And Soon the Darkness

And Soon the Darkness

Directed by: Robert Fuest

UK, 1970

Horror, 99min

How many “Lost gems” are there really out there? I find that every now and again, say every six months, a movie is released of which there’s little or less know, and after watching it I find myself with the same damned question! How the heck did this film slip off the radar, and why don’t more of us know about it?

And Soon the Darkness shouldn’t have been able to slip through our fingers as it’s more or less the lovechild of several predominate personas in horror and science fiction drama back in the sixties. Director Robert Fuest is certainly no stranger to low budget, low key thriller/horror fare with titles such as The Abominable Dr Phibes 1971, Dr. Phibes Rises Again 1972 and delightful occult “Lost masterpiece” The Devil’s Rain 1975 – which seems to be having a great revival right now. Fuest was also involved with UK Sixties pop culture secret agent sensation The Avengers and it’s follow-up series during the seventies. A quick glance at the screenwriters and you find Brian Clemens, also connected to The Avengers, The Persuaders, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad 1973 and even directed the Hammer outing Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter 1974. Finally, but certainly not least, Terry Nation, again connected to the previous two, through The Avengers, The Persuaders and also The Saint, but most importantly being the simple fact that HE IS the man responsible for Doctor Who’s all time archenemy, The Daleks.

So how come this movie slipped us by? Well in some ways it “rediscovered” in 2010 when Marcos Efron directed a US remake, adaptation featuring American lasses set in Argentina. Yeah, that one went completely past us without an imprint too… More the reason to dig out the original and 1970 Robert Fuest film based on screenplay by Brian Clemens and Terry Nation to see what this “Lost gem" has to offer up, and why.

A three-sentence quick fix is all you need to enjoy this little gem, and here it is: Two young women Jane [Pamela Francis, who also starred in John Hough’s seminal work The Legend of Hell House 1973] and Cathy [Michele Dotrice] are on a bike trip through France. After Cathy flirts with a man, Paul, [Sandor Elès] that they meet at a roadside café, an argument makes the women fall out with each other and go separate ways… But when Jane returns, Cathy is nowhere to be found.

The stranger in a strange land plot is a great one. Take people from one country, stick them in another where the hardly manage the lingo – even if its only French – and hey presto they are alienated and find themselves having severe difficulty communicating with their antagonists.  This device is used frequently in And soon the darkness, and in such a way that the lead character certainly feel the threat of the situations and not the actual meaning of what’s being said.

Quite often stupid reasons separate protagonists from each other, you know, the classic Oh I’ll pop over here whilst you go that way and look for that strange man… thankfully And Soon the Darkness separates Jane and Cathy in a logic way. A classic argument over who has the right to decide what their joint holiday is all about. After bickering Jane takes off leaving Cathy to lap up the sun and listen to pop music in a little secluded woodlands area just off the road. Way down the road Jane starts to see the error of her arrogance and stops at a rural roadside café as she awaits Cathy… but the wait will be long, as we already know something’s happened to Cathy.

This is where guilt comes into play. After her arrogant reasoning blows over, Jane starts to feel guilt. Cathy has gone missing and it’s her fault. Well not necessarily her fault, but she feels guilty for acting like a child and leaving her in the grassy nook of the roadside woods. This guilt is what drives Jane throughout the movie, taking her to places, into situations and talking to characters that she should perhaps have been more careful about. Guilt can drive characters to do completely irrational things if it’s in the goal of satisfying their conscience.

In a series of neat moves, that predates slasher traits a decade later, there’s a warning omen when an old woman [Hana Maria Pravda] warns Jane she’s travelling on “bad road!” a “Helper character” who delivers exposition and a seemingly crazy old mute  [Jean Carmet] who lives in a bust up shack just off the road. With this said, the disappearance of Cathy becomes even more menacing as there’s an apparent threat posed – she may be dead, and Jane might be next! The threat is enhanced as we learn of a previous murder of a young female tourist years earlier, and characters become even stranger in their behaviour. Made today, this would have been survival horror and we’d definitely had seen some torture porn along the way. But being a movie with forty-two years on it’s neck, And soon the darkness, is a classic old school mystery thriller with some rather tense and unsettling moments. The mind wanders easily towards Hitchcock and the great moods he created, as the questions keep being posed and are never answered until the very last moment. Slowly building up to that last minute shocking reveal, and an ending that I’m surprised didn’t earn this movie a wider reputation than what it has!

A lot of the tension comes through the matter of trust. Who is lurking in the woods, are the roadside innkeepers to rely on, can she really believe the story the English ex-pat [Clare Kelly] tells her, is Paul and his suspicious crime preventing theories trustworthy, and should she really put her faith in the help of the Gendarmerie [John Nettleton]. Who is friend, who is foe, your guess could be the last one you make.  The movie presents a gallery of shoddy characters as the plot thickens, and just when you start to decide where you have them, Fuest shakes things up and takes a swift turn in a new direction, quite often due to the paranoia that Jane is starting to experience.

Definitely a movie I’d recommend, and a delightful little thriller that really works. And Soon the Darkness needs to be brought back out into the daylight and re-discovered by fans of UK horror, and old school genre cinema. 

The Girl in Room 2A

The Girl in Room 2A

Original Title: La casa della paura

Directed by: William L. Rose

Italy, 1974

Horror/Thriller, 90min

Distributed by: Mondo Macabro

Dick Randall, happy go lucky archetype of an American film producer/ writer/actor, with a burning passion for low budget trash and sleaze fare. Amongst his mighty catalogue of productions prowls some of the grittiest dazzling and favoured exploitations flicks co-produced between the USA and Italy, Spain, France, Philippines, Taiwan, South-Korea, Thailand and on and on and on. I’ll say stuff like Guido Zurli’s Lo stranglatore di Vienna (The Mad Butcher) 1971, Fernando Merighi’s Casa d’appuntamento (The French Sex Murders) 1972, Mario Bava’s Quante volte… quella note (Four Times that Night) 1972, Eddie Nicart’s For Y’ur Height Only 1981 and Juan Piquer Simón’s Mil gritos tiene la noche (Pieces) 1982 and you’ll probably find at least one title you like, and then you have a perfect image of what Randall got up to in his thirty years as producer of cheap and cheerful trash cinema.

If you’ve been keeping up with Mondo Macabro’s catalogue these last couple of years, you will definitely have seen the names of several Dick Randall produced movies, amongst them the more recently released gialloesque sleaze thriller, The Girl in Room 2A.

A pretty grim initial attack – during the opening credits, talk about being effective - eagerly sets the tone, as a young woman is kidnapped by masked strangers, drugged, striped naked, strung up to the beams of a roof, tortured and then tossed off the side of a cliff to her death… There’s no doubt about it, from here on this movie is probably going to be on the rough side.

In stark contrast to the violent opening, we’re introduced to our protagonist Margaret Bradley [Daniela Giordano] as she’s released from prison peacefuly chatting to the wardens. She goes straight to her halfwayhouse under the supervision of Mrs Grant [Giovanna Galletti], claims to have been incarcerated innocently, and that it all had been a mistake, which obviously makes her backstory suddenly become intriguing. To thicken up the plot, there’s a lurky geezer following her around, and installed in her temporary residence, she notices a big blob of red – supposedly blood – that won’t wash out from the floor of her room. Definitely lifting a trick of two from the Italian Giallo genre, shutters slam, the landlady acts suspicious, footsteps stalk outside her door at night, a character has a mannequin fetish, and a red gowned, red masked figure haunts her dreams… but is it a dream?

By chance the landlady’s son Frank [Angelo Infanti], is in cohorts with the sinister Mr Dreese [Raf Vallone] who takes an eager eye to Margaret. There’s a little hook that keeps Margret from leaving the cooky landlady and her snooping son, Margaret can’t leave before she’s paid the first rent. So she need’s dosh too become free… With a small loan of twenty bucks from her parole officer and friend Alicia Sundberg [Eurohorror icon Rosalba Neri], Margaret starts to plan her move to freedom and escape from the suspicions apartment of Mrs Grant.

Along the way, we learn just how vile Dreese and the man in red can be, as they turns on a former business partner, torturing him and driving him off a cliff in a burning car. The plot thickens when Jack Whitman [John Scanlon] turns up, telling Margaret the story of his sister’s suicide. Edie Whitman was also the previous tenant of Mrs Grant, and also a former resident of room 2A.

Jack ignites his own little subplot, which goes via Edie’s boyfriend Charlie [Brad Harris], and his wife Claire [Dada Gallotti], who clarify both Margaret and the audience’s suspicion that Mrs Grant’s hostel is being used as a menagerie of victims for the Red masked man’s sadistic pleasure. When Charlie tells Jack Edie ended up at Mrs Grant’s after a short spin in prison, it becomes clear that Margaret better stay on her toes. Which doesn’t stop her or the supposed mourning Jack from dropping out of heir clothes and getting it off, whilst Frank peeps on them from the other side of the curtains…

The threat against Margaret is pretty solid now, and gearing up for the last act, the red hooded figure and his thugs make their grand entrance.  Chained up and locked in a small cell in a dank chateau Margaret finally learns what the strange cult is all about, and how they are the only ones who can help her, and the other” Bad girls” repent their sins. It’s a small part, but Karin Schubert is featured as Maria, yet another young woman to move into the Grant hostel, and as we have already learned, bad girls must be punished. Subplots and main narrative all come together in a final climactic encounter where answers are given and the identity of the masked red figure is revealed.

The Girl in Room 2A never really manages to get up there with the great Gialli, although it certainly does tap into genre traits and relies heavily on something of an investigation plot. There could have been more moments where nudity and violence come together, and the greater part of the hooded man’s sadistic torture is told through flashbacks. It is a great moment of depravity, and a quick internet search makes me wonder if there was an even rougher cut of the film, as some seventies bush found on the net, isn’t featured in the film. It could also be the classic publicity shot stunt, so let’s not pay too much attention to that. I’d easily have seen more of it, but despite being an important part of establishing the threat of the climax, it’s pretty sparse. The opening premise certainly doesn’t come through even though the final scenes have a great evil cult, complete with bourgeoisie audience in attendance moment. If one this is underused, it’s the mystery of Mrs Grant and the ominous cult!

Perhaps it is part of lesser Gialli traits, the sudden stopping in it’s tracks and tossing a mediocre ending at the audience, as a lot of them suffer from somewhat unsatisfying final solutions. The climax to The Girl in Room 2A isn’t’ altogether satisfying and comes off as something of a quick fix. I’m guessing that the lack of eroticism and sexploitative content – which certainly was an area that Rose had tampered deep into back in the states during the Sixties with scripts for several roughies and his direction of the one with the best name ever The Smut Peddler 1965 - may be sign that Rose was trying to move into a new area, more serious film turf and perhaps starting to sever his ties with the old smut peddling sexploitation world. Whatever the case, his plans seemed to have failed, and he unfortunately never made another film after The Girl in Room 2A.

The majority of the score is brilliantly haunting ambient jazzy stuff by Berto Pisano - mostly known for his scores to Andrea Bianchi’s Nude per l’assasino (Strip Nude for Your Killer) 1975, Le notti del terrore (Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror) 1981, and Mario Landi’s Giallo a Venezia 1979. But at the same time it takes on some preposterous proportions during the last act and does more damage than help build towards the climax. I don’t know what the through was at the time, but it almost becomes farcical with a cheesy adventure matinee quality. Needless to say it sounds pretty daft in the context of saving young naked women from a red masked person thrashing at them with a cat o’nine tails.

Re-built using part of English and Italian prints to bring the most complete version of The Girl in Room 2A, Mondo Macabro present the film in the finest shape it’s ever been available in to date, uncut, uncensored and unbound! It may not be the top of the crop, but it sure is an delightful little piece that easily makes for some easy watching and the Red hooded sadist is one of those characters you really cant get enough of and cherish every moment of that scarlet insanity.

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Bereavement

Bereavement

Directed by: Stevan Mena

Horror, 2010

USA, 103min

Distributed by: High Fliers Films

I knew nothing of the original movie when I first sat down to watch Bereavement. If I had know that this was the second instalment in a proposed trilogy – and a prequel - I most likely would have looked at it through the “oh do we really need another sequel telling us where it all went wrong movie” glasses. But that would have been wrong of me as Bereavement stands completely on its own two legs and is somewhat unlike other explanatory prequel movies in this genre. Instead of a road to ruin recap showing how all the bad conditions shaped the monster, Bereavement presents a scenario of its own through which the antagonist of the initial instalment merely figures as an unfortunate victim instead of being the prime focus of the narrative.

“If they have no feelings they can’t know fear, but if they cant know fear, why do they run?”

The above sentence is a mantra uttered by serial killer Graham Sutter [Brett Rickaby] who resides in his families since long shut down and abandoned Meat and Poultry processing plant. After kidnapping a young male child of six years, Sutter starts to force his young protégé to watch a series of disturbing moments of violent sadism. The young child, Martin [Spencer List], is stricken with a mysterious condition that makes him lack emotion or feel pain. A condition Sutter uses in his mental and physical torture of both Martin and the victims he has chained to the roof of his torture chamber. In stark contrast to the dark sinister realm of Sutter, we find the Miller family. Hard working father Jonathan [Michael Biehn] who takes in his teenage niece Allison [Alexandra Daddario] after her parents die in a tragic accident. The Miller’s do their best to welcome Allison, and raise her as one of her own, and are the complete opposites of Sutter. After spotting Martin lurking behind the broken windows of the processing plant, Allison’s curiosity get’s the better of her, and the contrasting families rush head on in a violent collision course.

Bereavement runs pretty smoth and effectively, despite tapping deeply into TCM territory, which is hard not to do, when messing around in this genre niche. It builds a fine tension between the good and the evil. Martin doesn’t really have much activity in the major part of the movie, but acts more as a supporting role to Sutter – who has some serious issues of his own. From square one Martins “disorder”, which will come in handy in the sequel… is introduced. His mother tells a nanny there on a job interview of his condition, his fragility and his lack of feeling. It’s also used as a tool against him later when Sutter slashes his face with a huge knife in front of one of the unfortunate female victims. Sutter does this whilst delivering philosophical ponderings along the lines of “don’t feel anything, because it doesn’t hurt”. A complex approach as he torments Martin whist the poor victim becomes part of his sadistic game.

The way Mena uses the contrasts of Biehn’s gentle all American guy, against the raw sadistic way Sutter is raising Martin - making him watch as he tortures and slaughters innocent victims, punishing him in tormentfull ways, grooming him for the murders to come - is effective. One never knows when Martin will snap and become what his destiny expects of him. Unfortunately there’s many areas unexplored within the Sutter character, such as the strange demons that haunt him, and the backstory between Sutter and Miller. Miller at one point refers to the “stink” of Sutter who used to go to the same school as him. There’s also the subplot concerning Sutter and the imaginary shape he sees roaming the shadows. Unseen beings he refers to as “Them”, and also the beings he claims control him, and demand the sacrifices he’s committing. Who knows, perhaps that’s where the third instalment will reside.

There’s a witty pun the first time Martin sees Alison and Sutter warns him “Curiosity killed the cat”. When Alison’s curiosity drives her to seek out Martin in the supposedly abandoned processing plant later on the phrase backlashes with a bittersweet irony.

I’d be lying if I said that I find  Bereavement to be the most original movie in the genre because it isn’t, and as I said earlier, it does tap into a lot of other genre classics for inspiration. Then again not to many movies in the niche do come up with something unique to add. So where the upside lies, is in the way it stays away form many of the pitfalls others have tumbled into when trying to introduce backstory into a franchise. I also find it works much more efficiently if the audience, instead of reading it as a straightforward genesis of a “madman” film, interpret it as a study of the parallel lives of Martin and Alison. They both are challenged with the same obstacles – trying to fit in to the new lives they have ahead of them, and not really belonging. They both try to run away from the lives they are being forced into – in their own very different ways. The movie comes to a climax, when Alison as a character develops from a self centred teenager to a person who risks her own life to rescue others. Martin also changes character, from the passive character he is throughout the movie, to a most active character in the last act. It's also between the two youngsters that the dynamics of the film rests, and where the tension is built to that final climax.

Although it still is the telling of what drove Martin to become the character he is in the first part, Malevolence, it’s the path taken to that point which is of interest. It does indeed build a fine tension as to which way Martin will go at the last act, considering the sinister grooming Sutter has forced upon the young child. One could say that the victims along the way are anonymous and their deaths never really mean anything, but when the shit hit ‘s the fan and the movie goes all in survival horror, the pace picks up and the punches start to take. The way Mena presents characters is a worthwhile investment and he reels the audience in effectively in this dark and suspenseful horror. At the end of the day, this certainly wakes an interest in the original movie – which is elegantly woven into the final scenes of Bereavement - and what will become the final part of the trilogy.

Bereavement is out on UK DVD on the 1st of October!