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Mum and Dad Visit Horror In Your House
Welcome to another edition of Horror In Your House featuring our home video releases for Tuesday, May 5th. While the lot of films hitting retailers are indie films, some titles you definitely want to pick up are Revolver’s UK torture film Mum & Dad, along with the long, long, long delayed End of the Line from Critical Mass.
Horror in Your House
May 5, 2009
ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES: Brett Kelly Entertainment
In a small town, the silence is shattered by a rash of disappearances at the swamp near the old deserted factories. Bodies are being discovered with no blood left in their bodies. It s up to a park ranger and the town sheriff to discover what ungodly creature is responsible for these deaths. It s only a matter of time before they discover that what they seek are Leeches that have grown to unbelievable size. We bleed- they feed!
THE BONE SNATCHER: First Look
When Dr. Zack Straker, a field research scientist, unearths the skinned bodies of three missing prospectors, Zack discovers that he and his team are being hunted by millions of creatures that have united into one unstoppable killing machine. As darkness descends, the ground they stand on becomes a living carpet capable of devouring their flesh with every step. Hell has been unleashed. With no clues to investigate the massacre, Alex must find a way to stop them before it’s too late.
ECOUTE LE TEMPS (aka FISSURES): Koch Lorber
Charlotte, a sound engineer and loner, travels to her mother’s house in the countryside to help with arrangements after her mother is murdered. Once there, she realizes that she knows very little about her mother’s life in this strange village. Frustrated by a lack of progress by the police investigation, Charlotte begins to use her sound equipment to carry out her own investigation. While listening to a fresh recording she made in her mother’s house, Charlotte discovers a strange phenomenon; sounds from the past blend in with sounds from the present. Soon she is piecing together the last days and hours of her mother’s life, drawing every closer to discovering who killed her, even as the murderer returns to try and kill Charlotte before they are discovered.
THE 8TH PLAGUE: Celebrity
Launa is obsessed with investigating the disappearance of her sister who has not returned from a recent camping trip in the mountain town of Halcyon Springs. The search leads to an abandoned prison where Launa and her friends are exposed to an ancient evil that the stone walls of Halcyon Ridge can no longer hold back. Relentless terror, gore, and bone-chilling thrills are unleashed on anyone whose soul is exposed to this demonic curse.
END OF THE LINE: Critical Mass (TEX’S PICK OF THE WEEK)
Karen, a young psychiatric nurse, boards the last subway train of the night only to have it stop in the middle of the tunnel. Suddenly, her nightmare begins: a mysterious cult has decided that it’s the end of the world and the only way to save the souls of the living is to kill them in cold blood. As those around her are brutally murdered, Karen and a handful of survivors must face the homicidal cult, supernatural forces and their own fears of Armageddon in order to survive.
FRANKENHOOD: Lionsgate
Motown and Darius work in a morgue, trading put-downs and toiling among the most undemanding of customers. But outside of their decidedly dreary jobs, the two dream of bigger and better things. If only they could win the $25,000 prize that will go to the winners of the upcoming 3-on-3 Streetball Tournament. One night, having been demoted to graveyard shift, they run into their semi-sane colleague Franklin in a dark alley outside the morgue. They find Franklin using the auto battery of Motown’s precious Gremlin to bring to life a monstrous dead man whose heart Franklin has just replaced. That 3-on-3 basketball tournament isn’t looking so bad…if they can just get their new mutant friend to play basketball!
FROM A PLACE OF DARKNESS: Celebrity
There can be a fine line between good and evil. Documentary filmmaker, Miles Cody, ends up crossing that line when he becomes obsessed with his subject: the King of Snuff Films and delves into a world of nudity, forbidden sex and…VIOLENT CLIMAXES. Miles soon discovers the ghosts of those films have returned to warn him…or lure him into…a place of darkness.
HELLBRIDE: Jinx Media
Everything is working out for Nicole Meadows. She has a great job. She has an adoring boyfriend who has just proposed. She has a doting father who is preparing the wedding. She also has a dark secret. And a cursed engagement ring. Come the wedding day, there will be bloodshed. But at least there will be cake, too.
THE HOUSE OF THE DEMON: Celebrity
It’s Halloween, the biggest party night of the year. A group of college friends won’t let the university’s new ban on parties spoil their plans. Charlie has just inherited his recently deceased uncle’s abandoned house on the outskirts of town. What is supposed to be a night of good, clean, Halloween fun becomes an outrageous nightmare of demonic possession, as each of the hapless teens discover what is inside The House of the Demon!
MUM & DAD: Revolver/Image
One of the most disturbing shockers to emerge in recent years, “Mum & Dad” will leave the toughest horror fan gasping in shock. When Lena, a young Polish immigrant working as an airport office cleaner, misses her last bus home, she accepts an offer of help from friendly co-worker Birdie, who lives nearby with her “adoptive” parents. Knocked unconscious after arriving at the house, Lena soon finds herself imprisoned in a suburban house of horrors, a living nightmare of torment and terror. Designated a “Mommy’s Girl,” Lena’s only options appear to be becoming part of the insane family — or dying.
RISE OF THE SCARECROWS: X Posse/Tempe
Big city cop Officer Brown has moved to Adams, a small town in the middle of nowhere. With less crime and less stress, Brown plans to live a quiet life, but all is not what it seems. Adams is the sort of town that you can visit but never leave. Bodies are piling up, people begin to disappear, and only Officer Brown can uncover the horrible truth that is THE RISE OF THE SCARECROWS!
SCARCE: Critical Mass
Returning from a snowboarding weekend, three friends take shelter from a sudden winter storm in an isolated cabin. But while waiting out the weather, they are stalked, one by one, by the cabin’s demented owners. These locals specialize in curing of meat but this time, there is more than venison on the menu. The weekenders find themselves fighting more that the cold; soon they are fighting for their very lives.
SLAUGHTER: Celebrity
Slaughter is the feature film debut of writer and director Dan Martin and takes horror back to its nasty, gritty and often tongue in cheek rootsd of the 1970’s and 80’s. The film follows escaped mental patient David Ward as he hides in his derelict caravan spending his days hiding from the police and doctors and filming himself raping and murdering while police slowly discover his crimes and get closer to him.
Night School, director Ken Hughes and writer Ruth Avergon‘s tale of a headhunting slasher on the streets of Boston, arrived in the early Golden Age of the slasher film and never quite broke through the endurance test that other films in the subgenre, like Friday the 13th, managed to pass with flying colors. Blame it on a more cerebral tone, a crowded market, whatever you like, but saying it’s a shame that the film didn’t break through doesn’t begin to cover it.
Night School isn’t just an underrated slasher, or an underseen one. For my money, it’s one of the best films the subgenre has ever produced, full stop, and Vinegar Syndrome’s new 4K UHD restoration, arriving just in time for the film’s 45th anniversary, is must-have proof. Stacked with special features highlighting the craft of the film and its place in slasher history, and headlined by a gorgeous restoration showcasing the wonderfully textured production, this is Night School as it’s meant to be seen for slasher devotees everywhere.
So, what makes the film so effective? It starts very simply, with the revelation that a killer with a very cool knife and a motorcycle helmet as a mask is murdering young women in Boston, taking off their heads, and dropping those heads in the nearest body of water (no matter how small).
Solving the case falls on Judd Austin (Leonard Mann), a detective with an academic background who traces all of the victims in one way or another back to a local night school. There, suspicion falls on a womanizing professor (Drew Snyder) who sleeps around on his research assistant and romantic partner, Eleanor (Rachel Ward), whose own death could be right around the corner.
I’m doing my best to stay as spoiler-free as possible here, not just because I think plenty of slasher fans still need to see Night School, but because the film is quite determined to be a whodunit in the classic Italian giallo sense. The kills are brutal and elaborate, the killer deliberately covered head-to-toe in leather and a gleaming black helmet, the knife and the headhunting a disturbing signature. Avergon’s script is well-versed in the trappings of exactly this kind of story, complete with red herrings galore. And yet, by the time it’s all wrapping up, there’s also the sense that the answer was right there in front of you the entire time, something the very best films by legends like Mario Bava and Dario Argento could also achieve.
But on to the restoration: Like the best of the gialli, Night School is also a beautifully engineered film full of colors and delicate camera compositions and sound design. The opening kill, which takes place on a playground carousel outside of a daycare, is rich in exactly this kind of thing, from the cityscapes that lead into the scene to the sound of a motorcycle slowly rolling forward, its engine already dead. Cinematographer Mark Irwin, best known for his many collaborations with David Cronenberg, paints the film in rich reds, absinthe greens, and haunting, chilled blue-white light on wet Boston streets, all of which are preserved beautifully by the restoration team at work on this one.
It’s a movie that very deliberately evokes a specific place – the aging streets of Boston in the 1980s, and the halls of relatively low-level academia – and then takes that place into haunted territory, saturating every frame with color and shadow that suggests a killer lurking just out of view.
Night School is not a massively gore-heavy film, but it does deliver the slasher goods with a series of tense, often unpredictable kills and body discoveries that range from the darkly comic to the flat-out jaw-dropping. That’s thanks to the sound design, the score, the editing from Robert Reitano, and more, all of which add to the film’s giallo soul.
In every case, the scene’s geography is outstanding, and it’s easy to see where the simplest possible kill shot might land, but the film never goes for the obvious. Throw in a surprisingly (for 1981, anyway) feminist bent to the storytelling and some very progressive moments for an early slasher film, and this one fits right in with Black Christmas and The Slumber Party Massacre as a film with depth you can just keep unpacking.
That depth, helped along by a load of featurettes and two new commentary tracks featuring members of the crew, is what stands out the most in this new 4K set. Night School may be a niche film recognized mostly by horror addicts and the slasher faithful, but it deserves to be something more, a landmark on the roadmap of slasher cinema history. It’s one of the best in the genre, and this restoration highlights, underlines, and shouts that from the rooftops.
Night School is now available in 4K UHD from Vinegar Syndrome.
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