THE REVEREND’S REVIEW
FT’s resident man of the cloth REVEREND PETER LAWS dons his dog collar and faces the flicks that Church forgot!
We have quite the fortean cocktail this month, starting with Unearth (on digital platforms), where a family of cash-strapped farmers reluctantly let corporate America frack on their land. Rather than release new funds, the drilling unleashes a dormant pathogen instead. Eventually, the locals are sprouting roots and screaming a lot. This might be billed as a horror movie (genre icon Adrienne Barbeau leads the cast) but there is no scary stuff until the last 20 minutes, which may put off some viewers. Yet if you’re willing to see the truly frightening and unfair ways corporations treat farmers, you might find it’s an effective horror movie throughout, after all – it’s certainly a depressing one.
I saw the cover of Witch Hunt (on digital platforms) and assumed it was just another rip-off of The Craft. It’s not. This high-concept thriller owes more to The Handmaid’s Tale and The Crucible. The setting is modern America, where witches are methodically hunted by the BWI (Bureau of Witch Investigations). Martha Goode runs a safe house smuggling witches into Mexico – which is offering asylum – but the stakes are raised when her daughter starts showing powers of her own. This OK exploration of American power and prejudice will particularly appeal to teens worried about being different.
Next it’s the ground-breaking Encounters of the Spooky Kind, (Eureka, £17.99) which combined comedy, horror, slapstick, Chinese folklore and
A homicidal piano that’s filled with pilgrim ghosts and aristocratic demons
kick-ass Kung-fu to create a new, and somehow coherent, genre of its own. It’s hilarious, but weird and creepy too.
From bouncing vampires to German expressionism with The Hands of Orlac (Eureka, £16.99), the unsettling tale of a concert pianist mutilated in a train crash. When he learns his hands have been replaced by those of an executed murder, his mind starts to disintegrate. ConradVeidt is stunning as Orlac, who slips into wild and frightening madness without a sound. His intense, wide-eyed stares (and a disturbing control over his temple veins) speak loudly enough.
The thrills are less sophisticated (but a lot more fun) in ArrowVideo’s Weird
Wisconsin box set (£59.99), which showcases six films by the America indie director Bill Rebane. Space forces me to pick my two favourites.
The Alpha Incident is like a community theatre version of sci-fi classic The Andromeda Strain, where a leaked alien virus forces a small group to quarantine in a train station. Apart from a slowly bursting head (complete with gross eyepop), there’s not much ‘action’ in this, but the claustrophobic story of a virus-induced lockdown touched some surprisingly relevant nerves as I watched. The Demons of Ludlow features a town gifted with a haunted piano that’s filled with homicidal pilgrim ghosts and aristocratic demons. It’s super-cheap and seriously kitsch, and it certainly lacks the style and polish of its clearest inspiration (fellow cursed-town movie, The Fog). But the unfolding mystery is ambitious and there are creepy sights for the patient viewer.