THE cult OF KIM NEWMAN
The critic and novelist on this month’s weirdest straight-to-video picks
What exactly is the demographic for gruesome contemporary horror films built on the ruins of 50-year-old kids’ tv franchises? Outside of me, of course. i assume there is one, since the Banana splits Movie and saturday Morning Massacre both fit in this peculiar box, providing handy examples of the right (ish) and wrong (definitely) way to go about mixing mutilation and nostalgia.
in the alternative universe of The Banana Splits, the 1968-’70 acid-coloured hanna-barbera freakout hosted by four slapstick musicians in baggy animal suits, the show is still running decades later — only to be cancelled the very day that the splits’ biggest fan, a kid who ought to be into Marvel movies, is taken to a taping of the show by his devoted mom. Drooper, Fleegle, Bingo and snorky — animatronics with killbot sub-routines just waiting to be activated — take the news of impending unemployment badly and recruit a literal captive kid audience while slaughtering nasty grown-ups who’re out to spoil their fun. Directed by Danishka esterhazy, whose more serious dystopian drama Level 16 is worth a look, it’s a lumbering oddity, but undeniably unique and odd. if you find horrid people being done away with by gallumphing, giant, furry robots to that infectious tra la la song heard in Kick-ass at all amusing, this gets a pass despite its rough-round-the-edges feel.
spencer Parsons’ Saturday Morning Massacre tries something similar as squabbling, unpleasant analogues of the cast of Scooby-doo, Where Are You? blunder through a haunted-house mystery that turns nasty. Beloved children’s characters murdering awful people has a Willy Wonka-ish moral appeal, but pitching equally beloved cartoons into a Wrong Turn sequel and having them tortured and mangled (even the dog) comes across as merely mean-spirited. the reverse of a spoof, it takes something lightweight and plays for grimness — but feels in no way like a good time. the mainstream Scooby-doo
franchise did better by taking a more grown-up approach in the terrific Mystery Incorporated
cartoon series — two seasons available — which offer more radical ideas (including Udo Kier as an evil parrot) than anything this meagre £2 supermarket purchase DVD manages. you didn’t think we were getting through 2019 with just the one Manson Family movie, did you? it says something about the case that, even before Once Upon A Time In Hollywood,
filmmakers wanted to weave in counterfactuals with less dreadful endings. in Mary harron’s charlie says , leslie Van houten (hannah Murray) briefly imagines taking off with a friendly biker rather than sticking with Manson (Matt smith) and ending up in prison with her two infuriatingly happy co-murderers — “the guards love them,” laments their therapist (Merritt Wever) — after the well-known crimes. it’s a thoughtful picture with a clutch of excellent performances, stressing the brainwashing element of the cult and the horrible paradox that deprogramming the culprits means waking them up to the mind-destroying enormity of their crimes. Much trashier is the haunting Of sharon tate from writer-director Daniel Farrands (who gave you The Amityville Murders
and The Murder Of Nicole Brown Simpson,
whether you wanted them or not). here, sharon (hilary Duff ) suffers premonitions of doom and goes through multiple versions of that terrible night in august 1969. exactly as tasteless as you might expect, it does include a scenes We’d like to see alternate reality more daring than anything in the tarantino film, as sharon tate and her friends fight back and slaughter the hippie home invaders.