Three and Three...Extremes (2002 & 2004)

Arrow are releasing a double disc Blu-ray set of producer Peter Ho-Sun Chan's two Asian horror anthology pictures, both of which contain work by some of the most famous directors working in that part of the world. But before we get started, let's clear up what might be a little confusion. THREE EXTREMES was released first by Tartan DVD in the UK, with its predecessor THREE then being released as THREE EXTREMES 2, so if you're wondering where the 'sequel' to THREE EXTREMES is in this set it's here under the correct title. OK - now let's take a look at what we get:

Disc One: Three (2002)

THREE, as the title suggests, offers us three short (ish) stories over a two hours running time. These consist of Memories directed by Kim Jee-woon (A TALE OF TWO SISTERS) in which a woman wakes up in the road with no memory of how she got there. Meanwhile a man consults a psychiatrist because his wife has seemingly left him but he has no memory of it. It's not difficult to guess how these tie together but the appeal of Memories is in an execution which offers us some atmospheric compositions and an excellent music score by Byung-woo Lee. 

        Second is The Wheel, a slightly confusing tale from Thai director Nonzee Nimibutr. Puppeteer Master Tao is dying and asks that his beloved puppets be destroyed,. They aren't of course, and this leads to all manner of mayhem and murder. A jealousy subplot is shoehorned in and by the end it's still not terribly clear why or how the puppets have caused the mayhem that has ensued. 

        Last is Peter Ho-Sun Chan's Going Home, which is essentially a love story told within the exceedingly grim environs of a tower block due to be demolished.

New extras include new interviews with Peter Ho-Sun Chan (20 minutes), Kim Jee-woon (15 minutes) and Memories DP Hong Kyoung-pyo (6 minutes). Archival material includes two more interviews with Chan (55 minutes in all), Kim Jee-woon (16 minutes) and Going Home star Eugenia Yuan (12 minutes). There's also a 16 minute making of.

Disc Two: Three...Extremes (2004)

THREE was so successful that Peter Ho-Sun Chan was able to attract even bigger Asian talent for this sequel. Fruit Chan's Dumplings offers a unique and delightfully disgusting take on youth treatments, Park Chan-Wook (OLDBOY, THE HANDMAIDEN) gives us Cut, in which a film director is terrorised by an insane actor who has wired his wife up to a piano with every intention of cutting off her fingers, and Takashi Miike concludes the film with Box, a tale about a stage show featuring two young sister contortionists and a jealousy that leads to something horrible. 

Extras include new interviews with Peter Ho-Sun Chan (16 minutes), Fruit Chan (a whopping career-spanning 43 minutes) and Takashi Miike (18 minutes) as well as archival interviews with Fruit Chan (15 minutes), Dumplings star Bai Ling (19 minutes) and three makings of for Dumplings (15 minutes), Cut (21 minutes) and Box (18 minutes). Those who still have their old Tartan DVDs may want to hang onto them as the feature length version of Dumplings isn't included here. There's also the usual booklet, double-sided poster and sleeve.

THREE and THREE...EXTREMES are out in a double disc Blu-ray set from Arrow Films on Monday 20th October 2025

Freaky Tales (2024)

PULP FICTION-Style Anthology With Niche Maximum Appeal

FREAKY TALES, an anthology picture that consists of four interlinked tales, is getting a cinema and digital release in the UK from Lionsgate.

It's 1987, and after a curious introduction about possible alien intervention in the town of Oakland in California, we are presented with four stories that take place over more or less the same period of time. The first story has the nicest, most benign punks ever committed to film taking arms against a gang of neo-Nazis who regularly trash the club they attend. The second concerns two female rappers who end up in an on stage rap exchange with the star act at a different club. 

The third stars Pedro Pascal as Clint, money collector for a Mr Big, whose 'final' job is to collect a debt from a secret poker game taking place behind the curtain of a video rental store. The store's owner is played by Tom Hanks who gives us a star performance with his monologue about underdog movies. Finally, crooked police detective Ben Mendelsohn's plan to raid the homes of famous basketball players goes horribly wrong when the girlfriend of one of them, Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis), is killed and Floyd decides to enact bloody vengeance with his arsenal of classic martial arts weaponry.

The stories interweave such that characters in one may turn up in another, and everyone is to some extent involved in the final story. It's a lot of fun with a lot of references to cult movies of the period. However, apparently there's a lot more in here to enjoy for viewers who lived in the real Oakland during the time the film is set (locations, personalities some of whom have cameos, etc) which means the maximum appeal of FREAKY TALES could be considered to be rather limited, especially to international audiences who may well have never heard of the place. 

Like many anthology movies FREAKY TALES has highs and the occasional head-scratching low. At a running time of 107 minutes the second story could have been cut altogether but by the end you'll probably feel entertained, if perhaps a little confused as to the point of some of it. Here's a trailer:

FREAKY TALES is in select cinemas from Friday 18th April 2025 and on digital platforms from Monday 28th April 2025

Virus Detected (2025)

"Rough Around the Edges but Refreshingly Funny in Parts"

There's been quite a surge in ultra low-budget horror film-making in the UK in the last couple of years. The best and most appealing of these make up for their lack of money, resources and (sometimes) talent with buckets of enthusiasm and energy meaning that, while it would be easy to point out their shortcomings, a much better time will be had if the viewer goes with the flow and enters into the spirit of these frequently ambitious endeavours.

One of the newest of these home-grown horrors is VIRUS DETECTED, an anthology picture with a theme of technology either in revolt, gone mad, or behaving just plain bizarrely. The brief 75 minute running time is host to six short stories plus a framework set during a radio station's all night broadcast. It should therefore come as no surprise that none of the stories wastes any time in getting to the point.

We start with Virtual Insanity, with its entertaining Russian Doll-like structure of VR games being played within VR games and the three people involved. It's light and breezy and plays as a good comedy sketch with a decent payoff. Things gets more serious with The Little Ones, in which a girl's mobile phone starts playing a video of its own accord that shows what actually happened to her recently lost lover.

The Toy gives us a talking AI vibrator and a couple eager to get to grips with it as the device itself struggles to understand what it is and its place in the world. It's daft, its inventive and at times it's really quite funny. Diehard fans of BritHorror may well be reminded of the work of the late, great Norman J Warren in the scene in which the vibrator flies across the room in much the same way a sword did at the climax of 1978's TERROR, plus the film's general cheery attitude to the limitations of its own resources gives it a similar feel to Norman's 1986 GUNPOWDER.

LoveToast has a toaster fall in love with its owner and then encourage him to exact a terrible revenge on the toaster's previous owner. Was this intended as a crispy crunchy bread-based homage to James Glickenhaus' 1980 THE EXTERMINATOR? That certainly seems to be the vibe, anyway. Next is Bad Penny and back to straight horror, where a woman's Alexa-style device starts talking of its own accord after lights out. Like the rest of the film the execution here is rough and ready but the idea is sound and the payoff satisfying.

Finally, and after the conclusion of the framework, we get Mic Drop. This is an idea that could have been stretched into a 45 minute episode of an anthology SF TV show but instead it's neat, concise, and the storytelling is just ahead of the viewer all the way, providing a highly satisfying punchline for the entire movie to go out on.

 VIRUS DETECTED is currently playing the UK Festival Circuit

 

Rampo Noir (2005)

"Great Author. Great Shame About the Film"

Arrow Films are releasing 2005's RAMPO NOIR on Blu-ray. It's an anthology film by four different Japanese directors that purports to ‘adapt’ (and I use that term loosely but not as loosely as the people who made the film) four stories by the Japanese writer Edogawa Rampo (a play on 'Edgar Allan Poe' - his real name was Taro Hirai). Rampo became famous in his homeland for his detective novels, but many of his short stories contained controversial elements of what were termed 'ero guro nansesu' or eroticism, grotesquerie and the nonsensical. His tales of cruelty and psychological horror haven’t been translated into English much, although there is a nice little paperback from Tuttle publishing that includes the classic tales ‘The Hell of Mirrors’ and ‘The Caterpillar’, both of which have both been filmed here.

We start with the very brief 'Mars' Canal', which is essentially plotless and features a naked man wrestling with a naked woman who might be his reflection that he saw in a lake. There's some fascination with lighting and skin texture here but in terms of narrative there's very little of substance.

An emphasis on imagery (plentiful) over storytelling (mediocre at best) and pacing (terrible) is present in the second story which adapts the mirror tale, and adds to its bare bones source a plot about women being discovered with their faces burned off. It turns out they all have hand mirrors made by one particular man, who ends up inside the mirrored sphere of the original piece. Despite attempts to make a police procedural out of it, this is far too slow and far too in love with its own visual style to hold the attention.

After that we get ‘The Caterpillar’ one of the most outrageous of Rampo's stories as well as being one of the cruellest and most despairing. The story of a war hero who comes home without his arms and legs only to be tortured by his wife was banned by the Japanese government out of concerns it would affect their war effort, and it could have formed the basis for a painful, tragic meditation on loss and desire. Instead once again we get something that is far more concerned with imagery than narrative which, especially coming after the similarly dirge-like previous segment makes for testing viewing indeed. Finally comes 'Crawling Bugs', a story whose execution is confusing rather than ambiguous and the denouement silly rather than horrific.

I'm being more vitriolic than usual here because I'm a big fan of Rampo's stories and it would be awful if RAMPO NOIR was to put off new prospective readers. Here his stories have been hijacked by filmmakers who have seemed determined to turn some excellent pieces of short fiction into relentlessly dull and self-indulgent cinema, and that's a great shame.

Extras include a new commentary track from Jasper Sharp and Alexander Zahlten, a 76 minute making of from 2006, 15 minutes of footage from the Japanese premiere with the directors on stage, an image gallery, and a stack of new interviews.

The new interviews include Mars Canal director Suguru Takeuchi (14 minutes), Caterpillar director Hisayasu Soto (25 minutes), Crawling Bugs director Atsushi Kaneku (14 minutes), Caterpillar cinematographer Akiko Ashizawa (16 minutes), and Mirror Hell cinematography advisor Masao Nakabori (25 minutes) and actress Yumi Yoshiyaki (14 minutes). There are also image galleries for each story. The disc also comes with a reversible sleeve and an illustrated booklet with new writing on the film.

RAMPO NOIR is out on Blu-ray from Arrow Films on Monday 6th January 2025

Trick 'r Treat (2007)

Before he directed 2019's GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS (and 2015's KRAMPUS) Michael Dougherty gave us TRICK 'R TREAT, an anthology film which is now getting a whistles and bells release in a limited edition from Arrow on 4K UHD.

The opening titles promise us four stories, although there actually appear to be five, all of which take place on Halloween night and involve characters who are all, at at least one point in the film, on the same street of the town in which the film is set.

Whereas most anthology films stack their stories so we get one after the other, TRICK 'R TREAT manages to circumvent the main problem with the format (some stories will be weaker, and the stronger stories will show them up) by interweaving its tales so that at times you're not sure which story you're in, plus some characters do feature prominently in stories other than just the one that's about them.

The result is a brief (82 minutes) entertaining piece with some familiar faces (Brian Cox, Anna Paquin) and that bouncy sense of fun and dress up that Americans attach to that particular day of the year.

Arrow's release is packed with extras. There's a new commentary by Dougherty to go along with an archival one that features him, composer Douglas Pipes and two of the conceptual artists who worked on the film.

Other new extras include a stack of interviews including Quinn Cord (who plays the little boy who figures prominently in the poster art), designer Mark Freeborn (12 minutes), Director of Photography Glen MacPherson (17 minutes), costume designer Trish Keating (15 minutes), creature designer Patrick Tatopoulos (9 minutes).

Archival material includes 54 minutes of interviews all of which include Michael Dougherty with various members of the crew. Seasons Greeting is the original four minute short film that inspired the movie & comes with optional commentary. Brian Cox narrates a 28 minute documentary about Halloween, there's a minute of school bus VFX, four minutes of amusing promos from FEARnet and a stills gallery that includes a Monster Mash comic book inspired by the film.

Michael Dougherty' TRICK 'R TREAT is out in a limited edition on 4K UHD on Monday 28th October 2024

Video Shop Tales of Terror (2023)

Not given an actual release yet but starting to make the rounds of film festivals is anthology movie VIDEO SHOP TALES OF TERROR, one of a number of ultra low budget UK genre movies that have been made over the last few years. Some of these, such as the oeuvre of the late Andrew Jones, have found distribution through supermarket shelves, others through mail order and VOD, and doubtless there are a few languishing in distribution hell to be discovered by UK horror obsessives at some point. The thing many of these films have in common is an almost guerrilla approach to film-making, fuelled in the absence of money (and sometimes talent) by sheer enthusiasm and love of the genre. VIDEO SHOP TALES OF TERROR is packed with enthusiasm and has buckets of genre love. It also has buckets of blood, gore, and an endearingly cheerful sense of nostalgia.

The action centres around a video rental store, the exterior of which is rendered a charming little model straight out of Michael Bentine's Potty Time. To continue the 1970s kids' TV vibe the proprietor of the shop bears an alarming resemblance to Dusty Mop from ITV show Hickory House. It's from here we go into the stories.

First off is MJ Dixon's Egghead, a jolly bit of comic strip-styled fun very much in the EC style in which disgraced surgeon Dr Egbert Humphries goes to a rival of his to get a new face and things get horrible from there. Next is Sam Mason-Bell's The Red-Lipped Moon, in which a man investigates the death of his friend and ends up meeting the lethal Ivy. Filmed in slick, stylish black and white this one has the look of a classy 1950s British B movie and gets the awards for the most professional-looking segment of the bunch. 

Third is the brief Fleurs du Mal in which there are strange time-travel goings on Andrew Elias' 1894 horror set in a convent staffed by Nigel Wingrove-style nuns who wear nail varnish and makeup. After that it's Mary Whitehouse You're a C***, an extremely jolly and good natured EVIL DEAD tribute from Alexander Churchyard and Max Davenport that includes Mrs W herself back from the grave (and the reason for her being brought back did make me laugh out loud) and some endearing stop motion animation.

Tom Lee Rutter's These Burnt Children features disillusioned film director Ron Bayliss taking revenge on producer Benny Southpaw. A scene with a medium (with the splendid name of Lemora Lachymose) is the closest VIDEO SHOP TALES OF TERROR ever gets to the classic Amicus anthologies of old and as the segment reaches hysterical fever pitch you're left with the distinct feeling that a John Waters-style script in the hands of Mr Rutter could be a dangerous and wonderful thing.

The final tale is the SALON KITTY-style Vergessen. Those in the know will enjoy ticking off the Nazisploitation personality names in this tale of a brothel designed to get secrets out of visiting officers.

But that's not all. The wraparound features plenty of bonus bits and pieces, including a trailer for something called Don't Sit On His Face which again had me laughing out loud. A bit later on there's a bizarre advert for Japanese hot dogs and the soft core porn video Video Repair Man which, true to the era, has at least eight 'sequels'. 

The overarching theme of VIDEO SHOP TALES OF TERROR is determinedly (and affectionately) retro. It's frequently crude, both in terms of subject matter and execution, but it succeeds in one very important area, in that it actually feels like a project its makers enjoyed making, and their enthusiasm, dedication and love for their subject matter really does shine through, and it's infectious. By the end of the movie I felt I'd had a disgustingly fun time. Well done, chaps.

VIDEO SHOP TALES OF TERROR is currently awaiting a distribution deal