VIKING SIEGE

Altitude, £7.99 (DVD)

At the heart of this film is an enticing concept: female warriors bent on vengeance must team up with a band of savage Vikings to defeat a horde of tree demons besieging the monastery where they are holed up. What self-respecting horror fan couldn’t get on board with a film like that? And what has ended up on the screen is pretty faithful to the concept: everything the film promises, it delivers. There is wallto-wall action, copious blood-letting and bone-crunching violence. Unfortunately, there are significant problems with virtually every other aspect of the production. Chief among these is the script: I’m pretty sure the English vernacular of the early Middle Ages did not include such bon mots as “spazz out” or “for fuck’s sake”. I understand that the film is not striving for historical accuracy but this sort of anachronistic dialogue renders the whole thing risible, if it wasn’t already. On top of that, the English-speaking characters sport a wide range of regional accents, the majority of them sounding like Cockney wideboys: the sort of thing that caused Guy Ritchie’s recent film about King Arthur to be met with hoots of derision. The acting veers from decent to inept and the makeup effects are similarly variable: the head tree demon is a genuinely fearsome beastie, but his minions look like extras with sacks over their heads. I don’t like ragging on lowbudget films, especially if there are at least one or two good elements in them, but a combination of poor handling and budgetary limitations have scuppered this one. Daniel King