| Product: |
Box Of The Banned 2 (DVD) |
| Date: |
26.02.08 (34 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: The films are all uncut
Disadvantages: Only one of the films is particularly good
Box of the Banned 2 was released by Anchor Bay in 2006. The first Box of the Banned had contained the most notorious of the old 'video nasties', most of which were still cut. Box 2 at least has the virtue of being uncensored, but of the five films included, only one can be described as well known (and probably only to genre fans). It's a convenient way to tick off a few titles, but whether it's ultimately worth it is debatable.
Tenebrae (1982) is the only film anyone's likely to have heard of. It's a giallo directed by Dario Argento (gialli are, broadly speaking, lurid Italian murder mysteries with complicated plots and elaborately staged murder sequences, usually of sexy women). An American thriller writer comes to Rome where someone starts to murder women using methods from his latest novel. The police and the writer try to solve the case, but the killings just go on and on.
I'm not really a fan of Argento. His visual flair is remarkable, and the ways he combines colour, light and sound during his set-piece murder sequences are dazzling. But I don't enjoy the films much; there's nothing to them beyond the murders. The plot of Tenebrae is very silly and full of twists that make little sense. The elaborate killings are invariably of pretty women who end up draped in decorous, fashion-model poses, scantily clad (if clad at all) and with suspiciously artful splashes of blood on them. There's a real sense of virtuosity in Argento's camera work, but given that it's only used to kill women at great length, it becomes a bit creepy.
The one great thing about this is the soundtrack by Goblin (or rather, former members of Goblin reunited for the occasion). It's one of their best soundtracks, and offers the perfect accompaniment to the murders. It does rather eliminate suspense, as you know someone's going to die as soon as the main theme cranks up again, but it's probably the best reason for watching. The acting is generally not that interesting, and there are some weird, dubbed accents on display. This DVD has plenty of extras, including a commentary by Argento and Simonetti (of Goblin); a weird old interview with Argento and his wife; some pretentious film studies stuff about the film; and a few shorter documentaries. It's an impressive package for Argento fans.
Contamination (1980) is easily the worst film on here. It's a shoddy Alien rip-off that takes too long to do too little. Some alien eggs have turned up in New York. They spray anyone with acid if they hatch, causing bloody exploding chests and the like. A New York cop, an astronaut and a woman have to find out what's going on by travelling to Brazil. This is cheap and boring and doesn't have a single original idea. It's another Italian film, so the actors are all dubbed (more ineptly than usual). The first half hour has some quite entertaining gore, but after that this is a fairly mild experience (it's only a 15 certificate). The music, by Goblin again, is poor by their standards.
This bad film has a curiously impressive array of extras, including two lengthy interviews with the director (one, from 1980, is quite fun) and a PDF comic book version of the film, which gets to include the full frontal nudity the film doesn't have (presumably the actress wasn't willing).
Don't Go Near the park (1981) is an oddity. A runaway girl ends up living in a derelict house in a park with a young boy, an older teen, and a 12,000 year old witch who survives by sucking the life force out of people's stomachs. (There's a bit more to it than that, but really, I can't be bothered.) The acting is pretty bad on the whole (and the film includes Aldo Ray and Linnea Quigley, who are at least known names). The one exception is the young boy, who manages to be quite endearing. There are a few half decent gore sequences, although they're all pretty much the same. There's also plenty of nudity - and therein perhaps lies a problem. The heroine, Bondi, is meant to be 16, and actually looks it. Her pubescent boobs make a quite few appearances (especially in the cut scenes included here as an extra). We also have shots of topless boys being caressed by older women. It all seems a bit dodgy, frankly, and makes the older characters come across as paedophiles - even the nice ones!
The film itself makes very little sense, but at least it's ambitious, with its flashbacks to prehistoric times and a story that takes place in three different eras. I really don't know what on earth was going on at the end; it's too slipshod to create the ambience it needs; and the characterisation is woeful. But it's fairly enjoyable as long as you don't expect much.
The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976) is an agreeable surprise. A disturbed woman has fantasies of killing macho men with a razor. As she experiences flashbacks to her own childhood abuse by her father, her fantasies start to come true. I'm not sure I'd call this a horror film at all, it's more arthouse than anything. The female nudity doesn't feel tacky and it's refreshing to see sexual violence directed against men for a change. The flashback child abuse scenes are handled with tact while still being fairly shocking. The blood is very fake, but otherwise I liked this very much.
It's set in a depressingly low-rent seaside town with characters who are actually poor. It's resolutely unglamorous in a way few exploitation films are - normally poverty in films like this is a source of class-based horror, as in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The acting from the lead, Millie Perkins, is perfectly suited to the role - there's a flatness to her performance, but that fits well, and by the end you've real sympathy for her. It's a commendably different film, and far more ambitious in theme than most other video nasties (the fact that this was banned shows just how ludicrous the whole moral panic in the mid-80s was). While I suspect it will annoy some people - it's slow, and allowances have to be made for its cheapness - I was very pleasantly surprised by what I'd assumed would be the dullest film of the set.
Evilspeak (1981) is about a geeky kid, Coopersmith, being bullied at a military academy. He manages to summon up the spirit of a long-dead Satanist named Esteban using his computer and wreaks a terrible revenge. It's a fairly standard 80s American horror film, which is obviously not meant to be taken seriously. Coopersmith is bullied by everyone except a kindly cook (played by Luca Brasi out of the Godfather in a really silly wig). Everything that happens to the poor kid is bad, but in a really over-the-top way - and his revenge is entertaining. It's bloodier than most horrors - the hungry satanic pigs provide some grisly moments - but is nothing special otherwise.
Coopersmith is played by Clint Howard, formerly the kid in Gentle Ben (and brother of Hollywood director Ron Howard). He's good, conveying 'hopeless nerd' without indulging in Jerry Lewis-style twitching. The rest of the acting is competent. The two really hilarious (or absolutely dire, depending on your viewpoint) aspects are the kitschy Satanic chanting on the soundtrack, and the amazing computer sequences, no doubt cutting edge at the time but now ridiculous. The DVD includes a bunch of trailers for horror films that are all notably better than Evilspeak.
There's a documentary on the final disk, Ban the Sadist Videos 2 (part one was in the earlier Box of the Banned). This deals with the years following the Video Recording Act when censorship of home video was given to the BBFC and its curiously reactionary head, James Ferman. It's good, although as ever it's depressing when you realise just how silly people can be. It covers how tragedies like Hungerford and the James Bulger murder were cynically used by the pro-censorship lobby even though violent videos don't seem to have had any bearing on either case. We now have more liberal censorship than we've ever had in this country; Ferman-style video censorship feels as outmoded as, well, VHS. The one fault is that this is very much preaching to the converted - the documentary in Box of the Banned 1 had more of the pro-censorship side of the argument and therefore came across as more balanced.
I'm not sure whether it was really worth doing a second 'Box of the Banned'. The quality of the films is generally low, with only Witch and maybe Tenebrae really being worth your time, with a nod to Don't Go Near The Park for providing a few cheap laughs. Amazon currently sells this for about £16, but I suspect it's destined to come down in price. One for the completists.
Summary: A barrel-scraping collection of video nasties
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