from the man. To round off the Romero collection, the disk also contains There’s Always Vanilla, previously though to have been lost, and made at about the same time. George appears on the disk in a documentary about both movies, and he’s appropriately critical about both.

For completists and aging hippies only.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

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