Three Films Make A Post: Little girl. Big psycho.

Psycho Goreman (2020): This weird-ass gory horror tokusatsu comedy by Steven “Manborg” Kostanski proudly stands in the tradition of comparable weird-ass movies from Japan. At least half of the film’s jokes are very funny indeed, the monster costumes are rubbery fun, and the acting’s generally fitting the tone. However, like it is with a lot of movies of this kind, from the US, Japan, or elsewhere, the other half of the jokes fall flat like blood-encrusted pancakes. The other big problem is that there’s simply not enough plot or material for a ninety minute plus movie, so the middle part drags pretty badly; which is particularly unfortunate when much of it could have been excised without any losses to the movie.

The Pond (2021): This Serbian, but English language, movie by Petar Pasic starring Marco Canadea as a Professor on leave after a family tragedy who is either suffering from a nervous breakdown or has stumbled upon a rift in our understanding of the world – or both - is a frustrating experience. There are some scenes and shots here that will probably haunt me for quite a while, but the film’s total commitment to a “everything on screen is a metaphor” type of the Weird also makes it hard to wade through, with little but metaphor to guide a viewer through it. Some of these visual metaphors are also really coming down on the side of the pretentious to unintentionally funny. Particularly all the fish business is just plain silly.

Still, there’s something there sometimes, an otherworldly quality to the staging and the shot composition that does make this one worth watching at least once, in my eyes.

King Rocker (2020): At times, there’s also something pretentious about this documentary about Robert Lloyd (of The Nightingales not-really fame) by Michael Cumming and comedian Stewart Lee, too. Particularly the film’s attempt to mirror Lloyd and a King Kong statue (don’t ask) is pretty strained and leading nowhere, and made even worse by Lee (who is on-screen as much as Lloyd) making jokes about it, suggesting that the filmmakers actually knew that this bit was a terrible idea but couldn’t come up with any better way to frame things. The film’s also a bit too chummy at times, with some diversions that really go nowhere fast (what’s the reading of parts of an unfilmed comedy TV script good for, exactly?), and scenes of Lee and Lloyd being drunk, middle-aged buddies that go on way too long.

However, it is also a treasure trove of interviews and raconteuring (that’s a word now) with and other footage of a genuinely interesting guy who made a lot of just as genuinely interesting music, presented with great sense of love and respect, which makes up for all of the film’s flaws.

SyFy vs the Mynd: Leprechaun Returns (2018)

Warning: there will be spoilers for parts of the final act!

The members of a newly minted sorority in what I assume to be the tiniest college town in the US have decided to turn a cabin in the woods in the middle of nowhere into their sorority house. It’s supposed to be an eco paradise, self-supplying with electricity and all other needs of the modern young woman. Alas, said cabin is the place where another group of young ‘uns had managed to trap the murderous Leprechaun (now played by Linden Porco), and soon, the tiny menace is quipping, murdering, and looking for his gold; also, having a car chase while riding on a drone.

As luck will have it, the newest sorority sister, Lila (Taylor Spreitler) is the daughter of what I assume was Jennifer Anniston’s character in the first Leprechaun, and the town eccentric Ozzie (Mark Holton) is another survivor of that particular epic. So Lila might just be the best bet the rest of her sorority (as played by Pepi Sonuga, Sai Bennett, Emily Reid and two random male hangers-on we can ignore) has for survival. At least once she’s copped to the fact that her mother’s tales of a tiny monster weren’t the ravings of a madwoman. Man, horror movies can be tough on off-screen survivors.

Now, if you’re like me, you weren’t screaming for any kind of sequel to any movie in the Leprechaun franchise, but perhaps you’ll be like me too in that you’ll actually come away from Steven Kostanski’s film with a big grin on your face (if, that is, you happen to have a face). How Kostanski has gotten from Manborg, Father’s Day and The Void to a Leprechaun sequel for the SyFy Channel is anybody's guess, but his film suggests a degree of sympathy for the franchise, a talent for enjoyable goofy nonsense, and a director who is perfectly willing and able to make fun low-brow stuff without a condescending tone or giving the impression he doesn’t actually want to entertain his audience.

As the plot description suggests, like the new Halloween film, this one’s pretending all other sequels in the franchise don’t exist, and seeing that these count among their number the Leprechaun’s adventures in space and in “da Hood”, that’s something we all should be thankful for; these are, after all, all films I wish I hadn’t seen. Also ignored is that terrible WWE reboot that turned the ole gnome into a most generic 00’s monster. Hurray.

Now, I’d be lying if I knew if there are any or many continuity problems between the first film and this one. Turns out the Leprechaun and the Wishmaster movies have turned into some kind of generic goo (probably only waiting for the proper dose of radioactivity to turn into a monster) in my brain. However, one really doesn’t need to have a degree in leprechaunology to understand the film. All one truly does need is an appreciation for a handful of (partially practical) gore effects, the lust for listening to horrible puns and quips that clearly know how horrible they are yet are still delivered without any winking and nudging at the audience (the film understanding we do get it without help), and the general temperament to enjoy all-out silliness. How silly does the film get? Well, apart from the Leprechaun riding a drone, there’s also the scene where it seems the nasty little person with the gold problem and the allergy against clover has been beaten by our surviving heroines, but begins to revive as a small army of tiny leprechauns. And a scene where Lila suggests to a semi-corporeal ghost that the judicious application of plastic wrap might make the guts hanging out of his belly (the Leprechaun got reborn thusly, you understand, or perhaps do not understand) more manageable. Also…but you see what I’m getting at here.

If this sort of thing sounds even the tiniest bit fun to you, imaginary reader, you will be pleased to hear that Kostanski and writers Mark Jones and Suzanne Keilly deliver the parade of jokes and the handful (we’re on a tight budget here) of character deaths with relish and a great sense of timing, and without ever going all Sharknado on us by explaining that yes, that joke was indeed a joke, aren’t I the clever one, and so on. Which is of course exactly the approach that makes Leprechaun Returns fun.


As an added bonus, you get an ensemble of likeable – mostly, this isn’t a film that wants us to want to see them die - young actresses who get into their theoretically thin roles with a sense of fun and indeed comical timing. That’s more than anyone could expect from a direct-to-TV sequel to a horror franchise that never was terribly good to begin with.

In short: The Void (2016)

On a slow night, deputy Sheriff Daniel Carter (Aaron Poole) picks up a hurt and bloody man from the side of the road. The closest emergency room is run by a skeleton crew in a hospital that’s nearly abandoned after a fire some time ago. As luck will have it, Daniel’s separated – they lost a child - wife Allison (Kathleen Munroe) is working there this night. These personal problems won’t be the worst thing on Daniel’s mind for long, though, for soon enough he and the handful of other characters in the emergency room, will have to cope with much worse things. A gang of white-robed knife-wielding cultists surrounding the hospital not letting anyone leave or make contact with the outside world will turn out to be the least of their troubles.

I am not at all surprised that Astron-6’s Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski made quite a film in their first “serious” outing (and without the Astron-6 moniker), seeing as their more parodic work demonstrated not just surface knowledge of genre cinema as a whole but what looks like a lot of deep understanding, enthusiasm and talent, certainly all things they demonstrate here in great amounts.

After hearing The Void described as a Lovecraftian film, or at least one of cosmic horror, I did expect a much slower film as the one I got. Properly defined, The Void is cosmic horror and Lovecraft filtered through Stuart Gordon, John Carpenter, Lucio Fulci and body horror, which means its psychologically grounded cosmicism finds a dancing partner in huge amounts of practical effects that suggest a diet of the aforementioned directors and the best of the Silent Hill franchise. The monsters and the effects get going much faster than I had expected, too. Fifteen minutes in, and things become gooey and grotesque and never stop for long from then on out, very much to my satisfaction.

The pace does get – rather appropriately – weird after some time of the directors playing with something of an inverted siege scenario (nobody seems to want to get in to hurt the characters, they’re just not allowed to leave because of something locked in with them). Once parts of the cast make their way into a cellar that acts as a place where the layers between our reality and something much grimmer have grown thin through abuse, things turn ever more dream-like, visions and hallucinations breaking the until then classically plotted movie’s timing until it turns strange. At first, I was a bit displeased by how this approach seemed to throw the film out of whack, further thought and exposure convinced me it is actually a rather brilliant way to let the audience share into some of the psychological effects of the characters’ contact with the Cosmically Weird, while providing even more opportunity for these fine effects.

Three Films Make A Post: For fourteen thousand years... It waited.

Manborg (2011): If you want to understand the kind of movie this Astron-6 production is, you need to imagine the fabulous video store in the sky, where all the most bizarre elements from the cheapest post-apocalypse, martial arts, action, videogame and probably Godfrey Ho  movies have somehow been genetically merged, turning into the mighty MANBORG, a culmination of the art form that could not have come to pass until the 2010s because people crazy enough to make it on the monthly budget of a not particularly rich family of three do not fall from trees. All more concrete description would make this sound like a Troma film, but unlike Troma, Astron-6 cares, their jokes are actually funny, and their films not just pretend they’re fever-dream crazy, they actually are. They’re also not feeling like parodies to me so much as the ultimate love letters to things utterly ridiculous and therefore awesome.

Wrecker: Staying in Canada, but entering a much less rarefied space, Micheal Bafaro’s film is an ill-advised backdoor remake of Steven Spielberg’s Duel that really can’t survive the comparison with the original movie. And because Spielberg’s film was a TV movie shot on a tiny budget and on a very tight schedule, you can’t even excuse this one’s failings with it being a low budget film. It’s just that Bafaro is no young Spielberg. Not many directors are, of course, but then not many directors are inviting the direct comparison this openly.

The only interesting change here is replacing Dennis Weaver’s character with two young women (Anna Hutchison and Andrea Whitburn), but since their interactions are not exactly riveting, and this also eats into the feeling of isolation for the films’ respective heroes, this looks more like a film desperately trying to do at least something differently and failing. The rest of the affair is easily described as “Duel but bad”.

Lighthouse (1999): Our final film of the day leads us to the UK, and while it is not the catastrophe that Wrecker is, Simon Hunter’s film isn’t exactly exciting. Sure, there’s a lot more talent visible on screen than in the Canadian film, but in the end, this is the ultra-generic tale of various people in an isolated place being murdered by your usual near supernatural psycho. Having read that description and the title, you’ll know exactly what you’re in for, with only a handful of over-constructed suspense scenes to distract you from the fact that there’s little reason to watch a film quite this lacking in personality. If you’re a collector of slightly more famous actors in early(ish) roles in (sort of) slasher movies, this one gives you James Purefoy as “the good, potentially innocent criminal”. Other excitement is pretty much absent.