New Movies Round Up # 2:Horror.

Sea Fever 

(Neasa Hardiman, 2019)

As far as niche sub-genres go, sea-bound eco/survival horror is generally a good bet, and this modest, primarily Irish indie production takes a pretty convincing shot at it. It’s a rather less exciting prospect to try to write about, truth be told, but I feel like telling you about it nonetheless, so buckle up, and we’ll get through this whole ‘review’ thing together.

So, synopsis time! A painfully introverted PhD student specialising in behavioural patterns of marine life, Siobhán (Hermione Corfield) is reluctantly persuaded by her supervisor to undertake a bit of fieldwork - namely, signing up for a research excursion on rust-bucket fishing trawler the Niamh Cinn Oir, wherein she makes the acquaintance of the unfeasibly diverse crew with whom she (and we) will spend the next 90-odd minutes.

In contrast to the wall-to-wall rough bastards you’d reasonably expect to find manning an Atlantic trawler, we’re instead introduced to hard-bitten yet well-meaning husband and wife skipper team Gerard and Freya (Dougray Scott & Connie Neilson), their sturdy and ever-cheerful son Johnny (Jack Hickey), and the family’s superstitious, and indeed suspicious, grandma Ciarra (Olwen Fouéré). Below stairs meanwhile, we’ve got Syrian refugee and unrecognised engineering genius Omid (Ardalan Esmaili) and another young man of middle eastern descent, Sudi (Elie Bouakaze), whose girlfriend is expecting a baby back home, and who regales us with his plans for a happy future, so -- I’m sorry mate, but you realise we’re in a who’s-going-to-die-first horror movie here, so might as well just get you measured up for that body bag right now, eh?

Speaking of which, exposition of the film’s supernatural plotline is wisely kept paper-thin, but long story short: after Skipper Gerard plots a course through a maritime ‘exclusion zone’ in search of a better catch, the trawler finds itself colliding with what transpires to be an unprecedentedly huge, translucent squid-like creature, whose suckers soon cause little patches of alarming, corrosive goo to begin seeping through the hull.

Sadly, the conspiratorial angle implicit in the fact that this massive, unknown creature is simply flopping around happily in an area from which the powers-that-be have pointedly prohibited civilian shipping is never investigated by Hardiman’s script, but no matter, as there’s plenty else going on to keep our characters busy once their vessel breaks away from the squid’s grasp. Not least, an unknown infection of spreading through the crew causing a variety of unpredictable, scary symptoms, furiously multiplying parasites in the water supply, a sabotaged engine, no means of contacting the outside world, and… well, you get the picture.

During ‘Sea Fever’s first half, the film’s gloomy tone, overcast, seaweed n’ barnacle-drenched ambience and plausible-seeming scientific chat all rather put me in mind of early ‘70s UK TV staple Doomwatch, establishing an atmosphere of drab realism which nicely enhances the impact once the full-on SF/horror elements are let out the bag and given a run around later on.

In particular, the low key atmos which prevails aboard ship contrasts nicely with the notes of Lovecraftian awe conjured up by the effects-heavy underwater sequences wherein we encounter the mysterious life forms first-hand, in footage whose eerie, CG-enhanced beauty proves surprisingly effective.

By far the film’s strongest suit though turns out to be its ensemble performances, with the cast having clearly been given a free hand to treat the whole thing as a long-form chamber piece/collaborative exercise, as all concerned do great work in transcending the potentially clichéd roles assigned to them by the script, effectively capturing our sympathies/attention in the process.

Though it can make few claim toward originality (see below), writer/director Neasa Hardiman’s screenplay is nonetheless peppered with curious bits of detail which also help add a bit of depth to proceedings, whether through random folkloric digressions (such as grandma Ciarra explaining the significance of the trawler’s name, or the crew reacting with consternation to the discovery that they’ve inadvertently set sail with a redhead aboard ship), or the assorted cool, DIY schemes Siobhán and Omid come up with to try to fight back against the alien incursion (using a hacked smartphone to generate UV light for instance); schemes which, refreshingly, totally fail to work in most instances.

There are, it must be said, a few glaring absurdities which stretch credulity along the way - most notably the vexed issue of the radio, which apparently falls apart after the boat bumps into the squid, causing the skipper to immediately declare that they’re now out-of-contact with the mainland, despite not even bothering to ask the two highly proficient tech bods on-board to try to fix it. (And what, no back-up radio? GPS tracking? Distress signals? FLARES, fergodsake? I mean, I’ll cop that it’s a been a few years since I spent any time on a boat, but I’d imagine it must take more than a few loose wires on the ol’ CB for a 21st century fishing trawler to declare itself lost without hope…?)

But, the crew must of course be entirely isolated in a confined space - that’s the point, for such is a prerequisite of the formula which inevitably takes ‘Alien’ as it’s foundational ur-text. In addition to which, it must be acknowledged that Hardiman draws heavily on the blue-print provided by John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’ here, hitting most of the same basic plot beats to one extent or another, and repurposing a number of that film’s key set-pieces in a manner which I scarcely need to unpack here, so bleedin’ obvious will it be to the vast majority of the viewing public.

But, if you’re going to steal, steal from the best etc, and within the limited gene pool of ‘Alien’/‘The Thing’-type movies, ‘Sea Fever’ makes optimum use of its modest resources, rarely putting a foot wrong. Not exactly a mindblower or shredder of preconceptions then, but, the next time you find yourself in search of something to fill that particular salty sweet spot in your viewing schedule - look no further folks, this one’s solid.

 

Destroy All Neighbours 

(Josh Forbes, 2024)

Watching the trailer for this one when it popped up on Shudder early in January prompted a bit of an “ok, clear the viewing calendar, Friday night is covered” moment on my part, momentarily making that £5 monthly subscription fee feel a bit easier to justify.

Later on said night though, spirits were subdued (and low level spending priorities reassessed), as it was agreed that Josh Forbes’ gonzo horror-comedy just didn’t quite hit the spot.

It’s difficult for me to put my finger on quite why that is though, given that all the necessary elements for a good time do indeed seen to be present and correct in this saga of an anxious prog-rock obsessive William Brown (Jonah Ray) battling to complete his home-recorded magnum opus in the face of overwhelming disruption from his bestial new neighbour (Alex Winter of ‘Bill & Ted’ fame, unrecognisable under a mass of prosthetics).

Indeed, there are a lot of individual bits and pieces here which I liked a lot - not least copious amounts of muso/record nerd humour, partially arising from the amusing mythos surrounding the film’s fictional prog titans Dawn Dimension, and a ton of wild and oft-impressive practical gore effects sure to warm the heart of any ‘80s horror fan.

Ray does great twitchy, whining, self-pitying work in the lead role, whilst still managing to make his character at least somewhat sympathetic, and there are numerous scenes and individual gags along the way which are genuinely very funny, but… I dunno, man. Somehow the overall structure and tone of the whole thing just felt off - its story and characters presented in an indigestible, sometimes frankly just plain obnoxious, fashion which I didn’t really care for.

The problems begin, I feel, with Winter’s characterisation of Vlad, the nightmare neighbour. Buried under such heavy, orc-like make-up that we initially wonder whether he’s even supposed to be human, Winter seems to be going for a kind of broad, Eastern European macho stereotype here, dropping weird, garbled dialogue which frequently proved difficult to decipher. He’s certainly an unnerving presence, that’s for sure, but… I think he’s also supposed to be funny, and on that level, well… I just don’t get it, I guess?

Likewise, several of the film’s other OTT comic characters (the coke-addled, Crosby-esque singer-songwriter who makes William’s day-job at a recording studio a misery, the hobo who hassles him for croissants on his way to his car, etc) represent an aggressively emphatic brand of low-brow / one-joke character comedy which soon becomes both tedious and exhausting.

This is especially regrettable, given that the bits of the film which actually are funny (such as William’s attempt to bribe the security guard outside a blast furnace with a rare demo tape, or his interactions with his long-suffering girlfriend (Kiran Deol)) tend to be those which adopt a more low-key / down-to-earth kind approach, letting the surrealism of William’s increasing disconnection from the world outside his head sink in more effectively than all the putty-faced gurning / shouty stuff utilised elsewhere.

Although it was presumably Forbes’ intention for us to feel thoroughly disorientated by the descent into hallucinatory psychosis which accelerates after [not-really-spoiler-alert] William kills Vlad and dismembers/disposes of his body, the film soon begins to feel confused and rudderless at this point, in a manner which I don’t think was entirely intentional (an effect not exactly helped by a number of exceptionally unlikely plot twists).

By the time we reach the grand excelsis of the movie’s conclusion, which sees William finally finishing his album aided by a band of re-animated monster corpses in a hi-jacked studio utilising phantasmagorical, lightning-blasting equipment, we can certainly enjoy all the triumphant audio-visual, effects-driven absurdity of the situation, but at the same time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the essential point of the exercise had been rather lost in transit (a feeling perhaps not inappropriate to the film’s unabashed celebration of bombastic prog excess).

Is this, essentially, a parable about the dangers of shutting the people around you out of your creative life? If so, I fear it doesn’t really come across terribly well. And, I realise that being cynical and un-PC and so on is cool in this cultural context, but should the film really be taking William’s ghastly crimes quite so lightly? Are we supposed to continue to identify with his personal/creative struggles as he alternates between whining self-pity and delusional slaughter? Because doing so is tough-going, frankly, but as we’re never allowed to leave his increasingly suffocating subjective POV, we’re never offered an alternative.

Whereas the presumed prime influences on Forbes’ film (Frank Henenlotter, early Peter Jackson) managed to skate across such questions in their work with charm, grace and a certain degree of humanity, ‘Destroy All Neighbours’ instead ultimately collapses in on itself, leaving behind a nasty residue of white boy smarm and mild nausea.

Perhaps that old chestnut about the perils of deliberately setting out to make a ‘cult movie’ may be applicable here? Or, pure speculation on my part, but perhaps the film’s problems simply stem from the contributions of its three credited screenwriters being insufficiently integrated into a coherent whole? Whatever the case though, sadly ‘Destroy All Neighbours’ many virtues as a piece of crazy-ass, low budget genre cinema find themselves scattered unevenly amidst a flood of nasty, unpalatable goo which just won’t wash out.

 

X 

(Ti West, 2022)

A few Halloweens ago, I found myself impulsively re-visiting Ti West’s ‘House of the Devil’ from 2009, and discovered that, not only had it aged very well, but that I actually enjoyed it even more than I did at the time of it release.

Naturally, this set me to wonderin’ what became of the film’s director, who looked to be the Great White Hope of US horror cinema for a few minutes back there. To be honest, I lost track of his career following 2011’s underwhelming ‘The Innkeepers’, so, it’s a great feeling therefore to catch up with his triumphant return to the world of mid-budget horror all these years later, and to discover that it builds upon many of the qualities which impressed me so much in ‘House..’.

So, once again, ‘X’ gives us a beautifully detailed period setting (late ‘70s rather than early ‘80s in this case), and again includes an extremely lengthy (but almost hypnotically captivating) ‘slow burn’ build up before anything happens to 100% confirm that we’re definitely watching a horror movie. But, when those things do finally begin to happen, they do so in a way which proves extremely satisfying.

Before we get to all that though, ‘X’s initial set up - in which a threadbare cast and crew set off for a remote Texas farmstead to shoot a zero budget porno movie - proves interesting, fun and (like every aspect of the film) reflective of a writer/director with an innate understanding of (and love for) the aesthetics of vintage genre filmmaking.

It’s easy to imagine for instance that any number of the ultra-scuzzy regional ‘70s porn flicks which survive today as anonymous, public domain scans of heavily damaged prints could well have been the one these guys are setting out to make here, whilst the character dynamic which plays out between the opportunistic strip club-owner producer and his seasoned sex industry ‘stars’ on the one hand, and the high-minded film student cameraman and his girlfriend/assistant on the other, seems modelled to some extent on that documented in Joel DeMott’s legendary Demon Lover Diary from 1980.

Which is to say that, as in any good slasher film, there is plenty going on here to keep us busy until the vaguely defined threat lurking somewhere out in the darkness finally takes shape and makes its presence felt - and, needless to say, plenty of opportunity to fill the opening act with sex, and arguments, and people running around at night without (m)any clothes on, without seeming too forced or far fetched.

And, make no mistake - this is an extremely good slasher film. No more, no less. (Well, perhaps just a little bit more? See below.)

Without resorting to Tarantino-style fanboy blather, West dutifully doffs his cap to all the requisite precursors in this particular backwoods corner of the genre (not only ‘Psycho’ and ‘Texas Chainsaw..’, both directly referenced in the text, but also ‘Eaten Alive’, ‘Tourist Trap’, etc), and proceeds to do right by them.

And, once ‘X’ locks into a familiar stalk n’ slash pattern during its second half, the director plays a very nice little game with genre expectations which I’ve rarely seen any other contemporary filmmaker achieve too successfully. Namely, giving us exactly what we expect to happen - but still making it work.

When discussing music after a few drinks, I’m sometimes inclined to grandly declare that the art of great rock n’ roll lays in doing the simple stuff well, and, in both ‘X’ and ‘House of the Devil’, West seems determined to prove that the same formula can also be applied to horror filmmaking.

Based on these two examples at least, notions of surprise and unpredictability (usually so key to horror/thriller storytelling) play very little role in his cinema. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with genre conventions should be able to grok the entire premise of ‘X’ right from the outset, and in each of the film’s ‘kill scenes’ in turn, exactly what we think is going to happen happens.

But, in West’s hands, it happens really fucking well. Like a chef who has spent his life carefully refining the same menu night after night, he gives it to us but good.

(In fact, West’s dedication to perfecting the predictable even goes so far as orchestrating the best needle-drop of ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’ in movie history, right at the pivotal moment bridging the film’s “slow burn” and “horror” sections. Again, original it ain’t - but awesome it surely is.)

Meanwhile, another similarity which unites ‘X’ and ‘House of the Devil’ (and indeed ‘The Innkeepers’, insofar as I recall) is the idea of the old preying upon the young, drawing explicitly upon the implicit fear of the elderly or infirm which lurks just beneath the surface of so many teen-centric ‘70s/’80s horror films.

Which brings us neatly to is what is ostensibly ‘X’s main talking point (though it is not something I found terribly interesting whilst in the process of actually watching it) - namely its status as quite possibly the first film in history to feature characters aged in their 20s and their 80s played by same actress (rising star Mia Goth, who delivers one hell of a performance in both roles, just for the record).

Surprisingly unaddressed in the writing I’ve seen about this film is the fact that, whichever way you cut it, the concept of getting young actors to don heavy aging make-up to play elderly characters seems pretty damned offensive, even in cases where those characters aren’t portrayed as psychotic killers. (As a comparison, just consider how far you’d get these days trying to make a film in which the same methodology was applied to race, or to disability, and you’ll see my point.)

At best, this could usually be considered fairly distasteful practice, inherently disrespectful to the older actors who may potentially have appreciated the chance to play these roles; but, in this case, as so often in the best horror movies, I think we can make an exception.

By which I mean, in addition to the practical difficulty of finding elderly performers willing / able to pull off the kind of physical extremity required of ‘X’s Pearl and Howard, I think we can also place ‘X’ within a lineage of horror cinema going all the way back to Tod Browning and Benjamin Christensen, in which filmmakers have purposefully stepped beyond the bounds of ‘good taste’, courting offense or disgust in order to confront viewers with taboo imagery and uncomfortable ideas, viscerally challenging conventional screen representations of ‘difference’, and hopefully provoking some thought in the process.

By casting heavily made up young actors as his damaged and homicidal geriatrics, West seems intent, not just on forcing us to question our own discomfort at the idea that aging/unattractive bodies may still harbour physical desire and the yawning gulf between flesh and spirit implicit in this, but also in drawing our attention to how thoroughly such unexamined fears permeate many of the 20th century horror films we all love so much.

Heavy stuff to unpack, you'd have to admit, but, like all truly great pulp/genre art, ‘X’ evokes these ideas merely as a by-product of simply being a fun watch - a perfectly-crafted, fantastically enjoyable exemplar of its sub-genre, whose side order of taboo-breaking thematic discomfort never spoils the deep sense of basic, popcorn-munching comfort this implies.

October Horrors # 13: Dark August (Martin Goldman, 1976)

By far the biggest revelation unearthed by Arrow Video & Stephen Thrower for the second volume of their admirable American Horror Project, ‘Dark August’ is a low key supernatural thriller shot in Stowe, Vermont in 1976. Never a high profile cult item, the film has, I would suspect, flown entirely beneath the radar of the vast majority of cult movie aficionados prior to its HD resurrection this year; a circumstance that seems extremely unfair after watching it for the first time.

To put it simply, ‘Dark August’ is excellent. If you’re a fan of subtle, slow-burn horror, films with a folk-magic / witchcraft element or independent ‘70s U.S. cinema in general, I would recommend obtaining a copy of Arrow’s new transfer and watching it post-haste.

Although this was a 100% independent production, written, directed and performed by a small collective of Vermont residents with no external funding or distribution deals in place, the finished film exists on an entirely different plain from most of its competitors in the regional horror sweepstakes. Not a “higher” plain necessarily (I don’t want to sound like I’m belittling the noble tradition of independent commercial filmmaking in the USA here) - but a different one, for sure.

The first thing which struck me about the film is its uncanny mixture of stylish, technically accomplished filmmaking (particularly in terms of its editing, camerawork and presentation of the natural environment), and candid naturalism in terms of its performances, plotting and character interactions. A very ‘70s combination, I would suggest, but one which was rarely attempted, let alone achieved, by filmmakers outside of the artier end of the Hollywood industry.

Far away from the work of even the most sophisticated of ‘70s independents (Romero, Hooper etc), ‘Dark August’ instead feels more like a distant cousin to such studio-backed quasi-horror films as Altman’s ‘Images’, Roeg’s ‘Don’t Look Now’ (definitely a conscious influence, I suspect), or even Philip Kaufman’s remake of ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ (which admittedly was made a few years later, but still).

Plot-wise, director Martin Goldman and actors/writers J.J. & Carolyne Barry keep things pretty minimal here, with a set up that on paper sounds like TV movie / short story material at best, but through careful attention to detail, and by zoning in on psychological nuance, they still manage to create an intriguing and open-ended narrative.

Following a messy break-up with his wife, forty-something New York advertising artist Sal Devito (J.J. Barry) has relocated to a small Vermont town to start life afresh, apparently following in the footsteps of his best friend Theo (Frank Bongiorno), who lives nearby and appears to have given up the rat-race to become a potter. During his first year of rural life, Sal has instigated a swell new relationship with Jackie (Carlyne Barry), who has recently established a small art gallery in the town.

Less happily however, Sal has also caused the death of a local young girl, killed when she ran in front of his jeep on a lonely road (a traumatic event which we repeatedly relive alongside him in flashback through the course of the film). Although Sal has been cleared of responsibility for this tragic accident in court, coming to terms with it is not so easy, particularly given the suspicion which already hovers over him as a loud and gregarious outsider moving into a small, insular community.

As the film opens, we see the dead girl’s grief-stricken grandfather turning to age-old sympathetic magic to exact vengeance upon Sal, who, as a result, is about to find himself haunted by something a little more tangible than mere repressed guilt and mid-life angst.

The very definition of a ‘slow burn’, ‘Dark August’ keeps its horror content simmering down at the level of vague, background uneasiness for a good forty-five minutes or so, but in the meantime, it gives us a generous and detailed portrait of the lives of this small group of interlocking friends (Sal, Jackie and Theo, plus the latter’s new age-y girlfriend Lesley (Kate McKeown)) as they haphazardly attempt to establish an idyllic, post-counter-culture environment for themselves in the depths of Vermont’s green hills, reinvigorating the sleepy local community with their arts n’ crafts, pot-smoking, tarot-card reading take on rural life.

Given that much of the film was reportedly shot in director Goldman’s own house, and that Bongiorno, McKeown and the Barrys all seem to have been real-life escapees from NYC, I’m guessing that ‘Dark August’s creative team had very direct, personal experience of the situations experienced by the characters herein, and as a result the quiet, subliminal tension between the locals and more cosmopolitan incomers is believably conveyed throughout.

Indeed, although we see this world through Sal’s eyes, there is a distinct ambiguity here regarding who we were actually supposed to sympathising with, suggesting that the film’s supernatural storyline could easily have functioned as an analogue for the filmmakers’ sense of uneasiness regarding their own intrusion into the community around Stowe, Vermont.

It is interesting to note that legendary comics artist Stephen R. Bissette, a lifetime Vermont resident who grew up near the film’s shooting locations, states in his essay accompanying the Arrow release that he finds J.J. Barry’s Sal a deeply dislikeable protagonist and was rooting for the locals throughout, gleefully anticipating the grandfather’s spiritual vengeance. As a city-dweller watching in his London flat though on the other hand, I personally found Sal and his friends to be quite relatable (his refusal to button up his shirt properly notwithstanding), and I enjoyed spending time with them. In keeping with the film’s inevitable designation as “folk horror”, could there be a deeper comparison to be drawn here with the moral ambiguities of ‘The Wicker Man’?

As Sal is increasingly plagued by stomach pains, inexplicable losses of control and unnerving glimpses of a hooded, “spirit of dark and lonely water”-like revenant haunting the woods around his property, Goldman does an excellent job of conveying the character’s increasing sense of paranoia and disorientation, ratcheting up the unease into full-blown menace and setting the stage perfectly for the late introduction of the film’s one ‘name’ performer, Kim Hunter – the widely esteemed method actress who played opposite Brando in 1951’s ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and went on to earn a steady living as Zira in the ‘Planet of the Apes’ franchise.

Here, Hunter plays Adrianna Putnam, a backwoods witch and psychic counsellor who takes up Sal’s cause after Lesley urges him to consult her - and by anyone’s estimation, she does so brilliantly, using her reportedly genuine interest in the occult to invest the role with the kind of unassailable, “shit just got real” gravitas which adds greatly to the film’s genuinely hair-raising finale.

The organic / atavistic treatment of magic(k) in ‘Dark August’ feels disarmingly matter-of-fact, yet also horrifically tangible, and as things build to a magic circle-bound, battle-of-wills showdown, there is a sense of real exhilaration to be savoured as we realise that a film which initially felt an off-brand version of one of those New Hollywood-type movies where Warren Oates and Harry Dean Stanton hang around on their porches mumbling to each other, has transformed itself into a full-on ‘The Devil Rides Out’ type proposition, having reeled us in slowly but surely until this transition seems completely natural, and indeed pretty terrifying.

‘Dark August’ is not a perfect film by any means, and I hope I’m not overselling it here. Since you’re asking, my chief complaint would probably be that the story could have worked a lot better if the revelation that the grandfather character actually was instigating a magical attack against Sal had been withheld until the end, thus allowing us to relish the possibility that his problems were solely the result of his own supressed guilt and paranoia, and making the blood n’ thunder action of the finale that much more powerful.

Given that this was a regional independent production offering little in way of obvious exploitation thrills though, I’m guessing that they simply had to put some horror signifiers up front in order to get the film even the very limited distribution it did achieve on the drive-in circuit; so, I won’t hold this missed opportunity against them, and it certainly doesn’t stop ‘Dark August’ from standing out as a vastly more rewarding film that I ever would have suspected – one of my top horror discoveries of the year, without a doubt.

Increasingly these days, dedicated genre film fans could be forgiven for thinking that mid-20th century English language horror films have been picked over so thoroughly – analysed, fetishised, celebrated and monetised – that we surely must have reached the end of the line by now. It’s all too easy to feel that everything special, weird and noteworthy within this finite canon must by this point have been identified as such and commended to our collective attention, leaving critics and blu-ray labels increasingly dredging up the silt as they struggle to remain relevant.

Huge and heartfelt thanks are therefore due to Arrow, and to Stephen Thrower, for renewing our faith and for reminding us of one of the core motivating principle underpinning any adventurous movie fan’s endeavours: there’s always another one. There’s still gold in them there green hills, and ‘Dark August’ is a nugget that proves it.

Exploito All’Italiana: Blastfighter (Lamberto Bava, 1984)

At some point in this review thread, we had to turn our gaze toward that prodigal son of the Italian exploitation business, Lamberto Bava, and what better place to start than here, as a Commandoed up moustache warrior stares us down through the barrel of a magnificently rendered shooter in what must surely count as one of the most definitive action movie posters of the 1980s (maestro Enzo Sciotti in full effect, of course).

On the basis of its title and poster artwork alone, I had always assumed that ‘Blastfighter’ must be one of those Filipino-shot gonzo war movies that so wantonly proliferated through the final decade of the cold war – you know, exploding huts, chopper stunts, bloody dog-tags, the whole nine yards. So strong in fact was my belief that ‘Blastfighter’ was one of those movies that I somehow managed to read some stuff about it on the internet, buy a copy of it (from a SHOP no less), and put the disc in my player on one of those increasingly rare post-midnight moments when I still have the energy to consider plugging in the headphones and tackling a movie before bed…. all before realising that it is in fact a different kind of movie altogether. Such is the power of Sciotti’s airbrush.

Once I discovered that what “John M. Old Jr” actually had in mind back in ’84 was a comparatively restrained backwoods Americana survival thriller, I felt a tad uneasy, but I ploughed on regardless, and ultimately I’m glad that I did. Maybe it was the woozy early hours time-slot, the accompanying glass of whisky or the complete lack of any particular expectations, but, for reasons I can neither explain nor fully justify, myself and ‘Blastfighter’ had a pretty good time together on that lonesome Saturday night.

Dardano Sacchetti’s script comprises a neatly polished Frankenstein’s monster of parts repurposed from ‘First Blood’, ‘Deliverance’ and ‘Death Wish’, and as such ‘Blastfighter’ begins as disgraced hero-cop Jake ‘Tiger’ Sharp walks out of prison, having served an eight year stretch for blowing away the politically connected scumbag who killed his wife.* (‘Tiger’ is played by Michael Sopkiw, whom you may recall from Sergio Martino’s ‘2019: After The Fall of New York’ (1983), here efficiently embodying a 2nd gen photocopy of ‘70s Franco Nero.)

As inevitably happens in such situations, ‘Tiger’ is reluctantly picked up by a limo containing his former boss in whatever elite, special operations-type police unit he belonged to, who tries to convince him to come back on-board, offering him a prototype of an experimental new super-shotgun that fires every form of projectile under the sun as a token of goodwill. (Whoever this big-wig answers to, he apparently anticipates no “COP GIVES FREE GUN TO CONVICTED MURDERER” headlines looming in his future.)

Much to our disappointment as well as the boss-man’s however, ‘Tiger’ shakes his head and declines the offer of returning to an exciting career of legally-shaky, villain-blasting mayhem, opting instead to make a lonesome new life for himself ruing his past mistakes, nursing his broken heart and espousing the cause of peace and human dignity from the comforts of his cabin in the mountains of rural Georgia. He takes the super-gun with him nonetheless though and stashes it under the floorboards on his porch, because hey – this is America, so who knows when a steadfast, law-abiding citizen will need the help of a laser-guided, pump-action grenade launcher to uphold what is good and right.

To no one’s surprise, the build-up to that day begins almost immediately, as Tiger encounters a posse of perpetually whoopin’ and hollerin’ young rednecks who are in the process of decimating the local deer population, cruelly keeping their wounded prey alive as they sling them in the back of a truck to take home. Naturally, our hero must step up to confront such barbarity, and, as you might expect given his past history, he is far from diplomatic in his approach.

As it transpires, the rednecks are making a living selling the live animals to a Chinese butcher who is hacking them up for medicinal ingredients (the racist language thrown in this guy’s direction by both sides in the film’s drama goes unchallenged, incidentally), and matters are further complicated by the fact the leader of the posse is the younger brother of Tiger’s former hunting buddy and small town rival George Eastman – now a local logging company foreman who grants tacit paternal approval to their unsavoury shenanigans on a “well it give the boys something to do” type basis.

As the antagonism between Tiger and the good ol’ boys swiftly intensifies, the stakes are raised further when his teenaged daughter (Valentina Forte) tracks him down and turns up demanding some fatherly affection. (He had previously abandoned her to an orphanage after her mother was murdered on the self-fulfilling basis that “I was a lousy cop and I’d make a lousy father too” – our hero, ladies & gentlemen.)

Inevitably, the lecherous overtures the rednecks cast in Valentina’s direction add a slight pinch of ‘Straw Dogs’ to the brew, and of course we know it’s only a matter of time before Tiger is going to be pulling up the floorboards to retrieve his mighty gat, his tache bristling with a renewed thirst for vengeance…

Driven on by the kind of inflexible moral certainty that only a truly cynical production can muster, ‘Blastfighter’ happily jettisons the relatively complex issues that weighed upon its aforementioned source texts, instead choosing present its story as an almost pre-modern popular morality tale, in which a character’s courage and martial prowess is entirely dependent upon the righteousness of their cause (as solely determined by the film’s scriptwriters), and in which real world consequences matter not a damn, so long as the cruel baddies are vanquished and the deer can gambol freely across the wooded hillsides as nature intended. (Except of course on rare occasions when some fine, upstanding sandy-haired hunter needs to shoot one of them for food, or to humanely manage the population or whatever, which is wholly acceptable – look, Tiger agrees, and you’re not going to argue with him, are you?)

Legend has it that this movie only exists at all because the budget Lamberto had lined up for a proposed post-nuke science fiction project fell through, and, having already pre-sold it to distributors under the name ‘Blastfighter’, he and his producers had to cobble something cheaper together to fill the gap. Under such  circumstances, I think everyone concerned did extremely well, but, inevitably, quality still comes on something of a sliding scale here, with ‘Blastfighter’s strongest moments (the action and outdoors stuff, chiefly) sitting right at the top end of what you’d expect of mid-‘80s Italian genre product, whilst the weakest sink to an almost Troll 2 level of face-slapping stupefaction.

The latter, it must be said, is almost entirely a result of the appalling English-as-second-language dialogue, and of the especially shoddy post-sync dubbing with which it is delivered. [English is the only language option on my DVD of the film, so I am unable to comment on how the Italian track fares in comparison.]

Regrettably, this serves to reduce many of ‘Blastfighter’s character interactions and tender “back story” conversations to a state of borderline nonsense, as actors’ on-set lip movements are inexpertly matched up with entirely inexplicable pronouncements (“there’s only one way to get pleasure in this life, but one hundred ways to get pain – don’t seem fair does it?”) that one suspects existed only as “LINE NEEDED HERE – ASK ENGLISH DIALOGUE GUY” gaps until long after principal photography was completed. Thus, we must persevere through dozens of instances of semi-meaningless, generic action movie blather whose zen-like opacity will boggle the mind of any viewers actually paying attention.

(That said, I did at least enjoy Sopkiw’s spirited “You want to know who I am? I’M A SON OF A BITCH… who wants to be left alone!” – a minor delight which more traditional line delivery would probably not have provided us with.)

That this state of affairs renders it impossible to connect with any of the film’s events on anything but the very bluntest level is hardly a surprise, but it is a particular shame in this case, given that the film-making here could under other circumstances have easily scaled the dizzy heights of actually-making-us-care.

Indeed, ‘Blastfighter’s technical acumen is actually far greater than its era and background might have led one to expect. Editing, cinematography and action choreography are all slick to a fault, whilst Sacchetti’s script (dialogue aside) is surprisingly coherent and well-paced (quite an achievement in itself from the man who gave us the dog’s dinner un-storytelling of Lucio Fulci’s early ‘80s horrors). In purely visual terms in fact, this could easily pass for a slightly rough-around-the-edges Hollywood studio film - making it all the more unfortunate that the game is up as soon as anyone opens their mouth.

Sadly, such unwarranted professionalism also elevates ‘Blastfighter’ to that particular grey area in which a film proves too well made and po-faced for viewers to simply laugh it off and enjoy it as a brainless thrill ride, whilst at the same time it is nowhere near “good” enough to generate any real emotional involvement or thematic engagement, meaning that, at the end of the day, what remains is just kind of… there.

Less the yummy cinematic junk food promised by its poster and personnel, ‘Blastfighter’ is instead more like a plate of tasteless steak and potatoes served at a quaint rural diner; despite occasional moments of uncouth wildness and genetically ingrained sleaze (could the brief flashback to Sopkiw’s wife’s death be leftover footage from one of Lamberto’s earlier gialli..?) and an absolutely bangin’ synth-rock theme from Fabio Frizzi, those who thrill to the madness and degeneracy of more typical Italian exploito product will be in for a letdown here.

If on the other hand though, you suddenly find yourself with a hankering for a reassuringly one dimensional tale of men with moustaches doing the right thing, attractively shot forest locations, badly dubbed teenage daughters, string-bending lead guitar stings and cars that explode in the slightest breeze – well, dive right into these cool Georgia waters my friend, and you won’t be disappointed.

Watchable, predictable, kind of likeable in a distant, undemanding fashion, ‘Blastfighter’ is, in a profound sense, a MOVIE. It also features a lovely country n’ western song written (though not performed) by The Bee-Gees, which plays three times in its entirety, so that's nice.

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In closing, check out this interesting alternative promotional artwork (also by Sciotti), which I *bet* must have originated back when the film was still being envisioned as an SF-tinged ‘Mad Max’ rip-off:

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* Whilst watching ‘Blastfighter’, I was convinced that Schwarzenegger’s ‘Commando’ also must have been a key influence, but subsequent research informs me that that film actually came out a year later, in ’85. I must have just been picking up on the shared Rambo inheritance common to both projects, I suppose.

Lovecraft On Film: The Shuttered Room (David Greene, 1967)

When I instigated this blog’s on-going survey of “Lovecraftian cinema” last year, I realised of course that most of the films we’d be looking at would, at best, bear a pretty marginal relationship to the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, but with David Greene’s ‘The Shuttered Room’ – the third feature made in the 1960s to include Lovecraft’s name on the credits – that thin thread of connective tissue is stretched about as far as it will go, as we are forced to contemplate an extremely loose adaptation of a story that, in all likelihood, Lovecraft never actually wrote a word of in the first place.

To be honest, I was in two minds as to whether even include ‘The Shuttered Room’ under the “Lovecraft on Film” banner, but, given that the film seems to have been consciously planned as a Lovecraft adaptation, with the author’s name appearing prominently on the credits and advertising material, I thought it best to let it in, especially in view of the fact that it’s a pretty interesting and overlooked little film that I’m actually quite keen to write about.

To begin at the beginning then - I’m assuming that most of this blog’s readers will already be familiar with the situation vis-à-vis the posthumous “collaborations” that Lovecraft’s literary executor August Derleth began to publish in the years following his friend’s death – stories which bore the names of both authors, but, to put it bluntly, featured little if any input from the more saleable and less living of the two gentlemen. (1)

‘The Shuttered Room’ was one of the last of these ill-starred tales to see the light of day, first appearing in print in 1959, and, having re-read it with what I hope is an open mind prior to writing this review, I’m sorry to say that it doesn’t have a great deal to recommend it, even when considered solely as a Derleth story.

Framed as a quasi-sequel to both ‘The Dunwich Horror’ and ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’, ‘The Shuttered Room’ sees a young scion of the Whateley family returning to Dunwich from his more cosmopolitan life in New York to settle the estate of his late grandfather, Luther (brother of good ol’ Zebulon) Whateley. Trouble of course ensues however when the young chap takes down the shutters on the abandoned mill his grandfather called home and unlocks the door to the forbidden room in which – via some traumatic childhood memories – our protagonist recalls his grandfather imprisoning his Aunt Sarah, who, as far as anyone recalls, lived and died within the confines of her room after she incurred her father’s wrath by tarrying with a male cousin, an heir of the cursed Marsh dynasty, whilst visiting kin in nearby Innsmouth. Soon of course, a hellzapoppin’, size-shifting example of froggy Cthuloid spawn (the offspring of Sarah and her Innsmouth beau) is on the loose, munching cattle and scaring hillbillies, and so on and so forth until a reassuringly fiery climax puts a stop to things.

In keeping with most of Derleth’s “mythos” tales, ‘The Shuttered Room’ is passable as a bit of good-natured Lovecraft fan fiction, but it is entirely lacking in the evocative prose, vistas of archaic antiquity or the sheer sense of weirdness that make HPL’s genuine writings so endlessly compelling, instead limiting itself to simply reshuffling various ideas from the master’s stories to no particularly worthwhile effect, whilst adding precious little of its own to the mix.

With such a wealth of legitimate Lovecraft stories to choose from, it remains a mystery to me why independent Anglo-American producer Philip Hazelton should have chosen to adapt this particularly forgettable little number for the screen in 1967. Searching for an explanation, I can only assume that either, a) Arkham House demanded more money to license a ‘proper’ Lovecraft tale, or, b) after deciding a Lovecraft film was the way to go, Hazelton misguidedly began his research with a copy of ‘The Shuttered Room & Other Tales’, and never got past the first story.(2)

Either way, the film’s choice of source material is particularly regrettable given that assigned screenwriters Nat Tanchuck and D.B. Ledrov seem to have decided to systematically remove all of the story’s supernatural / Cthulhu Mythos-related elements, thus reducing the already weak tea of Derleth’s tale to a so-thin-it-barely-even-exists “crazy sister in the attic” yarn that would scarcely suffice for an Amicus anthology segment, let alone a feature.

To be honest, it would have been difficult for even the most gifted of filmmakers to breath much life into the under-cooked script that Hazelton & co eventually settled on, but we can at least be thankful that the producer did at least proceed to hire some exceptionally talented personnel to help bring his project to the screen, making ‘The Shuttered Room’ a veritable who’s-who of under-the-radar British cinema talent from this era.

Making his debut feature here, director David Greene would soon go on helm a series of stylish, underrated thrillers including ‘Sebastian’ (1968) and ‘I Start Counting’ (1970), whilst editor Brian Smedley-Aston could justifiably claim to be something of a ‘cult film’ legend on the basis of his subsequent work, having edited ‘Performance’ alongside Donald Cammel before collaborating with Jose Larraz on ‘Symptoms’ and ‘Vampyres’ and eventually masterminding the Brit-sleaze classic ‘Expose’ [aka ‘The House on Straw Hill’] in 1976.

My argument regarding the wealth of talent behind ‘The Shuttered Room’ is somewhat undermined by the discovery that director of photography Kenneth Hughes is not the same Ken Hughes who directed ‘Casino Royale’ and ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’, but nonetheless, the second Mr Hughes does extremely good work here, and meanwhile, perhaps the most noteworthy name on the credits for some viewers will be that of composer Basil Kirchin (who also went on to score ‘The Abominable Dr Phibes’ and ‘The Mutations’). Kirchin remains one of the most fascinating experimental musicians to have emerged from mid-century Britain, his name enough to send record collectors of a certain stripe into paroxysms of excitement to this day – but more on his contributions later.

Beyond merely outlining the history of this merry band of collaborators, ‘m afraid I know next to nothing about the production circumstances of ‘The Shuttered Room’, but my guess would be that it represents one of those instances – common during the ‘60s and early ‘70s – in which financial necessity demanded a horror film, and the aforementioned creatives, presented with a pre-existing script by the producer, decided, what the hell – I mean, it’s a chance to work on a proper movie, innit?

You certainly get the feeling that no one here really had much of an affection for horror films, or indeed much interest in abiding by the conventions of the genre as they existed in the mid-1960s, and – as much as I love ‘60s horror - it is the results of this attitude that are largely responsible for actually making the film worth watching.

In this respect you could almost place ‘The Shuttered Room’ in close proximity to Michael Reeves’ ‘The Sorcerers’ (1967) and ‘Witchfinder General’ (1968), and, although it is not remotely as memorable or artistically daring as either of those films, in a more modest sense it remains noteworthy for the unusual and somewhat forward-thinking approach it takes to material that, in lesser hands, could easily have emerged a singularly tiresome gothic timewaster.

After a rather awkward and unimpressive pre-credits ‘flashback’ sequence, featuring the parents of a terrified young girl being slaughtered by a furry-clawed POV monster-cam, the credits sequence itself shifts gears considerably, as fields of light and shadow flowing across a car windshield create a gentle, semi-abstract psychedelic effect that is emphasized by the ecstatic, minimalist textures of Kirchin’s score, immediately alerting us to the fact that we are in for a rather different kind of horror movie than the blunt exploitation stylings of the preceding sequence might have led us to believe.

Like every other Lovecraft movie made to this date, the story proper begins with a couple of conspicuously urbane strangers arriving in a forbidding and remote rural locale – in this case, the topographically reimagined “Dunwich Island” - in order to investigate their familial connection to some thrice-cursed local dynasty; but what an odd couple they are, in this instance.

When I first watched ‘The Shuttered Room’ a few years back, I remember thinking that Gig Young was just about the most dislikeable leading man I’d ever seen in a picture (yes, even worse than Nick Adams in Die Monster Die!). Now however, I’m wise enough to appreciate that he was simply appallingly miscast.

A Hollywood workhouse through the ‘40s and ‘50s (mainly specialising in comedic ‘second lead’ roles), Young was more than capable of turning in some excellent, off-beat performances in later years (see for instance his ‘suave psychopath’ turns in Sam Peckinpah’s ‘..Alfredo Garcia’ and ‘The Killer Elite’), but his days as a romantic lead were clearly long behind him by the mid ‘60s.

Apparently troubled by alcoholism and severe personal problems, Young had by this point acquired a “vibe” more befitting of villains, bastards and, well, people in Sam Peckinpah films, and as such, ‘The Shuttered Room’ finds him clearly struggling to get an angle on what the hell he’s supposed to be doing in a dashing, upstanding hero role. Apparently at a loss, his chosen response to this dilemma – that of continually smirking like a prick and occasionally drifting into Bob Hope impersonations – proves less than helpful.

Even worse is that Young’s wife is played by twenty-four year old Carol Lynley (who had recently enjoyed her first major role in Preminger’s ‘Bunny Lake is Missing’ (1965)), and the thirty year age gap between the couple is painfully apparent. Whilst Lynley appears baby-faced, barely out of her teens and as fragile and conventionally ‘beautiful’ as the role of a gothic heroine demands, Young by contrast is a smug, perma-tanned middle-aged ad exec who looks as if he’d be more at home picking a fight with someone on a Miami golf course.

Whereas an actor like Vincent Price could make this kind of age-gap relationship seem natural in the context of a horror movie, Young is just a step too far, and with zero chemistry between the couple and no background offered up to justify their unlikely romance, we’re left with the unfortunate impression that he must have tricked the poor girl into marriage by some nefarious means or other, with the result that he comes across as creepy and manipulative where the script would prefer us to see him as entirely sympathetic.

As the mismatched couple arrive on the ‘island’ to check out the derelict mill property left to Lynley’s character (maiden name Whateley, of course) by her deceased grandfather, they immediately encounter the usual cocktail of glowering hostility, doom-laden warnings and mutated/mutilated villagers, all of which adds to the suspicion that Charles Beaumont’s script for 1963’s The Haunted Palace may have exerted a considerable influence upon the development of ‘The Shuttered Room’, right down to the prominence awarded to the “mutant sibling locked in attic” trope that was also introduced in Corman’s film.

Factor in a corresponding similarity to the opening of ‘Die Monster Die!’ and it’s easy to speculate that a go-to formula for “Lovecraft movies” was already beginning to crystalise by this point, as a sub-set of the existing gothic horror blueprint epitomized by AIP’s Poe films. Predictably enough of course, it is a formula that has very little in common with anything Lovecraft actually wrote, instead incorporating a weird mish-mash of stuff that filmmakers and producers decided should probably happen in a Lovecraft type story. (Regrettably, ‘The Shuttered Room’s rather more low-key approach mitigates against the possibility of a finale that sees Lynley being sacrificed to some beast in a glowing, subterranean pit, but never mind – Daniel Haller’s ‘The Dunwich Horror’ (1970) was just around the corner.)

One of ‘The Shuttered Room’s biggest assets is its shooting locations, which see the desolate plains of, uh, Kent standing in for the wilds of the New England coastline. As utilised by Greene and his crew, several different areas in the vicinity of Faversham, Dover and the Oare Marshes Nature Reserve are combined into a cohesive filmic environment that not only allows us to believe that the film was shot on an actual sparsely populated island, but also conveys a very real sense of back-end-of-nowhere isolation that a more studio-bound film could never have achieved, suggesting a landscape in which human habitation seems like an unwelcome intrusion upon some vast and inhospitable green and brown desert. (3)

The film’s ‘set in USA / shot in UK’ status adds a faintly unheimlich air to proceedings too, as a landscape that looks unmistakably British (though I couldn’t quite tell you why) is cross-bred with American-derived names, titles and cultural references, whilst actors like Charles Lloyd Pack and William Devlin try out their best growly Hollywood tough guy accents, further contributing to the sense of geographic uncertainty.

For all this though, ‘The Shuttered Room’ still achieves a ‘sense of place’ that few ‘60s horror films can match (even if we’re never 100% sure where that ‘place’ is), very much anticipating the more atavistic, born-from-the-soil approach to the genre employed by the more widely acknowledged ‘folk horror’ classics of the early ‘70s.

Speaking of which, one element I particularly enjoyed during the opening scenes of ‘The Shuttered Room’ is the authentically perilous-looking ‘one-car’ car ferry (basically a small barge plus some ropes) that transports Young & Lynley to the “island”. The surreal sight of their gleaming Cadillac precariously balanced atop the rusty barge, hesitantly steered by two pole-wielding local extras, somehow manages to perfectly encapsulate the theme of smug, urban sophistication blundering its way into wilful, rural isolationism, strongly reminding me of Sgt. Howie’s arrival by seaplane at the start of ‘The Wicker Man’.

It is accidental details such as this that allow ‘The Shuttered Room’ to capture the feeling of a marginal and poverty-stricken rural community quite well, incorporating a subtle undertone of menace (again, quite reminiscent of ‘The Wicker Man’) that renders the obligatory “turn around and go home” type parroting of the script’s suspicious yokels wholly surplus to requirements.

Apparently warming to this theme, Greene makes much of the ‘Deliverance’-esque implications of incest and mental/physical deterioration that naturally ensue within such a set-up, dropping hints that one suspects H.P. Lovecraft might well have approved of, given his unhealthy fixation with such issues (“there’s a lotta people around here named Whateley”, glowers Devlin as a surly blacksmith).

Indeed, Greene seems to have had a yen to turn this story into more of a ‘Straw Dogs’ / ‘Deliverance’ style backwoods thriller than anything a 1967 audience would have recognised as a horror picture, and the material in this vein plays pretty well, even as the grit and menace of the urban/rural conflict narrative gels rather imperfectly with the pastoral, otherworldly impressions frequently created by the music and photography (an interesting tonal combo, for viewers with the right palette to appreciate it).

As such, one of the first things Carol & Gig encounter on Dunwich Island is your friend and mine Oliver Reed as (what else) a hulking, intimidating ne’erdowell, who proves to be the chief instigator of the film’s backwoods menace, backed up by a crew of shiftless loafers to whom he plays gang leader & all-purpose alpha male.

To be honest, I find it quite surprising that Reed was still willing to take on this kind of faintly demeaning ‘man-child’ role at this point in his career, despite having already proved his thespian chops via more challenging roles in films like ‘The Party’s Over’ (1965) and Michael Winner’s The Jokers (1967), but then, officially speaking his big break didn’t come until ‘Oliver!’ the following year, so he was still bringing home the bacon any way he could at this stage, one supposes. Still, ‘The Shuttered Room’ must have been very good for his health if nothing else – he spends most of the movie sprinting around the “island” like a maniac, when he’s not rolling around in the dirt or engaging someone in fisticuffs.

In the absence of any actual monster or horror-ish threat during the film’s first seventy minutes, Reed’s sheer physical bulk and threatening demeanor make him by default the scariest thing in ‘The Shuttered Room’, with his character emerging as a slightly goofier variant on his brooding, proto-droog gang leader from Joseph Losey’s The Damned, exhibiting an uneasy mixture of wide-eyed, childish enthusiasm and black-hearted, criminally-minded power-play. That Reed is extremely good at such a task almost goes without saying, even as the script gives him precious little to sunk his teeth into. (Given that his obligatory American accent leaves something to be desired, it’s probably just as well he opts primarily for the “physical acting” route, to be honest).

Moreso perhaps than the more obvious touchstones listed above, the bestial menace of Reed and his buddies, and the particularly harsh discomfort induced by their interaction with the urban interlopers, reminds me of nothing so much as the approach to this sort of material that became an integral part of Australian genre cinema in the 1970s and 80s, from ‘Wake in Fright’ (1971) through to ‘Fair Game’ (1986), and of course ‘Mad Max’ (1978). Certainly, the suggestion of men becoming ‘dehumanised’ when forced to survive in an isolated, ‘unnatural’ environments found in all of those films can also be strongly felt in ‘The Shuttered Room’, despite the obvious difference in the society and landscape portrayed.

(The scene in which Reed’s gang is first introduced – tearing along a dusty farm track in a beat-up truck as one of their number “dirt skis” on a plank of wood – is particularly pertinent in this regard, resembling those Australian movies stylistically as well as thematically, as Greene mixes up some wild, non-Health & Safety approved stunt-work with stylish, low angle vehicle shots and motion-blurring / focus-pulling effects.)

Should you wish to, you could probably go full circle with the exploration of this theme in ‘The Shuttered Room’, looping it right back to the horror of ‘degraded’ and ‘decadent’ rural communities that pops up with near obsessive frequency in H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction - even if Lovecraft’s assignment of the blame for these supposed problems was inevitably somewhat more reactionary than that of the implicitly liberal mid-century filmmakers who followed.

A counter-point to the bestiality of Reed and his cronies is meanwhile provided by Flora Robson, adding the obligatory “touch of class” beloved of all low budget UK productions in the role of ‘Aunt Agatha’, a character who represents one of the scriptwriters’ few attempts to actually add something new to the bare bones of Derleth’s tale, transforming the geriatric uncle who periodically turns up to beset the story’s protagonist with prophecies of doom into a far more interesting and ambiguous presence.

Aunt Agatha lives upon the upper floors of what appears to be a heavily fortified clifftop lighthouse [actually one of the two South Foreland Lighthouses in St Margaret's Bay, Dover – thanks again to Reel Streets for that one], which she shares with a fabulous-looking bird of prey (I’m unable to identify the species, but maybe any birders or ornithologists in the audience can help). Though the dialogue the script assigns to her sometimes drivels off into nonsense (a few “science vs mysticism” exchanges with Young prove particularly toe-curling), Robson – always a forceful personality - nonetheless manages to sell the character beautifully.

As the doddering yet intimidating matriarch of this sinister, marginalized community, mixing grand gestures of home-spun, quasi-pagan philosophy with razor-sharp practicality and psychological judgment, Aunt Agatha puts me in mind of an early draft for – yes, you guessed it - Lord Summerisle in ‘The Wicker Man’, whilst the sight of her at one point striding determinedly across the heath with her falconer’s gauntlet and black cloak almost takes us back to the kind of eccentric supporting characters who populated Powell & Pressburger’s rural fantasias.

Though her screen time is limited and her character’s background and motivations never satisfactorily fleshed out, Robson’s very presence makes ‘The Shuttered Room’ a more interesting and memorable viewing experience than it might otherwise have been, earning her cheque for a few days filming with aplomb.

As has already been mentioned, another great boon for ‘The Shuttered Room’ is Basil Kirchin’s exceptional score. A wide-ranging and expansive soundtrack that rarely repeats itself, Kirchin’s cues here are full of extraordinary sounds and textural juxtapositions that, like Greene’s direction, make little concession to the expectations of the horror genre circa 1967. In fact, the music here is so distinctive that it often seems to be almost telling its own story in parallel to the one being played out through the visuals, and at some points it’s a tough call as to which is the most compelling.

From the pungent, tripped out Terry Riley-esque vibes conjured during the film’s dreamy credits sequence (reeds and tape loops maybe..?), Kirchin brings in a timbrous, British folk sort of feel to accompany the couple’s arrive on Dunwich Island, with fiddle, stand-up bass and an eerie, high-pitched drone gradually giving way to more conventionally cinematic cool jazz passages and big band crescendos as the plot develops, occasionally descending into politely cacophonous improv discord during action sequences, whilst always in the background are odd, hesitant snatches of lithe, psyche-folk melody that seems to pre-empt some of Paul Giovanni’s cues for ‘The Wicker Man’ (that comparison yet again), leaving lost slivers of Pentangle-ish unease cascading across the Kentish coastline in a generally quite enchanting manner.

As you may have gathered on the basis of such hyperbole, I think Kirchin’s score here is absolutely superb – it adds hugely to the film, and in the rare event that a representative of some crate-digging record label might be reading, I would certainly love the opportunity to own it on disc. (4)

Matching their composer for open-mindedness meanwhile, Greene and DP Hughes experiment with a variety of inventive techniques in ‘The Shuttered Room’, demonstrating an particular skill for incorporating landscapes and natural features into the texture of the film, utilising compositions that make full use of the widescreen shooting ratio (an obvious technical point perhaps, but one that still stymied a surprising number of directors in the ‘60s, particularly in the horror field).

Weird-looking wide angle / fish eye effects are used to represent POV of the attic-dwelling sister (when she finally makes an appearance), and somehow this works far more effectively than such a hackneyed devices really should, adding at least some degree of horror-ish tension to a film that is otherwise entirely lacking in such, whilst good ol’ shaky handheld work, disorientating cross-cutting, extreme low angles and soft focus pastoral dreaminess are all much in evidence elsewhere.

Aided by feverish, free-form jams from Kirchin, the sequence in which Lynley flees from Reed across a plateau of stony rock pools proves a particular filmmaking tour de force, as Greene cross-cuts between footage of Reed molesting a local girl as his leering gang look on and Lynley inexplicably ignoring their antics as she strolls along the rocks, upping the tempo as Reed notices her and gives chase, switching restlessly between close ups and clifftop long shots before slamming on the breaks and using extended shot transitions to super-impose faces and landscapes, giving the chase an unaccountably delirious feeling and temporarily wrenching us out of the narrative with an outburst of ‘pure cinema’ that, given the soporific nature of the scripting, proves extremely pleasing.

As vague and ineffectual as ‘The Shuttered Room’s storytelling may be, Greene and his on-set collaborators clearly put their all into rising above it and the trying to deliver worthwhile footage, and in purely atmospheric terms they absolutely nail it, more often than not.

Far more subtle and naturalistic than the set-bound bombast of most ‘60s gothics, this plays like a more modern – more grown up? – kind of horror film, in which the ‘spookiness’ (such as it is) creeps up slowly, lurking behind and in between the words and actions of the human beings on-screen, hinting ever so gently at something intangible, just out of sight.

That that ‘something’ never really amounts to anything is obviously a disappointment, but all the same, ‘The Shuttered Room’ in some ways directly anticipates the kind of counter-cultural sensibility that would begin to creep into commercial cinema (and horror in particular) within a few years of this film’s release, with Greene’s direction incorporating an almost meditative aspect that encourages the viewer’s eye to drift across minor details within the frame - light, reflections, foliage, textures of wood and rock – whilst the story, thoroughly outgunned, falls into the background.

Making his feature debut after a long apprenticeship in TV, the director certainly seems to be having a ball with the opportunity to prove his chops on 35mm, and indeed his style is so accomplished that you could almost use ‘The Shuttered Room’ as a classroom case study in how sound and visuals can be used to overcome the constraints of mediocre subject matter. But unfortunately, at the end of the day there’s just no getting around that mediocrity. The vacuum at the centre of the film’s narrative remains so vast that no amount of behind the camera talent could have succeeded in turning the finished product into an unqualified success.

For all that I’ve rhapsodized over its finer points above, ‘The Shuttered Room’ was, is and probably always shall be a film that will leave the vast majority of viewers cold on first viewing. For horror fans, it’s an “Is that it!?” let-down, whilst for cinephiles and UK cinema aficionados, it’s a pretty but entirely aimless ramble through the countryside, prevented from developing into anything more interesting by its corny pandering to tired genre cliché. Any kind of more mainstream audience meanwhile, lacking such patience, will be liable to simply write it off as total bore, and it is hard to imagine that they would have felt much different on the issue in 1967. (I’m not sure how widely it played in the USA, but drive-in fodder this most assuredly ain’t.).

Probably the only thing that has helped keep ‘The Shuttered Room’ in circulation during the 21st century is its nominal status as a Lovecraft adaptation, and, needless to say, anyone approaching the film purely from that angle is liable to be especially disappointed by its total lack to connection to anything Lovecraft actually wrote, beyond the reuse of a few proper nouns.

As such, Greene’s film is liable to remain a footnote at best, whether in the annals of horror, Lovecraftiana or UK cinema, whilst its stilted narrative, disastrously miscast leading roles and total failure to figure out what the hell it’s all about before the credits roll reduce it, at worst, to a complete waste of time – one hundred minutes of under-cooked bru-ha-ha leading up to nothing more significant a thoroughly dreary “crazy sister in the attic” revelation that any conscious viewer will have copped to from the opening reel.

If ‘The Shuttered Room’ must ultimately be filed as a waste of time though, the combined forces of Greene, Kirchin, Hughes, Reed, Robson and the other eminently talented individuals involved in its production at least serve to render it a highly edifying waste of time, for those viewers with the right temperament to appreciate the more subtle virtues that lie just below its surface. Approach it in the right state of mind, and, as I hope I have demonstrated above, it is a tarnished gem that’s well worth the investment of a quiet evening.

As a closing testament to ‘The Shuttered Room’s unique status within the canon of ‘60s horror, let’s simply consider the fact that almost every other film I’ve compared it to in the text of this review was made later, and see where that leaves any modest claims Greene & co might make toward originality and influence.

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(1) For further info on the nature of Derleth’s “collaborations” with Lovecraft, see the summary provided here within the H.P. Lovecraft online archive here.

(2) A little known figure who seems to have been operating on a similar Transatlantic basis to producers like Herman Cohen and Michael Gordon during the 1960s, Philip Hazelton’s other ventures included ‘Psyche 59’ (1959) and a German co-production named ‘Eye of the Cat’ (1969), before he relocated to the USA in the ‘70s to work on a string of (one assumes) slightly more successful Fred Williamson vehicles, including ‘Hammer’ (1972), ‘That Man Bolt’ (1973) and ‘Bucktown’ (1975). (Incidentally, I believe this must be the only article of any kind ever published which mentions August Derleth and Fred Williamson in close proximity, although I’d love to be proved wrong on that.)

(3) Anyone wishing to find out more about the locations used in ‘The Shuttered Room’ should head straight for this fantastically informative photo gallery on the Reel Streets website, whose compilers I would like to thank hugely for their help in instantly erasing the geographical uncertainty that previously afflicted me whilst watching this film.

(4) To be honest, I’m not sure whether or not the Kirchin tracks used in ‘The Shuttered Room’ have ever been issued in any form, but any soundtrack aficionados or night-haunting bootleggers who can point me in right direction will find themselves richly rewarded.