Stars: Kellan Rudnicki, Tyler Miller, Sarah Tyson, Dylane DeVane, Walter Braithwaite and Brent Downs. Writers: Brendan Rudnicki and Kellan Rudnicki Director: Brendan Rudnicki
Rating: ★ ★ ½
From the SEO-friendly title (which sounds like a Simpsons Halloween episode) to its outfitting of a supportive relative’s home as its key location, The Rudnicki Brother’s no-budget mash-up of found-footage tropes and slasher beats is made for the scroll-friendly depths of Roku or Tubi, those modern streaming equivalents of the weekly VHS rental shelf. And like the cheesy, underlit splatterfests that dwelled on those shelves of yore, The Haunting of the Murder House will provide giggles, gasps and groans in equal measure.
The hosts of YouTube paranormal show ‘The Otherside’, Harper (Sarah Tyson) and Kai (Tyler Miller) find their online popularity on the decline. So, with reluctant cameraman Kel (Kellan Rudnicki) along for the ride, they decide to live-stream an 8-hour lock-in at the site of a legendarily brutal crime, during which a grotesquely-masked killer clown (here we go…) slashed and stabbed his way to infamy. Now, with OB-van tech Dylan (Dylan DeVane) calling the shots, the three settle in for a night of jump scares and swearing at each other.
(A quick aside - if you get a sense of deja vu from that synopsis, you may have seen The Rudnicki’s 2019 opus, The Murder at the Suicide House, in which three ghost-hunting YouTubers spend a night at the titular estate to get the material they need to boost the popularity of their channel.)
No haunted house cliche is left unturned, with ouija boards, hidden rooms, salted pentagrams, demonic possession and night-vision cameras all getting raked over the cinematic coals. Most effectively utilised, of course, is the image and presence of ol’ bloodthirsty Bozo himself; his introduction, in which he faces off against an increasingly jittery cop (Brent Downs), is legitimately scary. A combination of flashy lighting and a punchy score makes the clown’s first reveal to the YouTubers a genuinely chilling few moments. Also shocking are the occasional leaps from shadowy atmospherics to giallo-esque gore.
And that’s the take-away after 80 minutes of The Haunting at the Murder House - much of it actually works. There will be snarky web-critics who want to tear it down (some sketchy acting and loopy plotting give them an in), but for a calling card film that indicates the creatives have a handle on filmmaking technique and storytelling craft, it is a win for the Rudnicki siblings. Their production outfit DBS Films is favouring quantity over quality at this stage (they’ve banked seven low-budgeters since 2019), but one senses there will be a time soon when that equation balances out.
Stars: Sosie Bacon, Jessie Usher, Kyle Gallner, Robin Weigert, Caitlin Stasey and Kal Penn. Writer/Director: Parker Finn
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
Try telling non-horror types that the best horror films hold a mirror to society and/or humanity, and you’ll get some variation on “harrumph”. Horror movies exist to exploit and manipulate base fears, they’ll say; that most just use loud noises and fake blood to give thrill-seekers an in-the-moment cinematic sugar high; that a key role of horror films is to disengage the brain and tap the instinctual, not the intellectual.
Horror types know that sometimes that is true, and are hugely grateful for it, but that some really great horror films are also deeply insightful. Parker Finn’s SMILE has a foot strongly planted on both sides of the horror film divide, and emerges as one of the best of its kind in recent memory. You’ll shriek and shudder and cover your eyes, as the stylishly visual horrors unfold before you, but you’ll be drawn into the story of a woman facing off against an evil entity that metaphorically addresses the debilitating impact of depression and cyclical trauma.
A terrific Sosie Bacon plays psychotherapist Rose Cotter, a principled young woman who has foregone profitable private practice to offer aid to those in underfunded community mental health care. Her morning is upended when a frantic patient (Australia’s own Caitlin Stasey) starts screaming at her that she can’t escape people hideously grinning in her direction. One horribly bloody moment of self-harm later, Rose is now faced with nightmares of her own, as the toothy entity starts manifesting in the most terrifying ways possible.
The essence of writer/director Finn’s narrative is in Cotter’s backstory, which is revealed to be one rife with family trauma and untreated mother-daughter issues. In a lesser genre work, such undercurrents would be hinted at but then jettisoned in favour of the ghoulish byproduct of such sadness, but SMILE is a work that spells out very clearly the ties that bind the horrors of the past with the persons we are today.
Specifically, it speaks to the shocking statistics that indicate suicide begats suicide; that those impacted by loved ones who kill themselves are then cursed to carry the burden of crippling, sometimes fatal, pain.
Some may baulk at the use of severe mental health issues as the crux of a story that presents outwardly as a supernatural thriller. But genre fans know that horrors real and imagined can share the same space, and SMILE provides a smart, sad, shocking argument for their cause
Stars: Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher, Mark Burnham, Jacob Latimore, Moe Dunford, Nell Hudson, Jessica Allain, Olwen Fouéré and Alice Krige. Writer: Chris Thomas Devlin Director: David Blue Garcia
Rating: ★ ★ ★
Leatherface returns in what is being touted as the “spiritual sequel” to the late Tobe Hooper’s 1974 masterpiece. Don’t do the math; if you do, that makes the chainsaw-wielding bad guy a very spry 70 or thereabouts. Given some of the muscular action and physical dexterity he exhibits in offing the latest cast of annoying twenty-somethings, life as a disgusting shut-in clearly has it’s perks.
The pot-smoking Kombi kids of the first film have been replaced by upwardly-mobile, idealistic millennials whose vision is to rejuvenate the decrepit ghosttown of Harlow and turn it into the next Portland. Dante (Jacob Littlemore), his gf Ruth (Nell Hudson) and driven capitalist Melody (Sarah Yarkin) have the plan; Melody’s sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), in the grip of PTSD having survived a school shooting, is along for the ride. The group land in Harlow just ahead of a busload of douche-y investors, every one obviously lining up to be blade fodder.
The horror kick starts in the most 2022 of ways - a dispute over title deed. Dante and Melody claim ownership of a spooky crumbling house, but find a dusty old broad (Alice Krige, leaning into the scenery teeth-first) and her ‘son’ (you know who) still in the premises. Things go bad, storm clouds roll in, nighttime descends…you can see where this is going.
The Chainsaw Massacre films have never been at the cutting edge of social commentary, so bravo to this latest version for a few swipes at the handheld-device generation. No, it's the splatter that matters in the TCM films and Leatherface ‘22 offers plenty of inventive dismembering. Key player is Fede Alvarez, who directed the awesome Evil Dead remake and the first Don’t Breathe and here guides the gore as producer.
Slasher films count on outwardly intelligent people putting themselves in patently dangerous situations, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre has more than its fair share of “Oh my God, what an idiot!” moments. That’s part of the fun, and for those of us who adore the saw, there’s lots of fun to be had here.
Featuring: Enzo Tedeschi, Julian Harvey, Carlo Ledesma, Andy Rodoreda, Bel Deliá, Luke Arnold, Steve Davis, Eduardo Sanchez, Ahmed Salama and Andrew Mackie. Director: Adrian Nugent
Reviewed Sunday December 5 at Monster Fest 2021, Cinema Nova, Melbourne.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
The key players at the centre of a unique moment in Australian cinema history reflect upon their achievements in The Tunnel: The Other Side of Darkness. Recounting the emerging technology, gathering of personalities, indie-film landscape and distribution infrastructure that smashed together and created the headline-grabber that was 2011’s The Tunnel, director Adrian Nugent’s deep-dive into the blind ambition and unshakeable faith behind the found-footage shocker is a must-see for genre fans and, more importantly, wannabe filmmakers everywhere (pictured, above: actress Bel Deliá and director Carlo Ledesma).
When the production triumvirate of producer Enzo Tedeschi, writer Julian Harvey and director Carlo Ledesma decided to film a horror/thriller in the abandoned subway tunnels under Sydney’s CBD, elements such as budget constraints, daunting location logistics and the sector’s indifference to genre projects should have been key indicators that The Tunnel was not the best idea for a first feature.
But the project was coalescing at a time when crowdfunding was peaking and Tedeschi, an understated but driven creative executive, brought old-school showmanship to the new filmmaking paradigm; he sold frames of his yet-to-shoot film for a dollar, counting on a secure production budget materialising ahead of lensing. He and Harvey then made the call that grabbed the industry’s attention - the film would go out free as a BitTorrent stream. The recognised tool of the video piracy criminal underworld would be used as a legitimate distribution platform.
The Tunnel: The Other Side of Darkness melds archival digital footage (as crisp now as when it was shot 11 years ago) with the recollections of many associated with the film. Cast members including Luke Arnold, Bel Deliá, Andy Rodoreda and Steve Davis, all front to recount the sense of community, unshakeable commitment and inevitable corner-cutting synonymous with independent film sets. The best ‘I-still-can’t-believe-it’ moment is when, posing as their news crew characters, the actors blend in with real-life journos at a press conference held by then-prime minister, Julia Gillard.
Although it veers very close to ‘insider only’ territory, the historical context in which Nugent and, on-camera, Tedeschi and Harvey recall life as BitTorrent denizens is no less compelling. The global trade-paper coverage of the film’s ultimate acquisition by local Paramount Studios' subsidiary Transmission Films and how damaging to all involved the ‘Studio Giant in Bed with Piracy Partner’ headlines became is behind-the-scenes gold (pictured, above: l-r, producer Enzo Tedeschi and writer Julian Harvey).
One revelation left unexplored is in answer to the indelicate question - did The Tunnel make any money? It wrapped largely on budget and, at last count, the film had an estimated viral audience of 25 million views. But in the decade since The Tunnel crowd-surfed into existence, no major productions immediately come to mind that adopted the same distribution methodology. The documentary cites as creative inspiration that found-footage benchmark, The Blair Witch Project (co-director Eduardo Sanchez is a guest interviewee), but that film was a black ink-soaked blockbuster. Was the aim to get the film seen and/or turn a profit?
Irrespective of such crass considerations, the cult of The Tunnel is undeniable; Tedeschi recalls with pride a bucket-list moment when a chance meeting with Quentin Tarantino revealed the celebrated auteur as a Tunnel fan. And the influence of Harvey’s narrative and Ledesma’s visual stylings has resonated - check out the first episode of streaming service Shudder’s latest horror hit V/H/S 94 to see a terrific riff on life under a big city.
The Tunnel: The Other Side of Darkness is a complete and compelling end-to-end account of independent production ingenuity and the passion it requires and inspires.
Stars: Camille Rowe, James Jagger, Eric Savin and Carolina Massey. Writers: (French) Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury; (English) Julien David, Rachel Parker. Directors: Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
What do you call two internet influencers at the bottom of a lake? If you answered, “A good start”, you’ll likely find some dark-hearted glee amongst the legit chills in The Deep House, the latest from horror cinema’s most promising new directors of the ‘00s, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury.
Brattish Urbex YouTuber Ben (James Jagger) has convinced his gf Tina (Camille Rowe) to travel the European countryside, exploring society’s forgotten relics, the kind that often hold supernatural potential. Ben is the sort of boyfriend who enjoys frightening Tina in abandoned mansions, because that’s what earns likes and shares on his travel site; on more than one occasion, Tina justifiably mutters, “You’re so annoying.”
Their latest destination is a submerged home deep in a remote French lake. Led there by Pierre (Eric Savin), that most dangerous of horror tropes - the ‘mysterious local’ - Ben and Tina (with their underwater drone camera, ‘Tom’, as in ‘peeping’) are soon exploring the murky depths yet oddly pristine corridors of Montegnac House. The setting is pure ‘haunted estate’, but the claustrophobic intensity of scuba diving and the constant ticking-clock that is the oxygen reader exponentially increases the tension.
When their debut 2007 work À l'intérieur (Inside) was judged amongst the best of the new wave of French ‘hardcore horror’ films, the sheer brutality and filmmaking bravado of Bustillo and Maury earned them critical bouquets and cult status (both of which were less forthcoming with the arty hollowness of their 2011 follow-up, Livide).
With The Deep House, they embrace a more barebones aesthetic; a first-person immediacy, the kind of filmmaking usually associated with the ‘found footage’ genre. Go-pros, drone lensing, body-cams, hi-tech mask-mics - the cutting edge tools of the video adventurer are used to record a fateful expedition, an undertaking filled with the kind of shocking revelations and otherworldly vistations that, ironically, would have ensured Ben the social media eyeballs he craved.
In the 14 years since they burst onto the scene, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury have only improved as cinema craftspeople. With almost an hour of its 83 min story spent underwater, the directors and their DOP Jacques Ballard were submerged for 33 production days, capturing Hubert Pouille’s detailed production design and Ilse Willcox’s set decoration with consummate artistry. That The Deep House manages to be a white-knuckle ghost story as well seems like a value-added bonus.
Stars: Jack Kane, Zander Emlano, Zak Sutcliffe, Sophie Jane Oliver, Molly Dew, David Keyes, Terence Anderson and Matteo De Gregori. Writer: Daniele Cosci Director: Alessio Liguori
Rating: ★ ★ ★
A serviceable creature-feature that will play well enough with housebound under-’20s, the patch-quilt monster-movie/teen drama Shortcut is light on logic but buoyed by an engaging spirit. It will certainly be an advantage if you haven’t seen any of the Jeepers Creepers trilogy, Neil Marshall’s Descent or Guillermo del Toro’s Mimic, genre works that clearly influenced writer Daniele Cosci and director Alessio Liguori (and we’ll get to The Breakfast Club beats later), but for a streaming-service rip of those DVD-era guilty pleasures, Shortcut is perfectly watchable.
An Italian/German co-production that dresses up its Euro locales as a very green middle America, we meet our five heroes on a bus trip heading somewhere deep in the woods. Under the care of warmhearted bus driver Joseph (Terence Anderson) are (cue Simple Minds’ ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’) the every-dude Nolan (Jack Kane), arty blonde Bess (Sophie Jane Oliver), life-of-the-party Karl (Zander Emlano), bespectacled nerd Queenie (Molly Dew) and tough guy rebel Reg (Zak Sutcliffe). Forced onto a sideroad (not really a ‘shortcut’, but...), they are hijacked by snarling escapee Pedro (David Keyes, going all-in on his bad guy turn), a madman known for eating the tongues of his victims.
Pedro soon becomes the least of their problems when their bus breaks down in an abandoned tunnel and the resident of the darkness, a Mothman-like parasitic-humanoid that comes to be known as ‘The Nocturne Wanderer’, begins to hunt them down. Forced into a labyrinthine network of concrete corridors that come with their own dark secrets, the five must find a common strength to survive.
‘Why a whole school bus for these five students?’, ‘Why these five students?’ and ‘Where are they going?’ are just some of the questions left unanswered while watching Shortcut, but such deep-thinking is not really necessary; in fact, it’s best to disengage from reality entirely. These five kids symbolise all teens, and the monsters they face are the allegorical challenges all adolescents face as adulthood looms.
That might seem a long bow to pull to cut Liguori’s film some slack, but it goes some way to explaining away incongruities and shortcomings that would otherwise derail Shortcut. Age-appropriate audiences will draw more from the characterisations and the dilemmas they face than jaded critics or hardcore horror hounds.
The overall standard of production - Luca Santagostino’s evocative low-light cinematography; Jacopo Reale’s slick editing; the top-tier practical make-up effects of creature crew supervisor Leonardo Cruciano and offsider Elisabetta Paccapelo - refuses to allow the film to be dismissed as trashy monster malarkey. It generally delivers on that front, of course, but earns respect as a more ambitious entry in the genre.
Featuring: Kier-La Janisse, David Gregory, Eli Roth, Joe Dante, Mark Hartley, Mick Garris, Ernest Dickerson, Joko Anwar, Ramsey Campbell, David DeCoteau, Kim Newman, Jovanka Vuckovic, Luigi Cozzi, Tom Savini, Jenn Wexler, Larry Fessenden, Richard Stanley, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Brian Yuzna, Gary Sherman, Rebekah McKendry and Peter Strickland.
Director: David Gregory.
AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE: Screening with NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR 35th Anniversary presentation at Monster Fest from 1:30pm on Sunday, 6th December, Cinema Nova, Carlton, Melbourne.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
Anthology films, those critically under-valued providers of thrills and chills for generations of genre fans, are afforded an appropriately passionate, often giddily infectious reappraisal in Tales of the Uncanny. Severin Films’ boss David Gregory, working with renowned horror academic Kier-La Janisse, have corralled over 60 exponents of cinema’s darkest artistry to recount and respect the greatest short-form film narratives in movie history. Refreshingly, the doco compiles two Best of... lists - for whole films and individual segments -in a gesture that will help new fans seek out the finest of the genre.
While even the best of anthology films suffer from the inevitable saggy segment (a common trait acknowledged by the filmmakers and their interviewees), no such dip in tone or quality infects Gregory’s buoyant love letter. Tales of the Uncanny tracks the portmanteau format from its origins in Germanic puppet theatre and the collected works of Poe and Lovecraft in publications such as Grahams and Weird Tales magazines through the very earliest days of filmmaking.
Anthologies played a key role in early European cinema, such as the German masterpieces Eerie Tales (Dir: Richard Oswald, 1919) and Waxwork (Dirs: Leo Birinsky and Paul Leni, 1924) and the great British work Dead of Night (1945), featuring director Alberto Cavalcanti’s classic segment ‘The Ventriliquist’s Dummy’ (with Michael Redgrave; pictured, below). Anthologies soon found favour within Hollywood’s star-driven studio system; director Julien Duvivier’s 1943 pic Flesh and Fantasy boasted the dream cast of Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G Robinson and Charles Boyer.
The obsessively-minded cavalcade of contributors - amongst them, filmmakers (Eli Roth, Joko Anwar, Brian Yuzna, Larry Fessenden, Jenn Wexler, Mattie Do); authors and academics (Kim Newman, Amanda Reyes, Maitland McDonagh); genre giants (Tom Savini, Roger Corman, Luigi Cozzi, Joe Dante, Greg Nicotero, David Del Valle); and, Antipodean talent (Mark Hartley, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Mark Savage) - recount seminal moments in the anthology classics of their formative film years. The coverage is exhaustive, but extra attention is paid to such landmark movies as Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath (1963); Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan (1964); and, Histoires extraordinaires (1968; aka Spirits of the Dead), featuring segments by Louis Malle, Roger Vadim and Frederico Fellini.
Even at a relatively lean 103 minutes, Gregory and Janisse are able to fully profile U.K. outfit Amicus Productions, kings of Britain’s golden age of anthology films (Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, 1965; Torture Garden, 1967; The House That Dripped Blood, 1970; Tales from the Crypt, 1972 (pictured, top; with Joan Collins); From Beyond the Grave, 1974); highlight small-screen anthology horror, from the groundbreaking work of Dan Curtis (Trilogy of Terror, 1975; Dead of Night, 1977) to the resurgent anthology TV-series boom of the ‘80s (Amazing Stories, Tales from the Crypt, Freddy’s Nightmares); and, the classics of the modern era, both adored (Creepshow, 1982; Twilight Zone The Movie, 1984; V/H/S, 2012) and ignored (Cat’s Eye, 1985; From a Whisper to a Scream, 1987; Southbound, 2015).
Tales of the Uncanny has done its job if the viewer comes away with a list of films to re/watch, and it certainly achieves that. It also succeeds in painting the portmanteau genre as a form of film storytelling that needs to be more seriously addressed by both mainstream audiences and film historians. At their very best, anthology films offer the most unique of movie-going experiences and, with credit to David Gregory and Kier-La Janisse, ought now be examined more respectfully.
Stars: Jacob A. Ware and Christine Nyland. Writers: Christine Nyland and Terence Krey. Director: Terence Krey.
WORLD PREMIERE: Sunday October 11 at NIGHTSTREAM Virtual Film Festival, U.S.A.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
A sly, slow-burn two-hander exhibiting a genre heritage best described as ‘supernatural-noir’, An Unquiet Grave tightens the narrative screws with a mix of psychological thrills, grief-infused drama and OMG horror. Kept real by grounded depictions of desperation, sorrow and fear by two terrific lead performances, director Terence Krey’s high-end low-budgeter builds empathy and understanding for its protagonists before getting down and dirty in a pulse-quickening third act.
An established and respected ensemble player (notably in TV series like Boardwalk Empire and Graves), Jacob A. Ware takes full advantage of leading man status as ‘Jamie’, fleshing out the nuanced psychosis impacting a man still struggling with the death of his wife, Julie. A year on, he has taken to driving in the dark of night with Julie’s sister, Ava (Christine Nyland, who co-scripted), to the site where Julie died. Their shared hope is that Julie may not have lived her final days if what Jamie has learned is true.
Along the way, interaction between the pair waivers from warm and understanding to edgy and devious. Nyland and Krey’s script is a work of considerable skill, with each line playing a carefully constructed role in complicating character traits and strengthening the conceit. When the setting shifts from the front seat of the car to a cabin in the woods and the narrative spins from sideway glances and ambiguous wordplay to shovels and shallow graves, the transition is seamless.
If, by the hour mark, you are wondering why The Unquiet Grave is bowing at the Nightstream horror fest, one especially challenging sequence will silence your concerns. While certainly a great visceral horror sequence, the reveal also reinforces the notion that the true horror in the story of these lost souls stems from their broken hearts.
Krey, Nyland and Ware stay focussed on character and mood over genre tropes and histrionics, aided immeasurably by the artful eye of DOP Daniel Fox, who works wonders with a lot of single-source light/night-time location work. An Unquiet Grave is an assured genre exercise in the corrosive nature of profound sadness and how it can dissolve the moral core of good people.
Stars: Jemima West, Christopher Dane, Rebecca Hanssen, Rachel Lin and Harry Macmillan-Hunt. Writer: Jennifer Nicole Stang and Henk Pretorious Director: Henk Pretorious
Screening at the South African Independent Film Festival on 23rd and 30th August. Released in North America on August 21st; September 11th in the UK; and, October 28th in South Africa.
Rating: ★ ★ ★
Reintegration into the peaceful stability of suburban family life proves tough for Afghanistan War doctor Elizabeth ‘Izzy’ Cormack (Jemima West; pictured, above), a guilt-ridden medic gripped by PTSD in Henk Pretorious’ psychological chiller, The Unfamiliar. When that safeplace also begins to unravel and her fractured reality is encroached upon by supernatural forces, this low-key but tightly-spun tale of terror balances the torment of a dissociative mental condition with some legitimately ghoulish scares.
Everything seems slightly off-centre upon Izzy’s arrival - stepdaughter Emma (Rebecca Hanssen) is distant; angelic preteen Tommy (Harry McMillan-Hunt) is acting out; husband Ethan (Christopher Dane), while more aggressively amorous than before, also brings too much of his work home. This proves particularly worrisome, given he is a Professor of Polynesian Culture and what he brings home includes a Hawaiian tiki that carries with it a dark spiritual presence.
There is a faint sniff of cultural appropriation in Pretorious’ premise; ‘cursed tribal artefacts’ as a plot device peaked with that Brady Bunch episode. In 2020, the notion that a Stygian symbol of Islander folklore is the kicker for a middle class white household’s torment is a bit ripe (even if the script tries to deflect). The director also draws on some familiar haunted house tropes that suggest pics like The Amityville Horror (1979, 2005), Insidious (2010) and a couple of the Paranormal Activity sequels were inspirations.
The pic finds some fresh energy when Ethan decides Izzy and the kids decamp back to Hawaii, allowing for all the supernatural forces toying with the family’s fate to fully emerge. Pretorious and DOP Pete Wallington shoot the reveal of the film’s devilish protagonist (repping stellar creature design work from makeup fx veteran Robbie Drake) with a genuinely nightmarish glee. The other ace-in-the-hole is leading lady West, who conveys first the strain of PTSD then the terror of a demonic face-off with the required intensity.
While the lack of cast starpower and workmanlike helming will keep this uneven but watchable creepshow from wide theatrical play, genre festival audiences and streaming services will certainly find space for The Unfamiliar. It is not unforeseeable that, in much the same way Freddy Krueger turned a support part in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) into a star-making, franchise-building turn, so might Pretorious and co-scripter Jennifer Nicole Stang focus in on their creepy demon star should sequels manifest.
Stars: Steve Inwood, Deborah Raffin, John Rhys-Davies, Deborah Foreman, Louise Fletcher, Dick Anthony Williams, Charlie Sheen, Timothy Spall, Laura Dern and George Clooney. Writers: Ross Massbaum, Joan McCall and David Sheldon. Director: André Szöts
...or ★ ★ ★ ★ ★, depending on what you’re expecting when you decide to take on André Szöts sole directorial effort, Grizzly 2: Revenge. Smashed together by determined producer Suzanne C. Nagy from footage shot in 1982, this belated sequel to the ridiculous (and ridiculously successful) 1976 Jaws rip-off Grizzly is barely a film; truncated scenes are poorly dubbed and edited erratically, to vainly progress a threadbare narrative that never makes sense. But in the annals of ‘All-time Great Bad Movies’, where earnest acting in the service of unspeakable dialogue is prized, Grizzly 2: Revenge gains immediate respect.
“These kids never stood a chance” - Owens; “Poor dumb kids.” - Sheriff Nick Hollister (pictured, above; Steve Inwood and Deborah Raffin)
Of course, the only reason to talk about this Frankenstein-of-a-movie is because it has existed in a rarified air of mystery amongst film nerds since production ground to a halt 46 years ago in Hungary. Nagy and the late Szöts (whose other notable credit was as co-writer of David Hamilton’s soft-focus arty 1979 skin-flick, Laura) had blown a huge chunk of their budget shooting a massive rock concert, the staging of which provides the background setting and an unnecessarily large percentage of screen time in the finished film. (Pictured, below; Laura Dern, as Tina, and George Clooney, as Ron)
“You got the Devil Bear!” - Bouchard, Grizzly tracker
No money was left to fix the troublesome animatronic bear nor, ultimately, complete the film; in one of the many wild stories associated with the shoot, it is alleged producer Joseph Proctor absconded with $2million from the budget. It would not be until 2007 that rumours began circulating that a 96 minute ‘workprint’ existed (the version reviewed here peaked at 78). In 2011, journalist Scott Weinberg wrote a piece for Screen Anarchy in which he recounts his experience watching what he calls one of his “Genre Geek Holy Grails”. Nagy decided 2018 was the right time to remaster the surviving footage and hack together the man-vs-nature sequel absolutely nobody wanted.
“Getting sour by the hour. Excuse me…” - Toto Coelo, all-girl band (Lyrics)
Grizzly 2: Revenge is set in motion when a group of hunters shoot two bear cubs and wound the matriarch; all this footage is video stock, not shot in ‘83 but sourced to give the narrative a kickstart. Jump to three young twenty-somethings, played by hungry-for-work young actors George Clooney, Laura Dern and Charlie Sheen (pictured, above), hiking the woods on their way to the outdoor concert, only to be offed by said grizzly (or a handheld cameraman, if the sequence is to be taken literally, as we never see the bear). One of the few joys on offer in Grizzly 2 is future-star spotting; sharp eyes will spot Game of Thrones’ Ian McNiece and (are you sitting down?) British acting great Timothy Spall.
“Maggie Sue!” - Drunk men around a campfire, while pinching each other’s bottoms (Lyrics).
The film settles into its predisposed ‘Jaws rip-off’ mode from then on, with Louise Fletcher’s hard-nosed corporate type mimicking Murray Hamilton’s ruthless mayor; instead of keeping the beaches open for summer, she demands the rock concert go ahead, despite there being a teen-eating beast on the loose. Out-of-towner sheriff Nick Hollister (Steve Inwood, acting from his moussed hair down,in the Roy Scheider part) and Bear Management expert Samantha Owens (Deborah Raffin, going full Dreyfuss in her defense of the bear) are forced to call on legendary bear-tracker and Quint archetype, Bouchard (the always-game John Rhys-Davies; pictured, above) whose idiosyncrasies, and there are many, include speaking of himself in the third-person.
“You haven’t seen what Bouchard has seen!” - Bouchard.
As they fight the occasionally-glimpsed killer bear day and night (often within the same scene), the film cuts back and forth to the concert, which is sometimes in full flight and sometimes still being readied (let’s assume the first department to go when cash got tight was continuity). Future ‘Valley Girl’ Deborah Foreman (pictured, below), playing the daughter of Sheriff Hollister, gets a job at the event and falls for a George Michael-type synth-pop star, complete with ultra-tight short-shorts in which he both performs and jogs (watched, but not attacked, by the bear, which seems odd in hindsight).
“This grizzly is huge, obviously powerful and probably enraged.” - Samantha Owens, Bear Management Expert.
In true schlock-movie style, there are miraculously bad decisions made along the way that translate to priceless cinema. Personal favourite amongst them is actor Jack Starret (who played mean-spirited Deputy Galt opposite Sylvester Stallone in First Blood before he made this) calculates the financial benefits of double-crossing his mates while holding a rabbit, its expression at the absurdity of what’s happening the best animal acting in the film. That honour should have gone to the titular Ursus horribilis, but she gets no respect from the surviving footage. The denouement (more precisely recalling Jaws 2 than 1) is the final slap in the face for the anti-heroine, who makes no real impact on the concertgoers (imagine the carnage had she rampaged?!) and is reduced to the butt of a stupid final-frame joke.
Bound for cultdom, Grizzly 2: Revenge (also called Grizzly II: The Predator and Grizzly II: The Concert over the years) is the kind of bad film celebrated just for its very being, and one can’t begrudge the old girl that honour.
Thursday, November 3, 2022 at 11:11AM 
