"Don't Be Alarmed"

WEDNESDAY PLAY - THE WAR GAME (1966)

PROTECT AND SURVIVE (1976)

WHEN THE WIND BLOWS (1986)

The Protect and Survive campaign was a very naive attempt at preparing UK citizens for nuclear attack.

WHEN the Protect and Survive leaflets were released in 1980, its contents shocked many people and added to the air of nuclear paranoia. Echoing civil defence pamphlets which evolved from The Protection of Your Home Against Air Raids, you can only wonder what degree of additional chaos would have been created if the accompanying film series (actually made in 1976) was ever aired in anger, twenty short films which walk the viewer through every stage of a nuclear crisis. These shorts - fatalistically narrated by Patrick Allen - detailed the same instructions as the leaflets, using voice-over narration, kitsch animation, and an unsettling closing electronic musical note. One remembers Allen’s similar tone on remixes of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Two Tribes, which also imposed impending doom: "Mine is the last voice you will ever hear. Don’t be alarmed."

The films have left an uneasy yet fascinating mark. Their documentation of everything from improvising toilet facilities to name-tagging dead family members, moves unnervingly in tone from portentous to matter-of-fact. Each of the shorts end with the animated caption 'Protect and Survive' wrapping around the family unit, the same symbol used earlier to represent the inner refuge. The signal is clear - follow our instructions and things might be all right. In reality, all this public information was founded in people staying in their own homes; this would not only maximise the death rate - both from the blast and the fallout - but also prevent the spread of disease by not having corpses strewn in the highways and countryside. Less people, less hassle.

“Looks like there is going to be a war dear.” The nuclear disintegration of Jim and Hilda is often unbearable in WHEN THE WIND BLOWS.

Based on Raymond Briggs' graphic novel of the same name, WHEN THE WIND BLOWS is an animated film about a nuclear attack from the viewpoint of Jim and Hilda Bloggs (voiced by John Mills and Peggy Ashcroft), a retired couple still mired in memories of World War II. The Bloggs live in rural Sussex, and exhibit considerable confusion regarding the nature and seriousness of their situation; as Hilda says, "Well, if the worst comes to worse, we'll just have to roll up our sleeves, tighten our belts, and put on our tin hats 'til it's VE day again." Jim's nostalgic outlook also remains, "You get terrific heat in these bombs."

Rather than stretch this fable out to a global scale, all the essential points are made by the isolated couple in their country cottage, aided by a realistic style of animation - a technique seldom used since Max Fleischer - by building small table-tops and placing cels between the set and the camera. Jim places his faith in the Protect and Survive leaflets, though even he seems puzzled by the contradictions he finds, and the inane activities they suggest. Unsurprisingly, the movie shows more destruction than the book, highlighted by a sepia-toned sequence showing the disintegration of cars, trains, houses and even animals.

THE WAR GAME quickly became a cause célèbre for the CND.

Whereas WHEN THE WIND BLOWS hammers at the heart, THE WAR GAME is a sledgehammer blow to the skull. Written, directed and produced by Peter Watkins, THE WAR GAME was not transmitted until 1985, with the corporation publicly stating that "the effect of the film has been judged to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting." In fifty black and white minutes, THE WAR GAME depicts the prelude to and the aftermath of a Soviet nuclear attack. Continuing the experiments in fiction and documentary techniques which had begun with his CULLODEN, Watkins blends several different strands: contemporary vox pops, in which passers-by are interviewed about their knowledge of nuclear war issues; optimistic commentary from public figures that clashes with the images; and fictional interviews with key figures as the war unfolds.

The film's enduring power thus derives from a variety of sources, not least its cool articulation of the momentary images - a child's eyes burned by a distant air-burst, as the film itself goes into negative; a bucketful of wedding rings collected as a register of the dead; and a derelict building which has become an impromptu furnace for the incineration of bodies too numerous to bury. At a structural level THE WAR GAME achieves its effect through both its mixture and its separation of documentary and fiction. It does not, for example, offer the purely dramatic spectacle of later apocalyptic entries such as the American THE DAY AFTER or THREADS.

Hoodie Horror

EDEN LAKE (2008)

Kelly Reilly is a spectre of mud and blood.

THE horror genre speaks in metaphor, representing any number of oblique meanings amongst its supernatural settings or bludgeoning grue. But sometimes a horror film confronts the audience directly with topical terrors that get under the skin. EDEN LAKE echoes THE DESCENT - in particular with its mournful score, plentiful aerial shots and a blood spattered protagonist on the brink of insanity - but where Neil Marshall had wall crawling cave dwellers, James Watkins' characters are unnervingly closer to home in what could be termed a hybrid of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and STRAW DOGS. EDEN LAKE is the story of primary teacher Jenny (Kelly Reilly), whose boyfriend Steve (Michael Fassbender) has asked her away for a camping weekend on the banks of the titular flooded quarry, with the intention of proposing. 

The break turns into a nightmare when they encounter a gang of youths with a rottweiler. After Steve accidentally kills the canine, the situation spirals out of control, culminating in improvised torture and murder; and having prompted the viewer to wonder where the parents of these minors are, the film drives us right to their front door. EDEN LAKE is a formidably well-made thriller, ruthlessly extreme and genuinely upsetting. Focusing on the middle-class fear of a younger, violent underclass, and the effects of bad parenting, its festering, feral anger and survivalist horror themes are made so powerful by stunning performances. Reilly and Fassbender are perfectly cast as naturalistic lovers, and leading the teenage assault is an absolutely chilling Jack O’Connell as Brett, who encapsulates the hoodie hooligan: blunt, sadistic and incapable of being reasoned with.

The Crypt of Horror

TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1971)
THE VAULT OF HORROR (1973)

In a rare appearance under heavy make-up Peter Cushing is Grimsdyke, an avenging zombie, in TALES FROM THE CRYPT.

ONCE targeted as agents of juvenile delinquency by righteous politicians - and tossed into bonfires by outraged parents across North America - the banned in Britain EC Comics provided the drive behind two of Amicus' seemingly endless stream of portmanteau: Freddie Francis' TALES FROM THE CRYPT and Roy Ward Baker's THE VAULT OF HORROR. Essentially McCarthy-era morality tales, the publications were obsessively consistent in punishing corruption in the sickest way possible. Yet while Amicus provided some thrills, you need only look at a handful of the originals to realise that the literary source were more cinematic than cost-conscious Max J. Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky would care or cater for.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT was the biggest commercial success of all Amicus multi-tale terrors. Francis' visuals mix bright, basic colours with grey to approach the look of a comic book panel, but the masterstroke is how well the EC style of divine retribution fits into the festering middle-class resentment of the working classes in Edward Heath-era Britain. Opening to the ominous chords of Bach’s Toccata & Fugue in D Minor, the framing story sees five visitors losing their way in a labyrinthine set of catacombs, who are shown glimpses of their pasts - or futures? - by the cowled Crypt Keeper (Sir Ralph Richardson). Best remembered for its lively opening story And All Through the House - pitting a murderous wife (Joan Collins) against a killer Santa - the other four segments are split equally between the cumbersome and the classic. Reflections of Death and Wish You Were Here are both weak fillers, the former featuring a philandering husband (Ian Hendry) and the latter a wife (Barbara Murray) using an Oriental idol to bring back the dead. The remaining two episodes are so superior they seem to be from a different production altogether.

Everything in its right place. THE VAULT OF HORROR’s The Neat Job is the highlight in an otherwise bland production.

Poetic Justice sees kindly old Grimsdyke (Peter Cushing) driven to suicide by loathsome neighbours covetous of his land, who send him malicious Valentine rhymes. A simple tale of walking-corpse vengeance in the tried and tested EC tradition, the story is given extra resonance by Cushing's delicate performance, which has a quality rarely seen within the usually character-restraining portmanteau film. The actor was newly widowed at the time, and used a photograph of his late wife Helen, which he addresses by name on screen. Blind Alleys also has wonderful performances at its core, with Rogers (Nigel Patrick) - a retired army officer taking charge of a home for the blind - and Carter (Patrick Magee) - a spokesman for the unsighted. A slow-burning tale of redemption, Rogers' new rules for efficiency (food rationing, no heating) ultimately has him forced to choose between confronting his hunger-crazed Alsatian or hurtling to safety down a narrow corridor bristling with razor blades, set up by the spectrally-portrayed blind.

In comparison, THE VAULT OF HORROR is formulaic at best and signalled the end of any EC endorsement for Amicus. Five men inexplicably find themselves locked in the basement of a skyscraper, and pass the time by recounting their nightmares. Bargain In Death is a weak insurance scam story, while Midnight Mess is an allegedly humorous tale of small-town vampirism starring Daniel and Anna Massey. This Trick'll Kill You is a none-too-subtle allegory about a married pair of magicians murdering fakirs in India, but the other two stories fare better because they subscribe more to the twisted EC mythos. Drawn and Quartered features a struggling artist (Tom Baker) in a voodoo-laced variation on The Picture of Dorian Gray, but the only story that really seems in its element is The Neat Job, in which a disorderly housewife (Glynis Johns) tries to cope with her fussy, perfectionist husband (Terry-Thomas); it’s a delicious presentation of domestic EC-style terror.

The Soul of Frankenstein

FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN (1967)

Austrian model Susan Denberg had a limited screen career, and is best remembered for her role in this Hammer classic. Here Denberg appears as Playboy's Playmate of the Month in August 1966.

FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN - scripted by Anthony Hinds - is the most metaphysical of all Hammer Horrors, with Terence Fisher returning to the studios' mad scientist cycle after Freddie Francis' controversial departure THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN. The Baron (Peter Cushing) is engaged in a series of experiments to determine whether the soul departs the body at the point of death, assisted by alcoholic Doctor Hertz (Thorley Walters), and dogsbody Hans (Robert Morris). In a local tavern, three young bloods taunt Hans' disfigured sweetheart Christina (Susan Denberg), and are forcibly expelled by Hans and her landlord father Kleve (Alan MacNaughtan). When the trouble-makers return, they bludgeon Kleve to death and Hans - the son of a convicted murderer - is unjustly accused and executed. Distraught, Christina drowns herself. When the Baron succeeds in placing Hans' soul in Christina's body, the combination fuses the woman's emotional scars with Hans' vengeful rage, resulting in a split personality bent on using her new-found beauty to seduce and kill the murderers.

Cushing is seldom better than the trial scene, which includes a priceless thumbing of the Bible. Rapier-witted, Frankenstein is clearly an intellectual giant compared to the inhabitants of this particular rural Balkan setting, where his arrogance seems justified. Although Denberg does not have the gravitas of a Barbara Shelley or an Ingrid Pitt, the dubbed actress holds up remarkably well. Morris recalls Denberg as sweet and friendly, yet caught up with the Roman Polanski "crowd," often appearing on set under the influence. Unfounded rumours have circulated over the years that Denberg died of a drug overdose in 1967, and that she had mental health problems due to an addiction to LSD.

Martin Scorsese selected FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN as part of a National Film Theatre season of his favourite movies in 1987.

Rigorously circular in structure - its first phase framed by two decapitations, the second by two drownings - the miserable events of FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN take on a tragic inevitability. The film's low-key finale has been greatly criticised, but as Christina recreates her suicide, she is at once putting Hans to rest and reclaiming her individual soul. What most engages the viewer is the human identification, and it is this element for which Frankenstein has neither time nor appreciation. With his work once again in tatters, it fails this time because there is something in the fragmented Christina that cannot permit it to succeed. The Baron is unwilling or unable to accommodate this humanity, providing the first clue to his disintegration in FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED, and eventual downfall in FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL.

Apocalypse Wow

DEAD SET (2008)

“Is that Davina?” “Sort of.” Davina McCall as Davina McCall 

in Charlie Brooker’s zombie masterpiece.

TOWARDS the end of the first episode of E4's astonishing DEAD SET, the camera pans to a crouching figure in Channel 4's BIG BROTHER offices, savagely tearing at the entrails of a newly-slaughtered production assistant. It is the actions of an undead Davina McCall. Looking up - her face smeared with blood and innards - she then lunges for her whimpering producer, howling with bestial blood lust, as she chases him down a corridor. Screened over five consecutive evenings culminating on Halloween, DEAD SET follows in real-time the staff and "stars" of BIG BROTHER during a zombie outbreak, which starts on Eviction Night.

In George A. Romero's seminal DAWN OF THE DEAD, a group of mismatched survivors take refuge in a deserted shopping mall - then a thinly veiled nod to consumerist Western society. Thirty years later - with the mall replaced by the BIG BROTHER house - this mini-series is ripe for 21st Century allegories, an extremely visceral satire of the morally bankrupt Reality-TV generation. Like all lasting zombie pieces, DEAD SET therefore resonates truly in its time and - like all great art - is born out of disdain. This impact can be traced back to the birth of the cinematic living dead - WHITE ZOMBIE. Film historians have always equated the boom in 1930s horror to the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash, though WHITE ZOMBIE can be related more to the human condition than Dracula or Frankenstein. Expressing the powerlessness breadline Americans felt - unemployed almost reached 25% at the height of the depression - the film transformed work itself into the horror. The zombies who operate the sugar mill are humans reduced to expendable automatons; even when one worker plummets into the machinery they continue unabated, a pivotal moment that laid bare the wheels of capitalist economics.

Even the Diary Room can’t save Jaime Winstone as Kelly, the
much put-upon production runner turned feisty heroine.

Critical preconceptions about horror - one that it shares with science fiction - is that by introducing elements of fantasy, a work becomes less likely to explore social and emotional issues and instead concern itself with escapism. But it can be argued that the inclusion of fantasy opens up a new, free arena in which greater extremes of the human condition can be put under the microscope. Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD explores the impossibility of an undead uprising, but is less interested by the dead in narrative terms than by the pressure-cooker situation they create for the characters. Zombies are simply enemies, a malignant obstacle that our heroes have to overcome. The end of life itself is a universal fear, one that comes without cultural or historical baggage.

This reading shouldn't detract from DEAD SET being a stunning slab of television horror. Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that writer Charlie Brooker has admitted to a lifelong affinity to the living dead. After all, he has made his acerbic career critiquing years of life-less fodder that passes as modern TV entertainment. Production manager Patrick (Andy Nyman) is a priceless character who acts as a mouthpiece for Brooker and the millions of views who scream despondently at BIG BROTHER contestants ("…is the whole world just colours and shapes and the occasional noise in your head.") Brooker’s zombies belong to the sprinting, adrenaline-flesh junkie brand of 28 DAYS LATER… rather than Romero’s grey-skinned walkers, but new here is an unnerving death rattle as they stalk and feed. The gore quota - especially in the last two episodes - is astounding; one can only think of the final reel of Romero’s own DAY OF THE DEAD to rival its level of grue. Yet the tone of the series is sombre but slick.

Beware the Eyes that Paralyze

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960)
CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED (1963)
VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1995)

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED typifies British science fiction in that - unlike the comic book and serial traditions of American fare - the films adhere to sombre threats in drab settings. The work unfolds Quatermass-style, slowly adding the uncanny to a normal rural setting.

DIRECT echoes of H.G. Wells' obsession with catastrophe and its aftermath appear time and again in John Wyndham's oeuvre. Christopher Priest famously summed up the most frequently voiced criticism of Wyndham's work when he described him as "the master of the middle-class catastrophe." But while the tone of the author’s stories may occasionally strike modern readers as quaint, their cosiness serves a serious purpose. His innocuously English backdrops are central to the power of his novels, implying that apocalypse could occur at any time - or, indeed, be happening in the next village at this very moment. Wyndham was also redefining the science fiction genre; up until the late 1940s, sci-fi was almost exclusively set in space and involved what Wyndham himself described as "the adventures of galactic gangsters."

Wolf Rilla's 1960 VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED is a beautifully restrained adaptation of Wyndhams The Midwich Cuckoos issued three years previously. It is the story of a mysterious, hours-long fainting spell among the inhabitants of a small community, which is followed by the pregnancies of every local woman of childbearing years - including virgins. After short gestations, the women give birth to ten-pound babies with blonde hair and "arresting" eyes who, as they rapidly mature, are discovered to share a single consciousness, read people's minds, and be very dangerous when crossed. Gordon Zellaby (George Sanders) - the aging father of the apparent spokesman of the group, David (Martin Stephens) - is entrusted by the government to educate the children in a remote house, while trying to determine their purpose.

A year before his performance in THE INNOCENTS, Martin Stephens is the tweed-suited spokesman of the children in the original VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED. Stephens' flicker of an almost-smile after forcing a motorist to kill himself is one of the nastiest shots in British cinema.

As the children grow, so do their powers. Nevertheless, there are some inconsistencies. Early on, sensing that the grocer is frightened of them, they show unexpected consideration in promising to stay away from her shop. But when a man accidentally almost strikes one of the children with his car, they instantly band together and force him to kill himself by driving into a wall. Conversely, after more acts of violence, Zellaby’s brother-in-law Alan Bernard (Michael Gwynn) forces his way into the children's presence and threatens them, but they do not kill him, instead punishing him with a dose of temporary paralysis. Whether this is because of some kind of feeling for Gordon or wife Anthea (Barbara Shelley) is not stated; the only thing that is clear is that the children, like all children, do not have full command of themselves, however other they may be.

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED is a film that has managed to enter the collective unconscious because of the portrayal of the Midwich Children. With identical blonde wigs (an unsettling effect is achieved by casting real-life brunette kids whose colouring is subtly wrong for their hair), staring eyes (in some prints a glowing effect was added) and choreography of movement, they are disturbingly other. Their origin is left ambiguous, and when Zellaby interrogates them on the subject, their only response is lowered eyes and a calm "It would be better if you didn’t ask these questions" from David. Although alien impregnation is the favoured theory, it is implied that the children are the result of mutation, representing the next stage in human evolution.

CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED develops the original film’s political subtext, and transports the action to a damp and grimy London.

Much of the power of VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED comes via two pieces of serendipity. Firstly, when the project was in the planning stages, the Catholic Legion Of Decency objected to the central theme of mysterious impregnation. Consequently, the film could not be produced in the United States, and was instead made on location in Hertfordshire; the resulting shoot lends an uncomfortable air of authenticity. Secondly, filming in England meant the presence of some marvellous British character actors: Laurence Naismith as Dr Willers, Bernard Archard as the tormented village minister, Richard Vernon as the Home Secretary, and Peter Vaughn as a bicycling policeman. Sanders gives a suitably rounded performance but Barbara Shelley is not given all that much to do; Anthea seems to spend most of the film being sent out of the room. In contrast, Gwynn makes the most of his far more substantial role as a man with a foot in both camps, and Stephens'' air of cool, detached superiority makes us comprehend the extent of the threat. Stephens was eleven when the film was shot and, like many good child actors, both looked younger than he was, and seemed older.

A product of its time - the domestic scenes between the Zellabys now seem particularly dated - VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED dares not even hint at abortion. In perhaps the film's most indelible moment, we see the affected villagers – one man accompanied by his wife and his daughter – filing silently in and out of the clinic, not one person making eye contact with any other. On one level this is a story about rape and the consequences; and yet other than in a few scenes with Anthea, the film is never about its women. On the contrary, its focus is divided between the village men and the male authority figures. It has a power that many of its followers lack, perhaps because unlike them it is not merely a family drama, but deals with broader issues such as government action in times of crisis, how people's perceptions of themselves can affect their actions, and where the moral line should be drawn. If the film's resolution is a soft option, the hard questions asked nevertheless remain.

John Carpenter’s VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED remake marked another notch in his downward spiralling of a career.

In CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED, the youths identified by a research initiative are gathered from around the world and housed in London for collective study. After international and Cold War tensions lead world governments to return the children to their respective embassies, the children escape and hide out in an abandoned church in Southwark, where the situation escalates into a final showdown with the armed forces. Here, the youths are no longer malevolent, but merely misunderstood. Where VILLAGE was a variant on INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and its subgenre of aliens subverting the human norm, this film belongs to the type of alien contact personified by THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and STAR TREK, about defusing xenophobia and prejudice. Subsequently, it lacks any of the sense of sinister thrill of the original, and the film offers up the ludicrously improbable notion of having the children build a deadly sonic weapon out of a disused church organ.

Both Wyndham’s source novel and Rilla's film were very much a reaction to their place and time. John Carpenter's 1995 American remake of VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED approached no such social issues, relocating the story to "Midwich, California," and adding a dash of the director’s trademark shock tactics. The mis-casting of the film is its greatest talking point, however, which is amusing in its outlandishness. Just prior to his horse-riding accident, it is awkward to watch the limited dramatic range of Christopher Reeve as Midwich's resident M.D. Kirstie Alley displays little presence as the cold-hearted, secretive epidemiologist, and if Crocodile Dundee's main squeeze (Linda Kozlowski) is difficult to recognize as one of the expectant mothers, what better camouflage could there be for Luke Skywalker than as the local minister?

Two Tribes

DOOMSDAY (2008)

South African stunt woman Lee-Anne Liebenberg is memorable as Viper.

FURTHER advancing director Neil Marshall's affinity towards examining humanity in times of extreme stress, DOOMSDAY is set in 2033, where Scotland had been quarantined since the outbreak of the Reaper Virus in 2008. All communication lines with the outside world were cut and people left to die; as a final measure, a wall was built following the same line as the Roman frontier, cutting Britain in half. When the virus re-emerges in London, The Department of Domestic Security instructs Chief Nelson (Bob Hoskins) to select a leader for a military team to be sent into Scotland to bring back either a survivor, or a vaccine from a Dr Kane (Malcolm McDowell)'s lab. Nelson appoints Sergeant Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) who, with her comrades, head towards a job completed or to their deaths.

DOOMSDAY plays like a greatest hits package embracing apocalyptic efforts THE OMEGA MAN, MAD MAX 2 and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. Marking a distinct increase in budget, Marshall still maintains his punky DIY aesthetic, but here functions more as a fanboy than a serious director; its his own private Grindhouse, a loving collage of genre throwbacks. In addition to its action heritage, when McDowell spouts soliloquies in a castle straight out of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, we are reminded of another Marshall favourite, John Boorman’s EXCALIBUR. Luckily, in the midst of anarchy, Kane has managed to outfit an entire medieval castle with painstaking attention to period detail.

Rhona Mitra is Sinclair. Saved from the chaotic clutches of the disease-stricken zone when she was a little girl, she has grown up without a mother and has nothing to lose.

What redeems DOOMSDAY from being mere indulgence is the proficiency with which Marshall propels from one set-piece to the next. You have to credit the filmmaker for the rampaging senselessness, where somehow he wedges in pus-spurting ghouls, club-wielding punks, motorcycle chases, knights in armour, and gladiator fights, while breezing past matters as trivial as the plenitude of gas in this post-apocalyptic wasteland. There are also a couple moments of gratuitous cruelty toward animals that are meant to provide either a sick joke or a satirical statement about the Fascist nature of the government.

Effectively using a throwback pop soundtrack (Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Adam and the Ants), DOOMSDAY refreshingly relies on old-fashioned physical stunts rather than CGI, and consequently Marshall recaptures much of the rhythm and percussive power of the films he is referencing. Mitra handles her cold and distant role well and, although their scenes are brief, Hoskins and McDowell manage to register forcefully on screen, justifying their presence as something more than novelty casting. David O'Hara is excellent as the power behind the prime minister; his super-stiff body language is enough to tell you he's a bastard the first time you see him, and Craig Conway has a blast as the Mohawk-topped Sol, a hollow-eyed punk who keeps the mob happy with goofy production numbers and ritual human sacrifice.

Spaced Out

SPACED (1999 - 2001)

HOT FUZZ (2007)

The excellent assemble cast of SPACED.

AN outstanding Channel 4 series with a huge cult following, Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson’s SPACED was a new breed of situation comedy. The situation wasn’t new - experiences of a group of mismatched housemates (here played by Pegg, Stevenson and Mark Heap, with regulars Nick Frost, Katy Carmichael and Julia Deakin) - but it was memorable for director Edgar Wright’s innovative shooting techniques, which added extra depth and texture to the already rich scripts. Wright mixes the everyday with the extraordinary, achieving an impressive array of sight gags which reference streams of sci-fi and pop culture; the director doesn't just borrow from cinema, he aspires to the visual quality of a different medium.

SPACED’s characters have a complexity unusual in sitcoms, and are allowed to develop from miserly beginnings: Tim (Pegg) spends hours shooting zombies and drowning Lara Croft on his Playstation, Daisy (Stevenson) will organise anything (parties, performances, pets) rather than sit down and actually work, landlady Marsha (Deakin) hits the bottle, Mike (Frost) joins any organisation which allows him to wear army clothing, and artist Brian (Heap) hides in his basement, torturing himself with ideas which he can never fully capture on canvas. The show is often as touching as it is funny, and deeply sceptical about the things that twentysomethings are told to believe are the very essence of life: conceptual art, clubbing, responsibilities, and love. As Tim says in the final episode, "Hollywood endings are just a myth, life is just a thankless struggle."

“Here come the Fuzz”: Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

A straight-faced spoof of everything from slasher movies to Agatha Christie and homoerotic U.S. buddy movies, Wright’s HOT FUZZ sees dedicated London cop Nicholas Angel (Pegg) compulsorily transferred to Sandford - a quiet Gloucestershire village - by his superiors to stop him from showing them up. The local cop shop is run by chummy Inspector Frank Butterman (Jim Broadbent), and Angel soon irritates everyone on his first night by arresting all the under-18s in the local pub (echoing DS Andy Cartwright (Rafe Spall)’s contemptuous put-down "If you want to be a big cop in a small town, fuck off up the model village") and hauling in for drunk driving a slob called Danny (Frost), who turns out to be Butterman's son and Angel's imminent partner. When a figure dressed as the Grim Reaper begins killing the villagers, Sandford becomes the unlikely stage for bullet ballets and screeching car chases, as Angel and Danny lay bare the truth.

As in SPACED and SHAUN OF THE DEAD, the on-screen chemistry between real-life best friends Pegg and Frost is effortless. It's refreshing to see Pegg in a more driven and stoic role, far away from his bumbling nice guy characters Tim Bisley and Shaun Riley. Frost is particularly good as the foil for Pegg's procedural prig; wannabe badass Danny may come across as a bumbling klutz - his size instantly giving him the standard jolly fat man vibe - but he is the face of honesty inside a distorted reality of mysterious deaths, countryside conspiracies and semi-erotic male bonding. The film is awash with star supporting turns and cameos - including Billie Whitelaw, Steve Coogan, Martin Freeman and Alice Lowe - but Timothy Dalton as Somerfield supermarket manager and pillar of the community Simon Skinner is particularly worthy of merit.

Decapitation, HOT FUZZ style.

With its provincial town hiding a dark secret from a newly arrived cop, there is more than an echo of 1973's THE WICKER MAN (as if to underline the parallel, that film's star, Edward Woodward, plays the head of the Neighbourhood Watch). To further the horror film foundation, there are underground catacombs filled with the skeletons and a number of stunning Argentoesque murders. Strangely, little if anything is done in any of these scenes to signal that they are a joke; they are presented exactly as they would be in a straight-out horror. Consequently, the results feel botched – as if a cop spoof had awkwardly mutated into a splatter film, with a big, violent finale to blur the lines between the two.

Ultimately HOT FUZZ seems disjointed, over-long, over-polished and missing an emotional core. Even SHAUN OF THE DEAD found time to give its titular hero a love life; in HOT FUZZ, Angel’s only romantic involvement is speaking to his CSI inspector ex-fiancée Janine early on (an uncredited Cate Blanchett), and Danny's private stash of action movies is a sad replacement for actual companionship. Janine wears her protective goggles and surgical mask throughout her single scene, and her anonymity is underscored by all the other generic females in the film. Ranging from the old and cranky to the busty trollop, the female triteness makes the weapon-worship even more interesting by comparison, the sight of an arsenal as pleasing as ogling a nice arse.

Wild in the Country

THE DARK (2005)
THE WICKER MAN (2006)

Explore undead children and menacing mutton in THE DARK.

JOHN Fawcett’s THE DARK - based very loosely on Simon Maginn's 1994 horror novel Sheep - buckles under the heavy influence of other bodies of film, especially the 1973 THE WICKER MAN and Nicolas Roeg's DON’T LOOK NOW. Cliff-jumping sheep point to a Jim Jonesesque cult on the Welsh coast, but far from being worried by these sheep, you’ll find yourself counting them during this often laughable film. It opens with Adèle (Maria Bello) and her daughter Sarah (Sophie Stuckey) visiting estranged husband James (a disinterested-looking Sean Bean). While out by the sea, Sarah vanishes and appears to drown; later, a young girl named Ebrill (Abigail Stone) - who apparently died over fifty years ago - suddenly materialises. Adèle starts investigating and her search leads to Annwn, a portal hidden under the sea.

In Welsh legend, Annwn ("afterlife") is said to be accessed by the living through a door located at the mouth of the Severn once a year. Inhabitants would welcome the living for feasting and celebration, upon the condition that they took nothing back with them to the human realm. Surviving from pre-Christian Celtic mythology, it's neither Heaven nor Hell in the Christian sense, as humans can enter spiritually or corporeally. Shot in Cornwall and the Isle of Man, the film looks stunning, yet only wakes from its slumber when Adèle crosses the watery threshold late on. On land, its haunted farmhouse and neighbouring abattoir settings are sadly unscary, and when things do turn grisly with harrowing flashbacks of child torture, it feels like the scenes are an intrusion from a different work altogether.

The unintentionally hilarious Hollywood remake of THE WICKER MAN - watch for Nicolas Cage in his bear suit.

When a major American studio release with two Oscar-winning stars opens without press previews, one assumes the distributor is trying to hide the film from critics. In the case of Neil LaBute's THE WICKER MAN - a pointless remake of the fabled cult curio - it's entirely possible that Warners wanted to conceal it from audiences as well. This reboot sees California motorcycle cop Edward Malus (Nicolas Cage) receiving a letter from his ex-fiancée Willow (Kate Beahan), begging him to find her missing daughter. Malus heads out to the island of Summersisle, where he discovers a matriarchal society of beekeepers.

Robin Hardy’s original THE WICKER MAN serves as a working definition of a cult film: initially overlooked and offloaded as a support feature (to DON’T LOOK NOW), the unclassifiable project now has a sizeable following; when viewed today, it suffers from a flower power feel and a slew of honey-dripping folk songs. By throwing Hardy's meditation on pagan faith and Christian sacrifice out of the window, screenwriter/director LaBute rips the heart out of the ethos, turning Summersisle into a bizarre community where men are "drones" and the women mead-quaffing harpies led by Lady Summersisle (Ellen Burstyn in a Mel Gibson mudpack). The script is riddled with jaw-dropping declarations ("killing me won’t bring back your fucking honey!") and the production wastes an array of strong actresses (Leelee Sobieski, Francis Conroy, Molly Parker et al). But what's most curious is it's utter sexlessness - the nude dancing and orgies that made a palatable case for earth worship over Christian repression in 1973 is replaced by Cage’s hangdog investigator barking at and punching women in the face.

Comedy of Terrors

SEVERANCE (2006)
THE COTTAGE (2008)

If only former BROOKSIDE actress Jennifer Ellison had remained gagged for THE COTTAGE’s entire running time…

TWO jet-black humoured horrors set within the backwoods, and made by second-time directors, SEVERANCE and THE COTTAGE will never approach the finesse of SHAUN OF THE DEAD in the comedy stakes; both are grimmer, more shocking, and considerably less amiable. SEVERANCE tells of seven Palisade Defence employees on a team-building weekend in Hungary: there's Steve (Danny Dyer) the laid-back stoner-slacker, Harris (Toby Stephens) the golden-boy sales champ, Gordon (Andy Nyman) the overly enthusiastic corporate pawn, Richard (Tim McInnerny) the odious upper-management tyrant (“I can’t spell success without u…”), Maggie (Laura Harris) the sex-object, Jill (Claudie Blakley) the practical-minded girl with glasses, and Billy (Babou Ceesay) the token black PA. When Jill spots a masked figure outside their run-down bunker, it is only the start of a fight against a group who have more than axes to grind.

Christopher Smith - who previously made the London Underground chiller CREEP - adds underlying themes of dubious arms trading and exploitation of Eastern Europe, but any such commentary is overwhelmed by the gallows humour, including an encounter with a bear trap and a severed head rolling away still reacting in surprise. It is a thoroughly entertaining piece of work with one standout comedy moment - the accidental blowing up of a passing plane by Palisade’s American boss George (David Gilliam) - and the dwindling survivors are characters who are up a fight, even though the gun-toting call girls are more Russ Meyer than survival horror.

Claudie Blakley shortly to become toast at the hands of the Flamethrower Killer - one of the many denizens haunting the backdrop of SEVERANCE.

Contrastingly, THE COTTAGE feels like a cheap cash-in. Writer/director Paul Andrew Williams - whose debut was the critically acclaimed LONDON TO BRIGHTON - unleashes a unrelentingly violent and uneven sophomore effort. Two brothers - David (Andy Serkis) and Peter (Reece Shearsmith) - kidnap nightclub owner’s daughter Tracey (Jennifer Ellison) and hold her ransom in a secluded country cottage. When her dim-witted step-brother Andrew (Steven O’Donnell) - who is in on the scam - delivers the ransom, they find out that not only have they been tricked, but Andrew has been followed by his father's bloodthirsty Korean henchman. As the blackmail spirals out of control, Tracey manages to turn the tables on her kidnappers and escapes with Peter as her hostage, fleeing into the woods; it isn’t long before everyone faces a desperate battle against a disfigured local farmer (Dave Legeno in see-the-join make-up).

Williams claims THE COTTAGE explores the bond between brothers, but while early scenes of Serkis and Shearsmith show potential, this quickly gets lost amid the director’s insatiable appetite for humour and gore. The brothers spend too much time bickering to endear themselves, and Ellison’s expletive-heavy Liverpudlian is every bit as monstrous as the main killer himself, resulting in a priceless understanding glance between the farmer and Peter. In a role written especially for Shearsmith, the LEAGUE OF GENTLEMAN star shines brightest of all; the butt of continual violence, and permanently bloody-nosed, the deadpan Royston Vasey-stalwart completely understands this undiluted strain of Amicus-like weirdness.