halloween hits.

For your listening pleasure, volumes 1 and 2 of the Unwell Halloween Party Spooktacular mixes, guaranteed to get any party raving from the grave.

Enjoy!

you've been framed.

As unusual as it may seem I've actually found myself watching some halfway decent films for a change these last few weeks.

Well, I say halfway decent...

The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007).
Dir: John Erick Dowdle.
Cast: Stacy Chbosky, Ben Messmer, Samantha Robson, Ivar Brogger (I bet he has), Lou George and a load of other folk you'll probably never see again.

Do you remember the story of the infamous American serial killer the Water Street Butcher?

No?

Well maybe this will jog your memory.

The Butcher (or Pat as his friends called him) terrorized Poughkeepsie (that's in New Yoik geography fans) for over a decade beginning in the early 90's (gah....remember them?) and was eventually traced to a rented home after what the FBI thought were a series of minor slip ups on his part.

Never the type of folk to do things by half (just asked David Kuresh), the bureau aided by several dozen SWAT teams, three helicopters and an ice cream van stormed the house only to find a cupboard full of VHS tapes, a girl in a gimp mask hidden in a table and the killer long gone.

On closer inspection the Poughkeepsie tapes (as they come to be known) are found to contain contain the entire history of the killers reign of terror.

But not unfortunately the long lost final episode of classic Doctor Who story The Tenth Planet.

Luckily for us, director Dowdle has been given unlimited access to these tapes and all the major players, from police to parents, involved in the case enabling him to create a chilling look at the career of America's most prolific killer.

The idiot's guide to how to lose your child:
Tapas and Calpol not supplied.

And my word what a career it was, from changing his M.O. at random intervals to throw the authorities off his trail to dressing up like 80's Brit teevee terror Mr. Nosybonk to frighten his victims and locking his victims in cupboards after forcing them to wear rubber Barbie masks and French maids outfits, Pat was always one step ahead of both the police, the FBI and most importantly those self appointed Czars of fashion.

Tho' to be honest he had to be good at something as to make up for his frankly appalling camera skills.

I mean, I've seen better shot drunken home-made porn (my childhood has left me very scarred).

Between random snatches (oooeeerr) of tape and numerous monosyllabic talking heads (don't get frightened, they all have bodies attached - and judging by the lack of emoting from some of the interviewee's - poles rammed right up their arses) we learn how Pat began his life of badness by abducting wee girls out of their gardens before graduating to kidnapping and torturing plainly dressed couples before finally setting himself up as a slayer of whores and sneakily framing a policeman (by using of a stolen tub of semen and a plan far too complicated to go into here) for his crimes.

The rotter.

Well, he would be a rotter if any of it were real.

Yup, The Poughkeepsie Tapes is another in that long line of horror mockumentaries that began with Cannibal Holocaust (and was reborn with The Blair Witch Project) and continues to this day with the release of Paranormal Activity, the movie was hyped to hell back in 2007 before dropping off the radar completely and disappearing quicker than a child on a Portuguese holiday.

Possibly.

He might be all smiles now but
just wait till the fucking starts.

It was only by chance that I came across the screener of this sitting on my shelf (just behind those classic Mexican mad mentalist movies Vacation of Terror 1 and 2) after it'd been quietly gathering dust now for about 18 months and intrigued partly by the original hype surrounding it but mainly to see why it had been forgotten about so completely, I decided to give it a go.

And surprisingly it's not half bad.

Dowdle , who later went on to direct the American Remake of [Rec], the so-so Quarantine
(nobodies perfect) does a top job of making the killer's VHS footage look uncomfortably real (maybe too real, I can't imagine the pixel-lated, scratchy nth generation copies transferring to a cinema screen) whilst the script references such real life events as the John Wayne Gacy trial and the September 11th attacks adding an air of 'could be' reality to the whole affair, hopefully freaking out most of middle America along the way and inducing severe migraines in the rest.

The result veers wildly between being a skin crawlingly uncomfortable experience and an arse numbingly boring one depending who's on screen at any given time, whilst there are a few convincing performances from the movies cast the majority of the actors involved appeared to be construct entirely from MDF board and if you concentrate enough you can actually see the woodworm slowly crawling up the actors faces.

Now there are a couple of mooth's made
for shite-in in if ever I saw some.

A special mention must go to the FBI man who, when talking about the time his missis accidentally viewed one of the tapes after mistaking it for that weeks Sunset Beach omnibus said this of her reaction:

"it was over a year before my wife let me touch her again".

Quality (if oh so slightly snigger inducing) stuff.

Naomi Watts, up the casino, 1997....Yesch!

But for every crap commentary there's a scene that is so bizarre and unflinchingly vile that it demands your attention.

The grainy footage of an unfortunate woman hogtied like a plumb and sweaty turkey and the almost unwatchable (in a good way obviously) scene where pervy Pat invites the teenie, cookie selling Girl Scouts into his house are just two that come to mind.

In that instant you have no idea where Dowdle is planning on taking the film.

Or the viewer.

And there's precious little of that in modern cinema.

gotham's shame.

people you fancy but shouldn't (part 14).

The Rescuers Ms Bianca.

spooky scribbles.

Almost finished, just need a video company to use it on The Beyond re-release now.

apocalypse sow.

It's been a long weekend of walkabout ballooning, tidying the scary cupboard, watching that classic Doctor Who story The Keys of Marinus and experiencing the final glut of X Factor auditions which meant that by 11 o'clock Sunday night I was far too knackered (and far too drunk) to switch channels when this beauty turned up on Sci-Fi.

Shockingly I'd managed to avoid it up until then.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
Dir: Alexander Witt
Cast: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr, Sandrine Holt, Thomas Kretschmann, Sophie Vavasseur, Razaaq Adoti, Jared Harris, and Mike Epps

Welcome to Raccoon City, a normal American suburban paradise indistinguishable from any other but for the large amounts of piss stained tramps wandering about trying to bite folk, the fact that it looks a wee bit like Canada and that the bird from The Fifth Element has taken to wandering about the streets wearing a tea-towel as a dress.

While the stinky hobo's are quickly taking over and the towns residents (who surprisingly aren't evil) are desperately trying to leave (or at the very least are desperate to appear in a better film), the local law enforcement (and part time jazz dance crew by the looks of them) are fighting a losing battle to maintain order (and interest) against an overwhelming number of undead gypsies and the directors almost obscene obsession with crash zooming in on ladies underwear as they climb stairs to avoid a nibbling.

If this wasn't enough to put a downer on everyones week, the evil multinational in charge of the town, the Umbrella corporation has decided to erect large gates at every exit and has taken to machine gunning anyone who gets too close.

Which is a mercy killing really.

The local (and I do mean local) news anchor Terri Morales (turnip nosed, topless star of Rapa Nui, Holt) is bravely (and sweatily) reporting from the front lines.

What she doesn't realize is that Umbrella are blocking the broadcast, effectively cutting Raccoon City off from the outside world.

The swines.

You see, it seems that not only do they own the local secret labs, the pound shop and the bakery but also the news channels too.

Imagine an even more patently bastard Rupert Murdoch empire but with sexier suits and less grating accents.

Tho' you think she'd have noticed the big, fuck off 'U' on the side of the cameras before now.

Back in town at the local police station, a squad of Raccoon Cities finest are doing their best not to get bitten by skanky zombie whores whilst not spilling their coffees and filing traffic reports but to no avail.

Enter (oh go on, if I must) barely dressed, gun toting tottie Jill Valentine (Guillory from Love Actually), a no nonsense, kick arse cop kicked off the force for doing things her way.

Is there any cliche this film wont dig up and parade kicking and screaming in front of us like so gin soaked arthritic relative?

Valentine: She loves you not.

Taking time out from telling everyone to leave whilst walking around with her arse wiggling in the style of a ten year old cross-dressing Chinese boy, Jill shoots an undead hooker in the face and grabs a Snickers bar before heading off to meet up with her better looking (and far better dressed) cop buddy Carlos (the chip pan haired Fehr from, ahem, The Mummy Returns).

Which begs the question as to why she didn't just go and meet up with them in the first place rather than going to the station just to walk straight thru' and leave.

Oh yes, it was so we could all enjoy the long tracking shot of her backside.

My bloody Valentine.

Hiding out in a church alongside Terri the reporter and rent an ethnic sidekick Wells (Adoti from Doom - the guy must like his video games, well it's either that or he's got a huge drugs habit to fund) our heroic trio come across a fat vicar and his zombie sister before being attacked by some inconsequential CGI turd-monsters with big tongues.

Slobbering slimy mouth monsters and skimpily dressed heroines?

This is where the movie could get interesting.

But no, given the choice between some girl on monster tentacle sex or having the writers wife smash thru' the window on a motorbike the director goes for the latter.

Yup, it's genetically engineered skinny bird Alice (the monkey faced, Scrabble scoring Jovovich), fresh from lying strapped to a bed and flashing her smooth milky white thighs and a wee bit of bush (just enough to give the small boys watching something to do with their free hand) at the end of the first movie and ready to kick zombie bum.

Oh, and show her pants a lot.

Jovovich: Water sports.

Meanwhile back at the plot, the evil (yet sexily uniformed) Major Jeff Cain (Kretschmann, that nasty rapist from The Stendhal Syndrome) is busy arguing with the crippled (both physically - I mean he is ginger - and emotionally) genius behind Umbrella's slightly dodgy bio-weapons experiments Dr. Ashford (Harris, who should really know better). It seems that in the confusion they forgot to evacuate the good doctor's daughter before shutting down the city, mistakenly crashing the car she was in into a wall instead.

Arse.

Wheeling off in a strop (well in a wheelchair but you know what I mean), Ashford (but alas not Simpson) secretly contacts our merry band of zombie hunters - who've now picked up a wise cracking pimp named LJ ('played' if that's the right word by a shameless Epps) and offers them a safe route out of the city.

But only if they rescue his daughter first....

Stephen Hawkins arrested for speeding shocker.

Jumping the directors ship for the abominable sequel to the lackluster (nah, I'm being polite - that should read utterly shite) Resident Evil, baby faced movie mangler Paul W.S. Anderson handed over the reigns to Alexander Witt.

Lucky fella.

As you may remember, Anderson is the genius behind the anal rape of Forbidden Planet that was Event Horizon, the fist fuck of a film called Alien Vs. Predator as well as the not too bad (if I'm honest) Mortal Kombat and the Kurt Russell straight to video abortion Soldier.

Sorry if I'm bringing back bad memories here but people need reminding of these facts.

And scarily he's still allowed to make movies.

On a brighter note, this is (so far) Alexander Witt's only shot at directing a movie and I think you'll agree it takes a special kind of talent to miss the mark so widely.

The scary thing is how?

Witt's DP CV is certainly impressive (in a mainstream kinda way) and for the past 20 years he's been working alongside Sir Ridley of Scott which you'd think would be pretty good on the job training.

At the very least the film should look nice, not like it was shot thru' a gauze of watered down shite.

Who stole Milla's leg?

Complete and utter tosh, which has scarily given me a real urge to look out the third film.

Is there any hope for me?

comic relief.

A few more snippets of gory, Eurotrash graphic-ness.

Don't have nightmares.