No.265 : Witchcraft 5 : Dance With the Devil (1993)

Witchcraft 5 : Dance With the Devil at the IMDb

I haven’t seen any of the proceeding four entries in this franchise, so please forgive me if I miss any character references or throwbacks to earlier instalments. Having seen the film I don’t think I have missed much, and any character development employed looks to have been accidental at best.

I watched the film and then did my research - HUGE mistake! It has what appears to me to be a generous 2.7 rating on the IMDB and none of the cast have done any other work since. It was also straight to video and is slated in some places as being soft porn, which would have caused me to pass it by had I known. To be fair I did manage to work most of these things out for myself during my viewing.

After some cheap 90’s credits we open with a hooker taking her customer back to her room. Obviously it’s a movie hooker so young, beautiful and not covered in cold sores. “We agreed fifty bucks” says the mark - or was he the film’s accountant talking about the budget? - before he gets knocked on the head by the hooker’s boyfriend. This small scene captures the film in microcosm - the mark gets the hooker’s bra off for a gratuitous topless scene before it is magically back on when the boyfriend appears. I had to pause that several times to pick up on that continuity gaff!

Unfortunately the mark dies and our hapless couple drag his body up the street in a blanket. It looks like the fat John has lost weight in the interim, given how easily he’s pulled along, but you don’t really notice as you are wondering why they don’t bring the car to the body? Meanwhile an evangelist is in his limo impressing his secretary with his biblical knowledge. His car nearly hits that of the murder/hooker combo and a homeless man gets wiped out in the aftermath. The Minister goes to help, but the homeless man dies, but not before a yellow squiggle leaves the dead man’s body and enters his. This ‘special effect’ looks like someone with a magic marker drew straight onto the film. We guess that this is some sort of transference going on as our Reverend immediately starts taking an interest in his busty secretary.

Our body disposal pair are now in the countryside and their car has broken down. They chance across a nitwit who calls himself ‘The Collector’ and who chucks stuff in the fire to make it flame up just a bit. Our geniuses think he’s a bill collector and resolve to knock him over his head and take his cash. Well that plan has never failed before. Soon the pimp is dead and the hooker is under the control of The Collector who immediately changes his name to ‘Cain’.

Elsewhere a couple are planning a night out at the dance club. William (who was in the previous films, apparently) doesn’t want to go but is dragged along anyway. Cain has hexed the nightclub owner and changed the dance night to one of magic. William is dragged on stage for a trick and Cain realises he is a Warlock and takes him under his power.

Will Cain’s plan to harvest souls to allow Satan to return to earth come to fruition? Who has taken over the preacher? And whose top is coming off next?

I enjoyed this film in a guilty pleasure kind of way. Its cheap rubbish but it knows it, and plays to its strengths of titillation and risible acting.

Star of the show is David Huffman as Cain who is hammier than a bacon sandwich. At one point the nightclub owner says ‘You don’t look like a rock star’ and he stands there, the spitting image of Ronnie James Dio. Every line is wonderfully delivered with accompanying hand gestures clear and present. At least they will have saved on the catering budget as he chewed the scenery in every shot. Amazingly he hasn’t worked since!

The three main ladies clearly weren’t cast for their acting abilities as each stumbled through their admittedly terrible dialogue before getting into their ‘love’ scene. These were all shot like 90’s power ballad pop videos with mood lighting, billowing curtains and a rock soundtrack. The scenes went beyond what would be normal and it looked like the producers decided to cut their losses and go for the soft core porn market. Or at least the market of people too ashamed to buy porn but want to get it through the back door with ‘horror’ films such as this.

The big denouement was shot in the dark so I’m not 100% sure what went down but there was a head chopped off somewhere. Further sequels followed so this effort must have made its money back, or at least the director found enough spare change to get a few more ladies disrobed.

I did like the special effects, especially the soul delivery which was a fried egg drawn onto the screen flying into Cain’s cloak. You don’t get that in the big blockbusters.

Overall one for a quiet night in when you are concerned someone may be looking for porn in your Amazon Prime viewing history. Right, where’s Part 6.

Best Bit : Disembowelled night club boss keeps cigar in mouth throughout + 4 others.
W Rating 14/23

No.264 : Wild Bill (2011)

Wild Bill at the IMDb

No, no it’s not a reprise of  'W' Movie 165 'Wild Bill', the Bill Hickok biopic. This is a gritty British drama with more swearing and fewer cows.

This ‘Wild Bill’ dates from 2011 and was directed by Dexter Fletcher of ‘Press Gang’ fame. It is a bit grim and urban but there is a lot to like, not least a smattering of familiar faces on various stages of their career trajectories.

We meet the titular Bill as he’s being released from Prison after an 8 years stretch for drugs, G.B.H. - you name it. We follow his long trip home from his cell on the Isle of Wight to his horrible flat in a London sink estate. His two sons Dean 15, and Jimmy 11, have been coping on their own for the nine months since Mum ran off with a fancy man to Spain. They are not best pleased to let Dad back in the flat and only acquiesce when forced to do so by the local villains. There ruffians expect Bill to come back to his drug dealing patch, and to seal the deal they get him plastered and a date with the fetching Roxie.

Dean is providing for the family and working as a labourer off the books. Jimmy, who has a bit of the stage school about him, is going off the rails; dogging school and smashing windows. Bill soon sees what he’s missed and resolves to be a good Dad. In no time flat he’s cooking dinner and cleaning the bog.

Dean’s fledgling romance with hairdresser Steff  is stalled by the theft of some money and Jimmy tries to help the family by being a lookout for the drugs gang. Sadly when the cops come calling he trashes the gear and is now in debt to the drug barons.

Bill meanwhile gets a £3 an hour job holding up a sign and soon has the cash to buy his son a hooker for his birthday (it’s Roxy again!) and plates up a mean shepherd’s pie. The kids start to recognise his effort but Jimmy‘s drug debt will see them all have some troubled times before they can start playing happy families. Or gin rummy for that matter. Will this be a story of redemption or was Bill damned before he got off the ferry?

Despite myself I enjoyed this latest instalment of Alan Partridge’s ‘Bad Slags'. The characters are uniformly horrible but you can’t hep to warm to them as they try to make the best of their terrible existences. Charlie Creed-Mills is great as the hapless Bill. He’s painted as a legendary nutter from the start and it’s fun seeing him follow a worthwhile path, as we know it's going to end with him kicking off. I recognised him from ‘Harry Brown’ and I’m pretty sure the same pub was in that too - maybe they come as a package?

Of the sons the older one Dean played by Will Poulter was better and you’ll know him from the recent interactive ‘Black Mirror’, ‘Bandersnatch. He was in the Narnia films too, but I’ve only seen the first one and don’t remember him. He spends a lot of the film scowling but does look made up when the hairdresser takes her top off.

For your money you also get two scenes of Andy Serkiss as a pointless drug lord and Liz White off ‘Life on Mars’ as the ‘hooker with a heart’, Roxy. In addition Ramsay Bolton comes on and does his mad eye shtick - keep working on that your time will come! Needless to say Sean Petwee also shows up as is the legal requirement of any film make in the UK. This time he helps out by only showing up in one scene and he reuses his copper’s costume from ‘Alpha Papa’. Oh, and as a bonus you also get Miss Cross off ‘Rushmore’ as Bill’s ineffectual parole officer.

The direction and pace of the film were well handled and I like the long montage of how drugs were packaged and distributed in the estate. It was a bit like ‘Breaking Bad’. Wait a minute, it was exactly like ‘Breaking Bad’!

The film builds towards an inevitable climax and, to be honest, it was the only part that I felt short-changed by. Our man was summoned to the pub for a showdown with a mental drugs gang, What followed was a bit limp and I don’t think the build up got the pay off it deserved. That said, it was well enough made and I had enough invested in the characters for me to enjoy the overall package.

All the main characters enjoyed something of an arc and, although nothing was resolved, we still have hope for the future. Can’t ask for much more than that!

W Rating 18/23 Best Bit : You don’t get that at my hairdresser’s!

No.263 : Wild Honey (2017)

Wild Honey at the IMDb

Another unheralded release courtesy of Amazon Prime now - so much more variety on there than Film 4 who offer little but ancient westerns. Still more of them coming soon! This film is a bit like the movie version of Alan Partridge’s ‘Problem People’ with everyone on show with issues to spare.

Our heroine here is Gabby, a phone sex operator from Chicago whose 49 years and ample frame are at odds with her dial up persona. She has issues at home with a cheating boyfriend and financial problems that see her car repossessed in the first five minutes. She moves back in with Mom and shares here woes with Reggina, a phone sex colleague with whom she unsuccessfully cruises bars seeking male company.

Things take a turn when she gets interrupted mid filth by a caller named Martin who’d rather have a nice chat than hear any more about your clit, thanks very much. At $2 a minute he’d be better off trying wrong numbers! They soon become close and his hefty bills mean a fat pay check for Gabby - more Funyuns for her! Martin asks for a photo and after some uncharacteristic shyness Gabby sends one over. She’s quickly told that’s she’s beautiful and gets all excited about her prospects with the pervert caller. Maybe his guide dog will like her too!

With indecent haste Gabby decides to fly to L.A. to doorstep her new friend, under the guise of catching up with her sister with whom she hasn’t spoken in two years. The sister is everything gabby is not - thin, neat and successful. She also has a pregnant assistant Greta who is charged with taking Gabby about town. Gabby gets dropped off at the park where Martin, a successful screen writer, has told her he sometimes works. Inevitably the two meet up and enjoy a blissful day of smoking dope, visiting the theatre and eating in a pretentious restaurant.

Gabby stays the night but is awoken the next morning when Martin’s brother shows up - it seems that Martin doesn’t own the house after all and the screen writer is his brother, not him. Shocked by his sudden loss of wealth Gabby flounces off. Meanwhile after her chats with Gabby, Greta grows a set and ditches her P.A. job with Gabby’s sister, who in turn is also breaking down, unable to keep up the façade of having a successful life.

With everything collapsing Gabby’s cheater boyfriend shows up and after some drug and sex action, (hope she had clean pants) he proposes marriage. Is it her he wants or her unlikely talents as a manager of his apartment block? Can each of the damaged souls find some happiness and is there hope for  a reconciliation with Martin, even at two bucks a minute?

I enjoyed this film. Rusty Schwimmer does well in the lead, a part that probably had Melissa McCarthy’s fingerprints all over it. Her dirty chat was pretty full on and she wasn’t shy about her ample frame or modest looks - real people that’s what we need!

There weren’t many out and out laughs, but I did like the ridiculous fancy restaurant with the 11 year old chef and the arty play involving Martin’s naked daughter tipping a tin of beans over herself .
The twist that Martin wasn’t what he seemed was signalled from Mars but it turned out a lot more mundane than my idea that he was a serial killer with plans for Gabby. In truth is was a nice film with no one coming out of it terribly. There was a lot of swearing and a few bits of nudity but I’m all for that if it helps the story along.

The ‘wild honey’ of the title was a reference to the bee hive that Martin kept. I’m sure there was an attempt at a big metaphor here, especially as he pointed out the queen and that ‘everyone has a job, even the workers’ but as my regular reader knows subtext isn’t my thing!

Over all it was a fun 90 minutes with gentle humour, slight character development and a topless woman covering herself in beans. Got to be pass marks for that alone!

‘W’ Rating 15/23
Best Bit : Beanz Meanz a good shower is required.

No.262 : Willow Creek (2013)

Willow Creek at the IMDb

A cheap film doesn’t have to be a bad film, but a lack of budget certainly doesn’t help. If you had forty bucks and an old DVD of ‘The Blair Witch Project’ you could make a serviceable remake of ‘Willow Creek’ and still have enough for pizza on the way home.

The film was made in 2013 by when ‘found footage’ films were already old hat. I was drawn to this one however as it had the shouty comedian BobCat Goldthwait as the writer/director and it was based on a hunt for the legendary Bigfoot. So far so good.

Alas it doesn’t pan out well and it’s a dull, annoying and frankly forgettable waste of your time.

Our two heroes Jim and Kelly are on a mission to make a documentary about their quest to track the Bigfoot. The first half hour is taken up with scene setting - or padding the 80 minute run time - you decide. The two poor actors, whom I haven’t seen in anything else, look awkward as they try to improvise around real Bigfoot attractions in Trinity Forest area. We chuckle as they make a story around a Bigfoot mural, titter as they eat a big foot burger and lose interest as they make rude gestures at a Bigfoot statute.

Some unfortunate locals are dragged in to be ‘interviewed’ on camera and it seems an age before things even get near the action. We get a couple of hints about what lies ahead as Jim casually notes bullet holes in the park sign and a hillbilly local warns them off visiting their goal - the site of the famous Bigfoot cine film from 1967. A ‘Lost person’ poster is also noted but that’s bound to be irrelevant…

Obviously, they pay no heed to the dire warnings and drive deep into the forest only to be greeted by another redneck who invites them to have a coffee at ‘The Fuck Off Café’. As delightful as it sounds they decline and wander into the woods with their packs, but with no obvious means of navigation. After a needless scene of male nudity they bed down for the night - but it’s going to be a long night - for all of us!

A 20 minute scene follows with the two of them in a tent reacting to sounds outside. Bigfoot is known for banging bits of wood together (apparently) so there is lots of that and of rocks hitting their tent. This could be seen as a master class in tension building and bravura minimalist film making. Not by me however, it was totally tiresome!

Next day they wander about for a day, still lost, but finding hairs and large footprints along the way. Will they escape (er, found footage film, genius!) and will we at least get the monster money shot?!

It beggars belief that this film got a release. IMDb says it was shot in 5 days so they must have had at least four and a half off by my count.

It follows the found footage template to the letter with the only surprise being we get no pay off apart from a fat lass in the nip and a camera dragged through some grass. ‘Harry and the Hendersons’ this was not  - you’d get more monster in my underpants!

The improvisation and amateur interviews were terrible and the leads had no chemistry at all. At one point the bloke proposed marriage - I half expected the woman to say ‘sorry, who are you again?’.

There was almost no tension and that which there was, was falsely earned as it went nowhere. It didn’t make a lick of sense and had no laughs or horror to speak of. In one scene Jim finds a big pile of steaming shit and gets all exited about it - unfortunately I was unable to replicate this emotion with the film, despite their similarities.

Best Bit : Have a coffee in the Fuck Off Café.
‘W’ Rating 7/23