INITIATION: SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 4 (USA/1990/BRIAN YUZNA)

Somehow unrelated to its three predecessors, Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 follows the story of a journalist named Kim who, upon learning of a recent case of spontaneous combustion, decides to launch an investigation into the subject. Desperate to get approval from her boss, she offers to run the story for him, but as usual is pushed to one side. “Boys will be boys,” asserts her straw-haired colleague, but Kim is undeterred and starts researching independently. While at a bookstore, she encounters the proprietor Fima, who takes her to the spot on the roof where the woman had died. Visiting Fima at her home proves to be a wrong move when she passes out and subsequently wakes up to a visceral initiation ceremony involving rats and cockroach larvae.

The theme of Christmas has apparently been waylaid here, with only scant references to religion and the Bible to explain the festive setting. For the most part, director Brian Yuzna gives us gruesome insects with sexual overtones and sham pagan rituals in lieu of a story, Kim’s draw to the pathologically sinister Fima too obscure to be believable. Nonetheless, this fourth instalment in a famously tacky horror series is remarkably entertaining, with some godawful dialogue and subpar acting. Clint Howard, the physiognomically-challenged brother of director Ron Howard, portrays a creepy vagrant named Ricky (most likely a high point in his career), while former Bond girl Maud Adams is hilariously rigid as Fima. Naked Lunch it ain’t, but there’s fun to be had.

THE BUTCHER (SOUTH KOREA/2007/KIM JIN-WON)

One of the more unsettling trends in modern cinema is the pseudo-snuff film, designed to trick the viewer into believing they are witnessing an actual murder. This trend is manifest in Hollywood’s brief obsession with torture porn, but few prominent films have chosen to combine the gore with another contemporary trend, the handheld first-person horror. Enter Korea’s The Butcher, a low-budget independent feature just over an hour in length. The titular character is the pig-masked leader of a group of snuff filmmakers, who keep a selection of victims tied up in a basement in preparation for their films. In between torturing their captives into terrified silence, the group discusses the best ways to profit from their horrific scheme.

Clearly inspired by visceral B-movies and Japanese V-cinema, there is nothing new in The Butcher that hasn’t already been achieved, and one wonders what, if anything, director Kim Jin-Won is trying to say. The film switches between the views of two cameras, one held by a member of the Butcher’s group, the other attached to a female victim. One could be generous and suggest that Kim is making a statement about the sort of viewer who indulges voyeuristically in the genre, but there is too much fantasy in the film’s construction for the director to be excused. To his credit, there are moments where it is easy to forget that this is a fiction film, the low production values adding to the realism, but for the most part, The Butcher deserves no attention.

GUZOO (JAPAN/1986/KAZUO ‘GAIRA’ KOMIZU)

Opening with a sinister pan across an unidentified goo-spewing organism, Guzoo starts off as innocent as one could imagine. A group of female friends – Minako, Kazuko, Yuka and Mayumi, if we’re being formal – excitedly head for a trip to an isolated house in the country, little knowing what is about to befall them. The owner of the house, one Tomoko Kujo, is a researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Takamura, the archaeologist father of Minako. Once in their separate rooms, the girls experience strange phenomena, and Tomoko begins to get more shifty about the experiments she is conducting in a private room in the house. After Yuka sustains a bizarre injury in the swimming pool, the girls start to distrust their landlady – and rightly so.

Anyone who has seen the cinematic LSD trip that is Hausu might expect something similar from this film as the set-up is almost identical, but where Hausu starts to get hilariously psychedelic at the first hint of terror, Guzoo plays it pretty safe. The main attraction here is the camp design – Freudian tentacles emerge from unexpected places, and the soundtrack is pure 1950s B-movie – as besides that, there isn’t much to write home about. At just forty minutes in length, the film struggles to get the story out before overdosing on special effects. As a relic of low-budget horror in the VHS era however, Guzoo is of immeasurable value, and like the infamous Evil Dead Trap series, could eventually gain cult value through religious rewatching.

WOMEN'S FLESH: MY RED GUTS (JAPAN/1999/TAMAKICHI ANARU)

A relic of the Japanese craze for extreme video nasties in the 1980s, Women’s Flesh: My Red Guts eschews any notion of plot, instead displaying the slow, painful suicides of two mentally disturbed women. The film opens with a series of overexposed stills of the deceased women, presumably from a coroner’s camera, although the content of the photos implies an inappropriate sexual fascination with them. We then see the first woman attacking herself with a toothbrush, as if taken over by some demonic force. She then runs a knife around her mouth before slicing through her tongue. The second woman, sat against a black curtain, sits distracted before slowly committing hara-kiri. Hazy black and white interludes add scant detail to the women’s emotional deterioration.

While there have previously been intellectual cinematic explorations into sado-masochistic practices, Women’s Flesh disturbingly appears to be designed solely for thrills and, quite terrifyingly, is not the most extreme feature by infamous director Tamakichi Anaru. Nothing in the film suggests the viewer’s need to ‘understand’ or empathise with these women, their actions little more than a graphic display. Though utterly abhorrent in its themes and purpose, the film is at least interesting for its extremely lo-fi shooting style. VHS artefacts make each image difficult to make out, while a soundtrack of noise and electronic blips adds a supernatural element to the proceedings. Far too pointlessly morbid and puerile to warrant attention, Women’s Flesh is a bewildering bit of VHS-era gore designed merely to shock and disgust.

THE UNKNOWN (USA/1927/TOD BROWNING)

Taking place in a circus, like Browning’s better known Freaks, The Unknown centres around Alonzo the Armless, who uses his feet to perform incredible stunts. His earnestness and disability catch the attention of Nanon, the circus owner’s daughter, who is fed up of being pawed over by her male admirers. Unbeknownst to her, Alonzo is actually able-bodied and employs a corset tied by his friend to disguise himself. When the circus owner discovers him in his uncorseted state, Alonzo kills him, an act witnessed from a distance by Nanon. Because of his armlessness, Alonzo is above suspicion and he grows closer to Nanon, even having his arms removed surgically so as to not have to hide them from her. But just as he believes he is finally getting what he deserves, Nanon reveals her love for the circus strongman, spurring him into jealous action.

Browning’s love of the macabre makes the theme of infidelity in The Unknown so much more vivid as abnormality becomes Alonzo’s alibi for trustworthiness. Nanon’s disgust for the hands of men is a clear reference to the predatory nature of male sexuality, and Alonzo’s secret, coupled with his double thumb, make him a particular threat to Nanon, one that only the audience recognises. His decision to have his arms amputated is in effect a misguided castration, a metaphor deeply shocking even by implication. Lon Chaney does a commendable job in an unusually difficult role. Carefully designed and expertly paced, The Unknown is a hugely entertaining thriller.

THE KILLER BRA (CANADA/2009/YAKOV LEVI)

While out shopping, Laura fights with a fellow customer over a spotted bra, accidentally throwing her down the stairs in the process. Returning to her apartment, she decides to show off her glamorous new purchase to her flatmates rather than discuss the accidental murder, and their punny comments (“what a killer bra!” “it’s to die for!”) serve as unhappy omens. Lending the bra to flatmate Julie, Laura suddenly realises that her misdeed has not gone unpunished, and the killer bra lives up to its name, killing off her helpless friends one by one.

Yakov Levi is an independent filmmaker hailing from the Ukraine, a country not particularly known for its cinematic output. Levi calls himself out as a vehement John Waters fan, a fact which is abundantly clear when one sees his films. As schlocky and puerile as one could hope for, The Killer Bra is no different from any other no-budget laptop production – poor acting, terrible humour, Z-grade effects. With Waters’ films, the comedy lies in demystifying the taboo and making light of the disturbing. In his other shorts, Levi casts a grotesque old woman named Baba Alla as a lascivious babuschka, harking back to Waters’ beloved Divine. Her absence in this film drains it of all charm, the wackiness passed on to the props, as well as Julie’s irritatingly hyperactive boyfriend. The promise of underground films in the era of the internet is exciting, but The Killer Bra is not one of them. It’s a load of bollocks.

THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (USA/1932/IRVING PICHEL, ERNEST B. SCHOEDSACK)

Based on Richard Connell’s short story, The Most Dangerous Game follows a group of people who find themselves on a remote island for different reasons. Eve and Martin are siblings who, alongside two sailors, were the only survivors of a shipwreck. The four have been guests at the home of the Russian Count Zaroff when newcomer Bob, freshly marooned from a shipwreck, arrives on the scene. Bob and Zaroff appear to hit it off quickly, having both made a living through hunting, although Zaroff claims to have found an even more exhilarating prey on the island that he refuses to name. In a matter of days, Martin and both sailors have disappeared, and as Bob and Eve search the house for him, they learn of Zaroff’s horrific pursuit, correctly guessing that they are next in line.

Shot on a budget of $200,000, The Most Dangerous Game turned out to be more bankable than the 1933’s expensive King Kong, with which it shares actress Fay Wray, and certainly rivals it for entertainment value. The set-up is simple but brilliant, and even though the eventual outcome is obvious to the modern viewer, the suspense is kept up at a decent pace. As with many other contemporary films, the acting and screenplay are excessively camp, particularly Leslie Banks’ hammy portrayal of a Russian count, but fans of Béla Lugosi and early B-movies should recognise this is par for the course. Funny and sinister in equal parts, The Most Dangerous Game deserves a revival.

DEAFULA (USA/1975/PETER WOLF)

Though cinema was essentially born deaf, with sound films coming into common use in the late twenties, it is unusual for modern hearing audiences to imagine the film experience for someone not equipped to appreciate every aspect of it. Step in Deafula, a bizarre vampire film entirely in American sign language. Our lead character is Steve, a family man who moonlights as the bloodthirsty Deafula of the title. After a spate of attacks, Steve/Deafula finds himself on the run from two detectives, one of whom is his childhood friend, but the investigation seems incapable of curbing his murderous desires. Meanwhile, Steve’s sympathetic father is determined to get him some help, advising him to contact old family friend Amy who supposedly has the solution to all his problems.

It is hard judging such a film being outside its target audience, and there are supposedly many sign-language in-jokes that make for a very different film experience. Originally billed as a ‘light comedy’, Deafula is a horror story whose eeriest element is its incompetence. Although designed for the deaf, the film does feature selective dubbing and a piano score, presumably so that hearing people could also enjoy it. This, however, distorts the film even further as the tone and content of the audio doesn’t always match up to the image. It is in its own way a very endearing film, an unsettling peculiarity in the history of cinema, but as good as its intentions were, Deafula is little more than a living nightmare.

GHOST OF HANGING IN UTSUNOMIYA (JAPAN/1956/NOBUO NAKAGAWA)

Ryutaro is a spy employed by the shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, who is the target of assassination attempts that aim to hand power over to his younger brother Tadanaga. Before learning of these plots, Ryutaro discovers himself in a predicament of his own when he rushes to the defence of a local girl who is caught between her boyfriend and a greedy businessman. The situation results in many violent one-on-one skirmishes between Ryutaro and the businessman’s many samurai defendants, one of whom enigmatically refuses to reveal his face or use more than just the one hand. Before long, Ryutaro’s top priority is not protecting Iemitsu as it should be, but rather unearthing the true identity of the mystery samurai.

Director Nobuo Nakagawa is well known for mixing the supernatural with diverse genres of film, and in Ghost Of Hanging In Utsunomiya, he does a sublime job of giving the chanbara (or samurai) genre a much-needed boost. While it may not be as subversive a work as some of its contemporaries, the film has a wonderfully simple premise, and Nakagawa uses the time to reinforce Ryutaro’s story with some colourful characters. With his bizarre hood and penchant for spinning walnuts in his fingers, the unnamed samurai walks the line between clown and sinister threat, and the scene where he reveals his true face is unusually tense. It may not be for everyone, but Ghost Of Hanging In Utsunomiya is a brilliant mix of history and the ethereal, making for great evening viewing.

SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT III: BETTER WATCH OUT! (USA/1989/MONTE HELLMAN)

Ricky, the Santa Claus killer from the previous installments of Silent Night, Deadly Night, is in a coma after being shot by the police. Laura, a blind girl with premonitory powers, is asked to engage in an experiment that aims to find some form of communication with Ricky (the reason is never fully explained), but finds herself instead plagued by horrific nightmares about Christmas. When Laura takes some time off to visit her grandmother, Ricky is stirred awake by a tipsy orderly dressed as Santa Claus and begins his murderous spree again. When Laura suddenly feels something is amiss during her sojourn at Granny’s, she realises that the experiment may have been more successful than expected.

From the space-age cranial dome that Ricky supposedly requires in his comatose state, to the doctor’s parapsychological nonsense (“her body may be young, but her soul is old”), this dire sequel appears to take a laissez-faire approach to both science and horror, not to mention its overreliance on footage from the previous films to tell its story. Laura’s blindness is barely vital to the story besides supposedly giving credence to her psychic visions, which also seem too selective to be reliable. The film is not without its mildly amusing moments – Ricky hitchhiking with the dome still intact, for example – but it’s otherwise an abysmal experience with some unforgivably poor dialogue. Oddly enough, Lynch fans may recognise two of the film’s stars, Eric Da Re and Laura Harring, from Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive respectively.

DEATH LINE (UK/1972/GARY SHERMAN)

In one of the most wonderfully demented horror plotlines, a mysterious murder case involving a politician unearths a family of cannibals who have been living in a disused part of the London Underground. The family has evidently been in the Tube for some time (it is suggested that they are descendants of Victorian labourers), and have had little exposure to the outside world beyond the tannoy call of “Mind the doors!”, which has become the only phrase they are able to say. It is up to hardened detective Calhoun (Donald Pleasence), as well as young, transatlantic couple Alex and Patricia, to solve the mystery and save London from these dangerous beings.

There is very little in this film for those who like their horror stone-faced and without a trace of kitsch, but for everyone else, there is plenty. As with many of the Hammer horrors at the time, Death Line has surprisingly high production values, the underground setting used to its absolute full potential. An impressive tracking shot travels throughout the cannibals’ lair, serving merely to set the scene but also showing off the set design. Even more striking is the film’s unrelenting gore – no body part or impromptu weapon is spared as the family work their way through various passengers. There are the expected troubles with acting and realism, but anyone wanting to take this ludicrous story seriously should probably wait for the inevitable remake. Wrong Turn, eat your heart out (literally) – this is the original twisted cannibal family.

Gotta love these opening credits – I salute you, Wil Malone.

THE VIDEO DEAD (USA/1987/ROBERT SCOTT)

A TV arrives on the doorstep of Mr. Jordan, an unemployed layabout who has no recollection of buying such a device, given his scepticism regarding technology. In the middle of the night, the unplugged TV somehow switches itself on, becoming a portal for a series of zombies which had featured in a film Mr. Jordan had criticised earlier. A few years later, the house is occupied by a new family. Teen siblings Jeff and Zoë hold the fort while their parents are away, only to be delivered a TV that they didn’t order either! With the insatiable curiosity necessary to drive these sorts of narratives ahead, Jeff decides to play about with the TV in the attic, unleashing a barrage of zombies into the quiet neighbourhood.

As one might assume, there’s not much remarkable about this one, asides from the comical special effects and porn star acting. The zombies which emerge from the TV are far too human to present any significant threat – some of them are just a couple of eyeliner strokes from being New Romantics. In trying to create an original twist to the zombie genre, the film forgets pacing and plot, but more than makes up for it with some creative deaths – one unfortunate individual is stabbed (yes, stabbed) with an iron. Essentially, The Video Dead is no different from any other horror-comedy hybrid, but it does make an amusing (and surprisingly accurate) prediction about the future of televisual culture. A recommended watch when drunk or stoned.

HARPOON: REYKJAVÍK WHALE WATCHING MASSACRE (ICELAND/2009/JÚLÍUS KEMP)

As if economic collapse and the untimely eruption of Eyjafallajökull weren’t enough, Iceland is now receiving mixed attention for their first contribution to the torture porn genre. Featuring something of an alternative ‘all-star’ cast – Gunnar Hansen of Leatherface fame, Nae from Inland Empire, an extra from The Bill – Harpoon: Reykjavík Whale Watching Massacre takes place aboard a whaling ship, where a dozen international tourists are hoping to see the giant creatures in their natural habitat. But when the ship’s captain mysteriously dies, it is up to a spooky lank-haired individual to come to the rescue. At his suggestion, the passengers relocate to his family’s rickety old ship, little knowing that this is to put them in further danger.

From the film’s subtitle alone, it is clear that director Júlíus Kemp was planning to take more than just Gunnar Hansen from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Despite some superb photography of the Icelandic landscape, Harpoon is no different from any other slasher flick. Its top priority appears to be reminding its audience that the film is Icelandic – we hear references to Sigur Rós, a passenger singing Björk over the intercom, an older woman translating insults into Icelandic. Additionally, the film’s light-hearted attempt to show a cross-section of international holiday-makers actually ends up insultingly simplistic, as seen in Hostel. But in all fairness, Kemp was never going for the Oscar, and all things considered, the film is quite a fun little jaunt with enough blood and guts to keep your average gore-whore entertained.

THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE) (NETHERLANDS/2009/TOM SIX)

An exhausted trucker, defecating on the roadside after a long haul, is shot soundlessly by a trench-coated man in sunglasses. So begins Tom Six’s notorious horror film, modelled in the manner of Hostel or Saw but ending up much more like Videodrome. Our main characters arrive in the form of American tourists Lindsay and Jenny, two naïve gal-pals trying to navigate their way across Western Europe. Broken down on a Landesstraße in Germany, the girls are taken in by the enigmatic Dr. Heiter who spikes them with Rohypnol. The addition of Japanese tourist Katsuro allows Heiter to begin his experiment and fulfil his twisted dream – to make a human sewage line.

It is hard to know how to react to The Human Centipede (First Sequence). Clearly, the main goal of the film is to repulse, which it manages in abundance thanks to lingering shots of the centipede in ‘motion’. What makes the experience incredibly uncomfortable is the inherent comedy in Heiter’s mission – it’s hard not to laugh at Katsuro’s confused anger. While it is never explained, one can assume that Heiter’s goal has an erotic outcome, but the campy acting makes it hard to take seriously. But while to many it may just be a juvenile gross-out movie, The Human Centipede is at least an interesting exercise in suspense, and the next logical step in torture porn. A sequel of sorts is on its way, leading one to ponder what other dastardly schemes Heiter has in mind (a digestive ouroboros?).

CREEPY HIDE AND SEEK (JAPAN/2009/MASAFUMI YAMADA)

Belatedly riffing on the Japanese horror craze for technology, Creepy Hide and Seek follows curious teenager Ryoko as she saunters down the rabbit-hole of a new craze – online hide and seek. The rules of the game are revealed to us at the beginning through a girl named Mai-Mai. Slavishly obeying a set of instructions on a chatroom, Mai-Mai performs a voodoo ritual with a doll, then finds a hiding place in her own house. A string of messages persuades her that she is winning the game, before a mysterious hand strangles her from behind. Ryoko, as it is revealed, was a close friend of Mai-Mai’s, and is not satisfied with the popular explanation that she simply ‘disappeared’. Determined to unravel the mystery herself, Ryoko plays the game herself, not realising she is soon to face the intangible terror that has claimed so many victims before.

As the title suggests, it’s not a particularly cerebral piece of work, nor is it in any way original. Whatever this film might have wanted to say about the internet and Japanese folklore in modern culture has most likely been articulated better in another horror film – Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse comes to mind, as does Noroi: The Curse. Even more disappointing is that the film’s central concept is half-baked, and the lure of this hide and seek game is pretty unclear. But as simple as the film appears, it is still worth watching, if only for the accomplished sound design which almost creates music from fear.