Wheesht Reviews

The Last Winter (2006)

The Last Twenty Minutes!!!

[7/10 · 21 April 2008]

Okay, nothing much to say here that hasn't already been said by all the other good reviewers on here.

Director does a cracking job of building up a sense of tension, isolation and paranoia in the first half of the film. Beautiful, haunting location shots, spot-on musical score and some clever camera-work. Undoubted nods to the likes of 'The Thing', 'Blair With Project' and 'The Shining' but the director still manages to plant enough plot devices (mysterious white box, weird noises and footprints, well-acted descent into madness) to promise a worthwhile outcome.

Sadly, at this point they run out of ideas. In fact if I didn't know better, I'd almost have thought that they switched directors about two-thirds in. Particular gripes: 1) Rubbish CGI. You do NOT need a monster to make your movie scary. Especially when it's some sort of reject from Rocky & Bullwinkle.

2) The whole final scene. Been watching Resident Evil have we? The very final shot screams that they's completely run out of money and couldn't afford to do the apocalyptic wide angle shot that was needed here.

3) Poorly done switch in pace. About two thirds in we go from slow, deliberate menace to frantic, unexplained chaos. Handled well this might have worked. It didn't.

Reading this back it sounds really negative and that's not the impression I want to give. This was a decent movie and I suppose my annoyance is that it wasn't as good as it easily could have been given a bit more care and thought.

Casshern (2004)

Bimbo Movie (Great Looking But Not Much Else)

[6/10 · 25 July 2007]

Oh, what could have been.

First and foremost, this movie looks amazing. Some of the CGI is groundbreaking stuff and the whole look and feel of the film is utterly stunning. Little touches like the faces on some of the airships - pure class.

Sadly, this visual feast can't in the end disguise a tissue-thin plot and iffy script. Okay so mankind ought to be nicer to each other and war is a terrible thing - we get it! If anything, the constant hammering home of this message was making me MORE likely to resort to violence by flinging my beer at the TV.

God knows how long this movie was before it entered the cutting room but it needs to go back there to have at least half an hour of unnecessary commentary on man's inhumanity to man lopped off.

Damn shame. In the right hands, this could have been brilliant. Worth seeing nonetheless.

The Beyond (1981)

Better than your average 'Fulci' but that ain't saying too much...

[4/10 · 8 February 2007]

I'm constantly staggered by the number of otherwise rational people who seem to rate Fulci's films so highly. I'm always seeing them referred to as "classics" and "masterpieces" and I just don't get it. I'm always ready to give someone a chance though and so even after having endured the cinematic disasters that are 'City Of The Living Dead' and 'The House By The Cemetery', I still decided to give 'The Beyond' a watch as lots of folk on here seemed to rate it as Fulci's best work.

To be fair, it was an improvement on those other two movies but guess what folks - it's still a very average movie.

I'm assuming that all those gorehounds raving about the outstanding special effects have actually never seen any other movie ever? THEY ARE TERRIBLE! How anyone could actually watch that spider attack without laughing out loud is beyond me (no pun intended). Most of the spiders are so clearly plastic efforts being wiggled on a stick by someone that it's like watching some kind of poor man's Sesame Street.

Even when they get down to the serious business of face-eating, I couldn't help but think "Oh, they've left the guy on the floor alone and decided to attack some previously un-noticed wax dummy that was lying near him." The musical score, as usual with Fulci, sounds like a 5-year old playing with a synthesiser. Always thought the idea of the score in a horror movie was to add to the atmosphere, not detract from it.

On the limited plus side, the zombies looked good, the leading lady was less one-dimensional than in the other movies I've seen and the preamble involving the artist was actually quite well done. The shame of it is that Fulci just drifted back to his usual approach of unexplained gore as soon as there was the threat of an actual plot starting to emerge.

Fulci fans - if you want good zombie movies with actual special effects that don't look like they've been dreamt up as part of a nursery school art project, see Romero. I'll take your word for it that this is Fulci's best work but that's it for me.

Darkness (2002)

Stick To The X-Men, Love.

[5/10 · 11 September 2006]

Decent twist on the haunted house theme but one in which ultimately substance is sacrificed (no pun intended) for style. Pacquin looks suitably terrified most of the way through and the mother and father are reasonably convincing but in the end, I just didn't care what happened to them. From reading some of the other reviews, this film seems to have been chopped to bits in various editing suites and I can only assume the version I saw (on Sky Movies) had been similarly disembowelled because the editing/continuity was dire and killed the movie.

Personal gripe was the scene with Pacquin and her 'uncle'. A scene apparently (tie her up, drone on for 5 minutes, let her go)manufactured for the sole purpose of explaining 'the big twist'. Clunky, awkward and in many ways symptomatic of the whole film.

If you want atmospheric Hispanic scares, go watch a Guillermo del Toro movie.

The Ugly (1997)

Bit Of A Let-Down Actually

[5/10 · 24 January 2006]

Pretty disappointed with this movie as it happens. It came to me highly recommended by some people whose opinions I trust on such things but it really doesn't pass muster.

The opening scene was pretty good to be fair and the film had a few good things going for it. The two orderlies were class - must have been fun roles to play, Jennifer Ward-Lealand is grotesque as Simon's mum and Reynolds certainly conjures up a bit of atmosphere.

On the downside, it just wasn't very interesting. He's a serial killer who had a troubled childhood and was bullied at school. His mum was nasty to him and he hears voices in his head telling him to kill. Hardly revolutionary stuff is it? Roy Ward clearly watched lots of Bond movies to prepare for the role of Dr Marlowe. If you've seen Austin Powers, then think Dr Evil but with added demonic facial hair. All that was missing was a white cat for him to stroke.

I've seen this compared to Silence Of The Lambs but Rotondo and Hobbs are no Hopkins and Foster. I've also seen this described by a lot of folk as 'overlooked' or 'unappreciated'. That may be true but then there are reasons why it's overlooked and unappreciated.

Not a bad movie, just not the 'hidden gem' I'd been led to expect.

City of the Living Dead (1980)

Yup, 'Classic' Fulci Alright

[3/10 · 13 December 2005]

Well, it certainly has all the classic Fulci hallmarks: comedy acting, an abysmal musical score, a half-baked plot and some genuinely twisted gore.

I've seen this described elsewhere as a masterpiece. It isn't. Fair enough it creates a bit of atmosphere from time to time but other bits are just too dire to take seriously. Every scene in the diner, for example, is just terrible, really terrible.

Always thought Fulci was a real mixture - some great ideas and general concepts but totally unable to translate them into equally great movies. City Of The Living Dead encapsulates this problem nicely.