In short: Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls (2023)

Bedraggled and just plain weird burger flipper Marcus (Andrew Bowser) is trying to reinvent himself as occultist Onyx the Fortuitous, following the teachings of YouTube occultist, rock star, and Satanic fitness video guru Bartok the Great (Jeffrey Combs). Onyx, let’s use his chosen moniker, is not very bright.

So he is exceedingly happy when he is one of the five Chosen invited to help Bartok with a ritual that will gain everyone involved immortality. Obviously, Bartok’s plans are mite more sinister than he’s letting on, and Chosen might actually be short for Chosen Sacrifices.

Andrew Bowser’s Onyx etc is a bit of an acquired taste, to say the least. Or really, if one is in the wrong headspace for it and particularly its high maintenance protagonist who never shuts up making noises with his very unpleasant voice, this could be a bit of a chore. Particularly during the film’s first half, Onyx the character is just a bit much, and his “funny” loser shtick never really loses those quotation marks. But then, I’m not a great candidate for appreciating this kind of awkwardness-based comedy at the best of times, and Onyx is really, really awkward. The situation isn’t helped by the sluggishness of the beginning of a film that takes ages to get to its early and most obvious beats.

On the other hand, even the film’s early stages are well shot, and well edited, and, even if you don’t like the tone it is going for, clearly well acted – it featuring Barbara Crampton, Olivia Taylor Dudley and Combs certainly doesn’t hurt, either.

Once the preliminaries were finally through, Onyx actually won me over, though. Suddenly, ideas became silly but clever instead of completely obvious, character relations were rather more interesting than they at first looked, and the film demonstrated a likeable, big heart, while still having fun with movie Satanist clichés. Even the jokes in the later stages hit better – there’s nothing that isn’t funny about a seduction scene in form of a fake Meatloaf video with not-Thundercats.

Three Films Make A Post: The mission that changes everything begins.

No Time to Die (2021): This very long final entry in Daniel Craig’s stint as James Bond – by far my favourite Bond version – as directed by the often great Cary Joji Fukunaga is a pretty dignified note for the series to end on, continuing, varying and actually finishing the themes that have run through the whole of the Craig Bond cycle while also delivering highly entertaining crazy SpyFy nonsense, a large handful of great, usually imaginative and fun action set pieces and even quite a bit of character work that actually, well, works on the heightened level this sort of blockbuster needs to get up to.

The film really has only two problems in my eyes. First, there is Rami Malek’s inexplicable decision to play his villain as a mediocre Klaus Kinski imitation; but then, Malek is one of these actors whose ego bark to my eyes often promises more than his acting bite can deliver. Secondly, the way the script telegraphs the film’s ending beforehand is glaringly obvious even for the world of the blockbuster where things for understandable reason do tend to be telegraphed with the dumbest parts of the audience in mind.

Castle Freak (1995): Despite featuring house favourites Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, this is by far my least favourite Stuart Gordon film. Sure, the castle location is a pretty fantastic looking setting, and some of the suggested and portrayed nasty gruesomeness is somewhat diverting, but otherwise, this simply lacks the energy, the spirit, and the depth of the director’s other films.

In the Devil’s Garden aka Assault (1971): From time to time, this Sidney Hayers thriller seems to suggest a malign influence from some kind of outside force on its somewhat sordid tale of rape and serial murder. It mostly creates this mood by shots of the – always female – victims staring at the woods, the sky and overland electric lines in desperation. The rest of the film never turns these suggestions into part of the narrative and plays out as a plodding police procedural with some stiffly realized social criticism and skirts the edges of exploitation cinema via theme and very mild sleaze, but not with its storytelling. It’s not a terrible film – Hayers was nothing if not a pro – but one of those films that always seems to shy away from its most interesting impulses.

Replace (2017)

Kira Mabon (Rebecca Forsythe) wakes up with a bout of amnesia, a handful of strange dreams and short flashes of what might be memories. She takes her situation pretty well, or with a hefty dose of denial, depending on one’s interpretation, mostly pretending nothing is wrong – which is made a lot easier by what appears to be a total lack of social connections that makes the quasi-hermit writing this look like a social butterfly.

Rather more problematic for her than that pesky memory loss is the dramatic skin problem Kira is developing that finds increasingly large parts of her skin rapidly drying out, dropping and crumbling. Our protagonist does find out she has an appointment with a doctor the next day anyway, but when she meets this Dr Crober (Barbara Crampton), even Kira – usually acting as if she doesn’t quite know if she’s awake or dreaming – becomes a bit suspicious by the woman’s evasive behaviour and slightly creepy demeanour. Plus, the clinic the good doctor is working in looks right out of a Cronenberg/Panos Cosmatos movie. Not to mention that neither Crober’s medication nor her wait and see approach to Kira’s private body horror help the patient at all.

Kira does find something that is helping though: other peoples’ skin. And what’s a bit of murder when it keeps a woman beautiful?

German director Norbert Keil’s Replace (as co-written with Keil by that Richard Stanley, no less) does wear its main influence on its sleeve. Its weird medical interests, its focus on body horror and mental dissolution turning into a kind of rebirth into something new and not quite human, the disquieting erotic aspects to Kira’s inevitable acts of violence, as well as parts of its visual aesthetics all clearly point to early to mid-period David Cronenberg. Keil is certainly sharing a sphere of artistic interest with Panos Cosmatos and Joe Begos, though he also shares with these two enough of an independence from his influences he is able to make something of his own out of Replace.

It’s not quite as individual – and frankly not quite as convincing - an effort as what comes from Cosmatos, or Begos at his best, but what Replace delivers is still very impressive. If you want, you can read considerable parts of the film as a critique of the contemporary obsession with youth and an idea of beauty that can’t abide even the slightest traces of aging and the eventual death that signals. But I find myself mostly drawn to the often dream-like tone of the film, the shifts in time and space, the way connecting scenes are purposefully left out. All of this – together with Keil’s deftly non-realist approach to camerawork and lighting -  pushes the viewer into Kira’s fragmented mind space, not so much suggesting psychological alienation but rather a physical dislocation of the mind. Which, as my imaginary readers know, is the sort of thing bound to make me pretty excited about a movie. Though I am just as happy about movies these days containing lesbian love side-plots as a matter of fact, as it happens here.

One could criticize the film’s for its oftentimes languid pacing, yet this again helps draw the viewer deeper into Kira’s mind space, where today, yesterday and tomorrow all seem to feel equally distant from her, shifting together and drawing apart at the same time. It also makes for a particularly fine jarring effect when the film’s plot suddenly becomes fast enough for it to even include a couple of action scenes come the final act, whereas before even the act of murder seemed slow and perversely sensual.


It’s obviously not the sort of film everyone will like, but as far as I am concerned, Replace is very much what I’m hoping for when stumbling upon a film I haven’t seen – and hardly heard anything about - before, mixing the old, the new and the strange in exciting ways.

Three Films Make A (Decidedly Grumpy) Post: Monsters are real

The Incantation (2018): This thing is an attempt to make some sort of Gothic Horror with Gothic Romance influence. Alas, it lacks the visual flair and thoughtfulness, any sense of mood, the plot or the character depth to pull this off. The script is a badly paced series of clichés, lacking any kind of bite (and of course ends on a stupid plot twist), the acting – apart from Sam Valentine who starts out horrible but actually does her best with what she’s given, and perhaps poor old Dean Cain who deserves better – is execrable. In particular, watch out for the writer/director not going the Hitchcock or Argento cameo route of just popping in but taking on an important role that’s should probably have gone to an actor.

The whole thing left me annoyed and hoping for some sort of Satanic miracle that would make me unsee it.

Day of Reckoning (2016): Also visiting us from the realm of the crappy, the incompetently or lazily written, and the just plain disinterested is Joel Novoa’s Syfy Original about the recurrence of an invasion of a horde of improbably shoddy CGI demons (the people involved in their creation must either have no self-respect when it comes to their work or no intact eyesight). In the film’s only clever idea, the US preparedness for Demon Invasion II is in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security and therefore seems to suck rather badly.

The film doesn’t spend much time on this of course – how could it afford it – but rather goes with the SyFy approved tale of a divorced family fighting off monsters. You can imagine the character arcs there. On the way, the movie drags its feet, hurts the eyeballs via atrocious special effects, and wastes perfectly wonderful actors like Barbara Crampton and Heather McComb by giving them nothing of even the faintest interest to do.

Hooked Up (2013): However, things can always get worse, which brings us to this thing directed by Pablo Larcuen and produced by Jaume Collet-Serra, though you wouldn’t notice. Going by its PR, this is the first feature film completely shot on an iPhone. Consequently, it looks even worse than most other POV horror films, an impression that’s certainly not improved by what looks like the total absence of actual filmmaking skills. The script is even worse, mixing all the ills of bad POV horror (I don’t believe I need to list them anymore) with nonsense that belongs to the film all alone, namely absurd attempts at “psychology” that are so stupid calling them brain dead would be a terrible insult to the comatose.


Add to this a total lack of mood, an inability to stage scenes in any way, shape or form, and much time spent with total idiots on screen, and you’ve got yourself a film nobody should watch.

In short: Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (2018)

So, it turns out that, if you put the Puppet Master franchise in the hands of people with actual talent, namely here S. Craig Zahler for the script and Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wiklund the direction, and let them make as hog-wild an exploitation movie as they have a mind to make, you actually get that most curious of things – a highly entertaining Puppet Master film. Not surprising in a Fangoria production, this isn’t a film for everyone, but really made for an audience with a love for gory horror and the old-fashioned exploitation values of gore, tits, and wit. Good taste certainly wasn’t invited, instead we get more or less large appearances by the great Barbara Crampton, the Udo Kier, Michael Paré, Matthias Hues (soon to be controlled by Baby Hitler), and so on. Also, a score by Fabio Frizzi.

Puppet and kill-wise, this is much more packed full with incident and murder, also incidents of murder, than most other Puppet Master films, with a small army of the darn little Nazis (and in this version they are definitely Nazis, giving the the film a nice opportunity to have a more diverse cast to kill as well as saying goodbye to any tragic backstory some of the older films had for the master and his puppets) killing people in increasingly outrageous fashion. Apart from Baby Hitler Hues, one of the high points is a completely shameless killing of a pregnant woman and her unborn. Or one of the low points, if you are of a higher moral fibre than I am, probably. That particular scene is the moment that divides the people for whom this film was made from those for whom it wasn’t. If you’re me and find the whole thing funny (if “holy crap, did they just do that?” outrageous), than you’ll enjoy the rest of the film, too, if not, there’s really no shame in missing the rest of this.


Speaking of the film’s humour, this is very much a throwback to fun 80s and 90s style gore where everyone involved doesn’t take things terribly seriously but isn’t really interested in the post-Scream plague of “irony”, instead providing said fun by skirting (and overstepping) various lines. I would call it dumb fun, but there’s also so much obvious intelligence in the film’s staging, and so much energy and love put into propping up minor characters with neat details before killing them off in Zahler’s script, the “dumb” word doesn’t really apply.

Dead Night (2017)

One spring break, the Pollack family make their way into one of those all too typical cabins in the snowy woods, taking their daughter Jessica’s (Sophie Dalah) best friend Becky (Elise Luthman), too. It’s not just your standard vacation, though, but rather mom Casey’s (Brea Grant) last attempt at saving her husband James (AJ Bowen) from a brain tumour. The cabin, you see, is supposedly built on magical healing stones right from the realm of woo woo. However, something magical is going to happen when James finds an unconscious woman in the woods who is going by the improbable moniker of Leslie Bison (Barbara Crampton). Alas, it’s the kind of magic that leads to zombie families and axe massacres.

Speaking of axe massacre, while the increasingly demented plot unfolds, the film from time to time cuts into what a mysterious person or thing watches on a tower of TVs stacked up in the middle of the woods: an episode of a sensationalist true crime TV show about Casey’s axe-murder of her whole family. Well, and a TV spot for Leslie Bison’s run for Ohio governor.

That true crime TV show is one of the best parts of Brad Baruh’s pretty bizarre and terribly fun little horror film. It hits exactly the right tone with its over-earnest, sleazy presenter, the kitschy and melodramatic recreations, and the generally sanctimonious tone that comes with the business of making a quick buck out of terrible shit that has happened to people, without a care for boring things like truth, doubt, and responsibility. This part of the film is going to be even more entertaining than it already is once Dead Night comes around to telling the audience who watches it, when, and why, coming up with an answer that makes no logical sense (it’s not supposed to, mind you), the movie staring at its audience as if daring it to call it a damn liar. It’s pretty fantastic.

Also rather wonderful are Dead Night’s practical gore effects, a series of nicely done and excellently grotesque disfigurements that doesn’t really stop once the film has gotten going. As a frequent horror viewer, I did of course know where all of this was going in broad strokes very early on, but the film has a tendency to play with and audiences expectations at least a bit, coming up with improbable ideas and illogical little twists that certainly aren’t common.

That’s not the sort of thing everyone will enjoy, so if you need the plan of a movie’s villains to make much sense, even if it is only a ritualistic one, or things in a film to happen somewhat akin to the way things happen in the real world, you won’t find much joy here. In fact, Dead Night goes out of its way to present the violent supernatural as we know and love it from horror movies of the late 80s and the 90s as something that is at its core not logical and will therefore not act in manners that completely make sense. Or at least, that’s how its treatment seems to.


If you’re like me and go for stuff like this, you just might have a wonderful time, not only with the gory and strange bits but also some shots of wonderful strangeness, be it the TVs in the woods or Crampton’s behaviour in the cabin before the minor killing spree starts, including a fantastic bit of passive aggressive milk drinking. That last part again demonstrates how much of a treasure Crampton as a character actress specialised in all sorts of creepy, disturbed, or disturbing women has become in her return to horror.

Beyond the Gates (2016)

Gordon (Graham Skipper) returns to his hometown because his father has disappeared. It’s not the first time the alcoholic has gone AWOL, but this time, it seems to have stuck.

So Gordon has to reunite with his brother John (Chase Williamson), who stayed behind when Gordon left town and their father for good, to pack up their father’s house and the obsolete video store he owned. Both brothers have obviously suffered from abuse by their dear dad. As a consequence John as a young-ish man has turned into the sort of charming fuck-up who might soon replace the “charming” with criminal, dead, or drunk, and Gordon has difficulties to not turn into his father, fighting alcoholism and a tendency to violent outbursts. His girlfriend Margot (Brea Grant) is coming to help sort through dad’s baggage too – after all, that’s what she’s been doing for Gordon for some time now, it seems.

Going through their father’s old office, John and Gordon find that most 80s of things – a VCR board game. There’s something strange going on with the game, though: the somewhat sinister woman (Barbara Crampton) on the game’s video tape tells the brothers the game is the only way to save their father’s soul, and might react to what’s going on around it, which is disquieting enough, but soon, board game and reality start to mix in sometimes bloody ways, turning the lives of the brothers and Margot into a fight for their life, limb and perhaps their very souls.

Jackson Stewart’s Beyond the Door is a lovely bit of indie horror cinema, paying homage to the aesthetics of certain parts of 80s horror like a lot of films do these days, yet without falling into the trap of becoming too much of a copy of the style. Well, I’m not sure the film could actually afford to become one – this is after all a film where stepping into a different dimension happens via the movie magic of blue and purple lighting and some dry ice fog – but it is clear that Stewart knows what he’s doing in looks and tone.

I imagine some viewers will be frustrated by the film’s slow beginning and the rather budget conscious way it builds up to its climax, but I found myself charmed by the character interactions between the leads, appreciated how lacking in melodrama the treatment of the brothers’ backstories was, and generally found myself interested in these characters as people to observe for a movie’s length. Stewart is a pleasantly economic director of these character interactions, never letting things become too concise but also not falling into the trap of confusing the creation of believable people with long, rambling and pointless dialogue scenes. The film’s central metaphor on the other hand is as on the nose as they get, but that works out fine in a film taking its time for its characters as this one does.


Stewart treats the supernatural elements (Jumanji light – but with gore?) equally well, obviously putting all of his tiny budget on screen in a way that mostly works fine, demonstrates imagination and never descends into smugness. There’s fan enthusiasm even for the hokier parts of the horror genre that still doesn’t get in the way of the film’s own story, some pleasant macabre details, a smidgen of wonderfully gloopy gore, and Barbara Crampton glorying in her new role as queen of indie horror character actresses with some classy, controlled scenery chewing. Everything going on is rather small scale, of course, yet Stewart works so well with what he’s got, I enjoyed Beyond the Gates thoroughly, with a pleased grin pasted on my cynical old mug for much of its running time.

We Are Still Here (2015)

Emotionally reeling from the accidental death of their grown-up son, Anne (Barbara Crampton) and Paul Sacchetti (Andrew Sensenig) decide moving out of the house he grew up in might assist them on their way to closure. Turns out, moving to Aylesbury, Mass., situated right in Lovecraft Country might not have been the best idea to that end, for there’s something very wrong with the house they move to.

There’s a reason the place had been left uninhabited for thirty years. Particularly Anne finds herself confronted with various low key haunting effects that suggest the presence of the spirit of their son, but surely, actual ghosts don’t move to new homes with people. There’s also something deeply wrong with the house’s cellar that manifests itself in unseasonable heat, the smell of burning flesh, and – if you’re an unlucky electrician – the crispy-hot living dead.

After some time of weirdness, Anne convinces the more sceptical Paul, who still can’t quite wave away what’s going on, it might be a good idea to call a couple of friends of hers for help. May (Lisa Marie) and her hippie husband Jacob (the inevitable yet lovely Larry Fessenden) do have a talent for contacting the spirit world, it turns out, but there’s something worse in the house than just a few – already pretty damn bad, it’ll turn out – ghosts.

If you’re like me, you’ll probably already have read various bits and pieces about Ted Geoghegan’s We Are Still Here emphasising how much of the film is a loving homage to Lucio Fulci. That’s absolutely true, too, but if you expect a film that feels or is meant to feel like a Fulci flick from his great period, you’ll probably end up confused or disappointed, for Geoghegan uses certain markers of Fulci’s aesthetic in a way often antithetical to the old maestro’s approach. I rather think that’s a good thing, too, for what would be the point in making a film that’s only aping a gone great?

But let’s start on the obviously Fulci-esque elements: the film’s colour-scheme, the characters’ wardrobes and the production design are very much taken from Fulci’s playbook, as are the nods towards Lovecraft (bonus points to Geoghegan for using Aylesbury instead of a more obvious place). And there’s really no doubt in which direction the scene with the electrician in the cellar nods; even though what happens to him is rather different to the doom of a certain Fulci workman in a Southern cellar.

However, no Fulci film – from whichever career phase – would ever have featured as naturalistically drawn characters as the Sacchetti’s (speaking of nods…), actual people with actually believable interiority who mostly do things that make sense, even when these acts are ill-advised. Crampton and Sensenig are rather wonderful as the Sacchettis too, selling much of the sadness and loss, as well as their long intimacy with gestures, posture and looks, without them or the script feeling the need to oversell it and drift into a more melodramatic direction.

Geoghegan’s script does in general – except for one bar scene involving Monte Markham telling the local bar owner stuff she already knows quite well for no good reason apart from clueing the audience in – tend to find the sweet spot between showing and telling and seems to trust in the audience not to need every little thing spelled out for them. Of course, this generally logical and humanly believable approach is pretty much the exact opposite to Fulci’s (and Sacchetti’s) love for slow, dream-like series of strange occurrences vaguely drawn characters just stumble through. I do think it works very well for We Are Still Here, mind you.

Keeping with the Fulci, even the way the film uses gore, once it arrives for the final act, is very different from the maestro’s, replacing the slow lingering on the bizarre and gloopy with relatively quick edits. Though it still is rather bizarre and gloopy.

All in all, Geoghegan uses elements of Fulci’s filmmaking to turn out a more conventionally accomplished movie, losing the dream-like, weird and just plain crazy mood in favour of being an effective, clever, and well-acted low budget horror film. I certainly won’t blame a film for being that.

In short: Road Games (2015)

Somewhere in rural France - the huge empty part films have taught me is nearly unpopulated except by cannibals, serial killers and immortal Nazis. After helping fellow hitch-hiker Véronique (Joséphine de la Baume) out of a spot of bother with a driver, brit Jack (Andrew Simpson) teams up with her. Despite a certain language barrier, there’s romance in the air: Jack running away from some sort of affair gone wrong and Véronique being rather French.

Things take a turn for the sinister when they are picked up by one Grizard (Frédéric Pierrot). At first, Grizard is perfectly pleasant – if a bit too happy picking up road kill and depositing it in his trunk for Jack’s (and my) taste – but Véronique doesn’t have a terribly good feeling about him. Nonetheless, they agree when Grizard invites them to spend the night in his and his wife Mary’s (Barbara Crampton) home. There’s a serial killer roaming the roads of this part of the country, so staying outside just isn’t safe, or so Grizard says. So perhaps, agreeing to the invitation was a better idea than horror movie lore suggests…Of course, the younger couple may harbour a secret or two themselves.

I was very pleasantly surprised by Abner Pastoll’s fine thriller. It’s the kind of film that does very little I’d strictly call new but it uses the old quite a bit better than many films tending the same plot(s). Why, this is a plot-twist heavy thriller where I even found myself enjoying the plot twists! It helps that these twists generally make sense, and don’t go out of their way to make the things that went on before them absurd even if they do stretch plausibility once or twice; it’s the sort of approach that even makes those twists you do see coming effective as parts of the narrative (well, most of them, at least).

Pastoll also makes very good use of the – sometimes as sun-drenched as is traditional – rural horror film landscapes of France, aiming for the feeling of isolation that comes with large empty spaces. As presented, the house of Gizard and Mary is pleasantly creepy too, without the film feeling the need to go so overboard with the New French Gothic (that’s a thing, right?) you have to ask yourself why anyone entering it wouldn’t just run the other way at once.

The acting is good too, the core quartet giving performances suggesting just the right amount of depths and secrets to their characters. I’m happy with Barbara Crampton’s career revival as a wonderful character actress anyhow, and her performance here just cements how good she is as the kind of weird role contemporary horror movies can provide.

Finally, the film even has a bit of a moral: when visiting a country, it might behoove one to understand something of its language beyond “hello”, “goodbye” and “I don’t understand”.

Cold Harvest (1999)

Welcome to the double-apocalypse post-apocalypse. First, a comet collided with Earth hiding the sun away behind eternal clouds that just happen to make a film shot in the studio much more believable (in theory). Then, a mysterious virus with symptoms so mysterious the film never shows them or tells us about them rolled around to mop up the rest of humanity. In the end, it’s all darkness, people dressed in your typical post-apocalyptic rags (extra cheap edition) and something called “The Safe Zone”, whatever it may be.

Roland Chaney (Gary Daniels) roams decidedly not safe zones as a bounty hunter, for the world seems to have returned to some kind of frontier law. Being our action movie hero, Roland is of course haunted by a dark past. Things do not get lighter when hilariously sadist evildoer and Chaney childhood playmate Little Ray (Bryan Genesse) ambushes a government convoy in the hopes of picking up some goodies. Instead, he kills a bunch of civilians, as well as Roland’s twin Oliver (guess). Only Oliver’s wife Christine (Barbara Crampton) escapes.

Turns out Little Ray’s murder spree was an even worse idea than your typical murder spree, for the civilians in the convoy were the only surviving carriers of a gene that could make the virus a thing of the past. Thanks to a tracking device with extremely vague operational parameters, Ray follows Christine in the hopes of selling her on to the government; possibly after having had his way with her.

Too bad for him Christine and Roland meet and team up, and Roland’s the kind of bounty-hunting ass-kicker you really don’t want protecting your dedicated victim. Much violence, kidnappings, and a few explosions ensue.

I don’t think Cold Harvest is the biggest milestone in director Isaac Florentine’s decades-long crusade to make US direct-to-video action and martial arts films that are actually worth watching, carry a consciousness of genre history, and handle genre tropes knowingly yet lovingly. That doesn’t mean this isn’t a fun movie. In fact, it’s rather a lot of fun, but it does have a couple of problems.

For one, the post-apocalyptic world the NuImage budget provides is the usual mix of abandoned industrial buildings, and grotty sets, just with no lights in the sky (yet still an abundance of working light sources) and as such not exactly a delight to look at – it’s more than just a bit drab, and there’s very little to actually gawk at. Secondly – and I’m sorry, Gary Daniels fans – dear Gary Daniels only barely manages to get through the moments when the film actually needs him to act (and the script does take care not to put that much of a strain on him), even in scenes where saintly Barbara Crampton puts in rather a lot of effort to make him look good.

Which of course already leads us to some of Cold Harvest’s strong points, namely, Barbara Crampton who’d lighten up a shitty film and surely doesn’t do less to a really fun one like this, Gary Daniels when he’s not acting but hitting, kicking, shooting and pitchfork-ening people, and Isaac Florentine, esquire.

I’m not even sure it’s still necessary for me to praise Florentine’s action direction, but I’ll do it just to be sure: as usual, Florentine’s action scenes are incredibly energetic – it’s difficult not to use the old cliché of them exploding off the screen – yet never feel the need to go for the “cool” cop out shot that makes it more difficult to see what stunt actors and actors are actually doing. The basis of Florentine’s approach to action is based on the idea that the stuff his performers actually do is as cool as things can get, and it is his job to emphasise what they can do instead of hiding what they can’t. This time around, the style feels particularly Hong Kong to me, with 80s and 90s martial arts scenes and gun fu with a Western genre influence being the centre of Florentine’s attention. There’s a lot of action going around too, of course, but, as always, Florentine’s putting creativity and thought into the bits where nobody dies too.

Sure, the emotional parts are consciously cheesy (just look at the hilarious bit where Crampton washes her back while Daniels polishes his gun and watches her in a mirror and oh so many ever so slightly sexually loaded gestures are made) but then, that’s the only emotional content that fits a film like this.

Other joys are Genesse’s awesome and strange performance as Little Ray, a main henchman who is into noses (don’t ask him why), and a whole lot of overdubbed whoosh and swish noises. Turns out Gary Daniels can’t turn his head without the air around him going “woosh” in sheer excitement. And who could blame it?