Three Films Make A Post: VHS Goes to Hell

V/H/S/99 (2022): I was pleasantly surprised to find that even this epitome series of bro horror has become a more diverse project behind and in front of the camera. This apparently doesn’t change my traditional reaction to all VHS films, where I find all but one segment of any given movie insufferably uninteresting. It’s all epileptically wobbling cameras, overdone fake VHS artefacts, and tales of asshats I don’t care one whit about being killed off in not terribly interesting ways by not terribly interesting monsters. Until, finally, the last segment, “To Hell and Back”, by Vanessa and Joseph Winter (also responsible for Deadstream), stabilizes the camera a bit and goes on to create a preposterous and absolutely awesome low budget hell dimension out of very little but sheer creative force and the imagination most of the other segments lack; that imagination is overflowing enough to design monsters for one single shot. The narrative drive as ridiculous as it is inspired. Reappearing from Deadstream is Melanie Stone in another awesome over the top performance that suggests somebody has found her niche.

The Arrival from the Darkness aka Príchozí z temnot (1921): This Czech silent movie by Jan S. Kolár ends on the worst explanation for the supernatural known to mankind, but before everything was a dream, there’s quite a bit to like: the visuals are often more naturalistic than expressionistic – though there is a pretty great alchemist’s lair in the Black Tower – but it’s the reality of old and half-ruined castles, so the film still has a certain uncanny gothic power. It is also an early example of the trope where some kind of reawakened evil from the past decides some poor woman to be the reincarnation of the love of his life, features the very Czech combo of Rudolf II and alchemy, and is generally an interesting entry into the sadly sparse number of silent films of the fantastic we can still see today.

The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959): This tale of an artist and mad scientist (Anton Diffring) who has become immortal thanks to gland transplantations is a usually ignored, and certainly very minor, bit of Hammer horror. It is still directed by Terence Fisher, shot by Jack Asher and written by Jimmy Sangster, so it’s certainly a technically well made film. There is even quite a bit of clever psychological business going on below the somewhat too melodramatic plot. Also of note are a couple of scenes of Diffring growing green in the face and a bit murderous as well as some pleasantly unpleasant business about his ideas about romance as exemplified by his relationship to a character played by Hazel Court, all situated between scenes of perfectly appropriate ethical deliberation between Diffring and an old friend played by Arnold Marlé. It is also interesting to see Christopher Lee in what amounts to a for him very uncommon role as the romantic lead – which is to say, he has very little to do in this one, in classic Hammer tradition.

Still, there’s just something missing that would turn this from “interesting” to “good” or “great”, though I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.

Three Films Make A Post: You will believe …

Haunted (1995): Why this plushy attempt by veteran director (every single piece I’ve ever read about this movie seems to call him that, and it’s certainly true) Lewis Gilbert at adapting one of those later James Herbert novel where the writer – artistically rather successfully – attempted to escape his pulp instincts is pretty well regarded is beyond me. The script snails its way to a big twist the book handles and seems to understand much better, dialogue and plotting are otherwise completely forgettable, and a theoretically decent cast does little to improve things by being typically wooden (Kate Beckinsale), atypically panto (Aidan Quinn), or nearly not in the movie (John Gielgud). Lewis shows little understanding on how to film the haunting scenes, overlighting every scene (nights are basically as bright as days in this haunted house), and doing not a lick of mood building beyond the mood of a postcard. Intelligent use of shadow or colour simply doesn’t happen; instead, the score by Debbie Wiseman swells, because the filmmakers think the film’s material is best treated as a romance. Which it might be, if the script actually constructed one.

The Devil’s Hand (1961): I had quite a bit more fun with this early 60s indie horror movie about a guy seduced into becoming a member in the cult of “Gambu, the great spirit of Evil”. As directed by one William J. Hole Jr. it feels a lot like the adaptation of a Seabury Quinn story sans Jules de Grandin that never made it into “Weird Tales”. Consequently, it does contain rather a lot of weird ideas about non-western cultures – the cult’s lair is kitted out with bits and bobs from all kinds of non-Anglo cultures that have sod all to do with one another – but then, it does mostly seem to consist out of white people from LA, so that’s a somewhat ironic (and certainly inadvertent) fit. The acting’s very stiff, as is the dialogue, but the film goes as far with the masochist elements implicit in the tale of a man falling for a femme fatale as it could get away with at the time, doesn’t drag its feet, and is genuinely engaging as a piece of pulpy horror. From time to time, Hole even catches on a truly weird idea or two, which is more than you can say for a lot of movies.

Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet aka Adéla jeste nevecerela (1978): Speaking of weird, this farce by Oldřich Lipský is a perfect example of the peculiar Czech sort of slapstick, deeply silly in a way that always feels somewhat subversive. Apart from that, it also functions as a loving homage to the more lively kind of silent cinema (and certainly silent cinema serials), Jules Verne (including what today reads as proto-steampunk elements), and whatever else the filmmakers find enjoyable, from Czech beer to dime novels (the hero is, after all, Nick Carter). The visual effects are at least in part designed and realized by the great Jan Svankmajer, so there’s quite a bit to gawk at between overcranked action sequences, silly romance, and bizarre revenge plots surrounding a giant man-eating plant who only dines when called with the sweet sounds of a Mozart lullaby not actually written by Mozart.

In short: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1959)

Czech puppet animation pioneer Jirí Trnka’s free adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play (if anyone should need the plot to this one, please make your way across the Internet to various deposits of literature free of that pesky copyright) is the sort of film that leaves me in two very different minds.

On one hand, this is an aesthetic masterpiece, with some beautifully crafted puppets full of exquisite detail, moving in a light and delicate manner through backgrounds of inspired – and again exquisitely and meaningfully detailed – artistry. The film is also directed with much more taste and art than just going for filming what would amount to stages (as would have been much more typical in this style of animation at the time), providing life and further elegant movement via the camera, bringing everything to poetic life. A life also bathed in astonishing colours, Trnka clearly understanding use and meaning of colour to create an unreal mood.

It is all utterly beautiful to look at, showing so much grace and style the film’s main problem (aka the other hand) seems nearly preposterous. You see, while the English language version seems to feature dialogue, the Czech language print I saw replaces the words of that totally obscure and barely literate Shakespeare guy with an off-screen narrator who never stops telling what the film shows. Seriously, it’s such a bizarre decision, I can’t help but think the film would have been better off with having neither dialogue nor that narrator. Anyone interested in the film knows the material anyway, and if you as an artist are dead set against using the words of Shakespeare (or rather his Czech translators), you might as well be consequent.

How much the loss of Shakespeare’s words in this Shakespeare adaptation will bother any given viewer is of course, as it always is, a matter of taste – there are after all more than enough films using them which still don’t amount to much. I found myself mostly flabbergasted by the decision, spending nearly as much time wondering about it as I did entranced by the beautiful pictures.

Sleeping Dogs (1998)

Welcome to the future of 2029. The world’s economy isn’t interested in your old “money” anymore. The it thing now are emeralds, and the most important illegal emerald kingpin of them all is one Sanchez Boon (C. Thomas Howell). Boon is letting his emeralds cut by women with electronic gags only dressed in their underwear, so you know he’s a very special kind of guy. He also thinks his connection to the Agency (don’t ask me) are tight enough he can even kill one of their agents without consequences.

Jewel thief Harry Maxwell (Scott McNeil) has chosen just the night when Boon puts that theory to the test to rob the villain’s main emerald store. Harry’s not too happy with how things are going down, for not only does he end his strike of consecutive break-ins without murder when he has to gun down some of Boon’s henchpeople but he soon finds himself involved in a series of firefights and explosions. On the positive side, he finds instant action hero love – which means the characters are going to sneer at each other and exchange unwitty one-liners for half an hour or so – with one of Boon’s emerald cutting slaves, one Pandora Grimes (Heather Hanson).

Said series of explosions and firefights somehow (and it’s really better not to think about the plot mechanics here too closely, lest one’s mind might just break) leads everyone onto a prison ship bound for titan with a cargo hold full of weapons and cryogenically frozen criminals. Of course, Boon soon un-freezes the criminals, becomes BFFs with super-evil android-the-film-calls-cyborg Zee 4R (Kiara Hunter), and takes over the ship, so that finally Die Hard on a space ship can begin.

Oh yes, it’s another Lloyd A. Simandl production, made by the purveyor of only the finest Canadian cheese, and it’s got everything I have learned to love and fear about Simandl’s productions of the era. Namely, this is an action film so stupid, it might be possible to weaponize it and kill people – or at least their brains – stone dead through prolonged exposure. Oh no, it’s already happening to me!

So, we have a plot that makes little sense even if you’re giving it the special action movie dumbness pass, takes place in a world whose technological level makes no sense at all, is tacky at all get out, and never ever stops to throw out at least one delightfully idiotic bit per minute. No scene goes by that doesn’t either contain numerous explosions, guys holding their guns like John Woo reject gangsta wannabes, needlessly exposed breasts, an awesome stupid idea (quick example: the film gets some of its early exposition, like the name of its protagonist out of the way by letting Harry dictate stuff for his autobiography while he’s breaking into a highly secured building), or if you’re really lucky all of that at once.

Then there’s the acting: McNeil mostly seems a bit embarrassed by the whole affair, nearly visibly wincing throughout the psychotronic dialogue where nearly every sentence is a surreal winner, while Hanson keeps up a never-changing look of annoyance, whatever is going on around her, whether she’s flirting or being threatened with torture. Hunter gives her sadist android gal by contorting her face into all kinds of interesting grimaces like a nine-year-old’s concept of how bad guys emote, an approach that seems perfectly appropriate to the film’s idea of characterisation. Throning over them all is C. Thomas Howell, putting on an affected voice that might be a particularly offensive idea of a cliché gay voice but that just as well might be an attempt at a British accent gone horribly wrong, providing Boon with the most cartoonish tics he’s capable of thinking up, and chewing the scenery as if somebody had lathered the cardboard used to turn the usual warehouse sets “futuristic” in honey. It is truly a thing to behold more than one to describe, for words just cannot do Howell’s performance here justice.

Director Micheal Bafaro barely keeps all this nonsense und nearly surreal bullshit under control in typical late 90s cheap-shot movie hired gun style. That is to say, he adds a lot of inappropriate (the only kind fit for this movie) slow motion and does his best to pretend three grey walls and a handful of monitors from the 80s do a futuristic set make. Though I have to admit, some of the action scenes work as well as anything this deeply stupid in conception could, so kudos to Bafaro, I suppose. And given how much I enjoyed this misbegotten thing calling itself a movie, I’m not even wearing my ironic hat right now.

Last Knights (2015)

Welcome to a deeply unspecific, randomly multi-cultural feudal fantasy world.

Evil crazy minister Gezza mott (Aksel Hennie) achieves a particularly nasty revenge on feudal lord Bartok (saintly Morgan Freeman) for a snub, leaving Bartok’s son-like retainer Raiden (Clive Owen) to execute his beloved master, dissolving the whole Bartok clan and “disavowing” all his warrior caste knights. Instead of swearing bloody revenge, the former Bartok men fall into lives of menial work and – in Raiden’s case – dissolute drunkenness. Still, it takes years to finally convince even the paranoid Gezza mott (don’t ask me about the names in this one) and his main retainer Ito (Tsuyoshi Ihara) that no revenge is coming from these guys. If only they knew they’re in another adaptation of the Chushingura (or the 47 Ronin, if you prefer), just one that doesn’t bother to mention this pretty damn obvious source.

It’s also not a very good adaptation of said source, and not just because redoing this stuff again means inviting comparison with some of the best jidai geki to come out of Japan, though this surely doesn’t help the film much. Nor is its case improved by the fact it doesn’t really have any new perspective on its material. Which points at one of the film’s main problems, its inability to effectively transplant a story based in a very culturally specific idea of honour and duty (seriously, the philosophical concepts in the samurai code we translate to honour and duty are only very partially related to the way these words are, for example, used in the idealized version of chivalry of the European Middle Ages) into a new environment. In fact, it doesn’t even make much of an effort to do this. Instead of creating a world around the characters where their actions make sense, the film just wildly throws together signifiers of Japanese, Korean and European middle age cultures without ever seeming to spend a thought as to how these things can actually fit together to shape the characters into a form the plot needs. It’s just incredibly superficial, and robs the whole proceedings of any way to anchor its characters emotionally or culturally, and consequently never achieves much of an emotional effect; let’s not even speak of the film making any kind of argument about the things it is supposedly about.

That doesn’t stop Last Knights from making gestures pretending profundity, of course, but if there is anything to find, it is as vague as the world the story takes place in. This superficiality, as well as the hollow pretences of depth, are not exactly a surprise coming from director Kazuaki Kiriya, whose two earlier films both suffered from exactly these problems, as well as from the draggy pace Last Knight shares. Those films also featured surprisingly stilted acting from a theoretically good cast, and this, again, is what you get here from definitely capable actors like Ihara, Owen, and Morgan Freeman, who emote with all the passion of very sleepy old men. Only Aksel Hennie seems to be awake but then, where his on screen partners’ are bored, he’s just terrible; of course, given Kiriya’s dubious success with the other actors, and the atrocious dialogue he has to sprout, I suspect it’s really not his fault.

What did surprise me about Kiriya’s work here is how visually unimpressive the whole film is. Standing quite in contrast to the eye-popping insanity and visual intensity (as I see it, Kiriya’s one possible strength as a director) of Casshern and Goemon this is drab, static and clad in the usual washed-out greyish colours that spare contemporary filmmakers the need to think about the use of colour in their movies, but I spare you, imaginary frequent reader, my usual rant about that this time around.

I’m rather more disappointed with Last Knights than I would have expected, probably because on paper, a multi-cultural (South Korean and Czech production, actors from all over the world, a Japanese director) fantasy version of the Chushingura sounds like a wonderful idea to me. If only the execution weren’t so dispiriting.

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Crackerjack 2 (1997)

Okay, remember what happened in Crackerjack? You don’t have to, because in this curious sequel to Jack Wild’s (now Judge Reinhold) – called “Crackerjack” by exactly no one – misadventures, it didn’t happen. So Wild’s still a wild card (sorry) with spurts of violence, he’s still an asshole cop, and he’s lost his wife – though no children this time around - to an exploding car. Unlike that other Jack Wild, Jack MKII has somehow acquired attractive investment whatever girlfriend Dana Townsend (Carol Alt).

Of course, Jack’s still trying to apprehend the guy who killed this version of his wife, one Hans Becker (a Karel Roden looking barely able to contain his giggles). As luck will have it, Becker reappears exploding a warehouse and inadvertently provoking a fall-out between Jack and his much-hated boss.

As luck will have it, Becker is now working as the second fiddle to evil mastermind Mister Smith (Michael Sarrazin). Smith has a great plan, you see – catching a whole train full of rich investor-type people, trapping them in a combined railroad tunnel/bunker complex and using a computer wizard and brute force to get a their accounts while the police still think the bad guys have simply hijacked the still rolling train. It’s a plan brilliant in its simplicity, I’m sure.

Guess whose girlfriend just happens to be on that train? And guess who soon finds himself playing “Die Hard in a railroad tunnel/bunker complex”?

My mind, it boggles a bit at Robert Lee’s Crackerjack 2. Not just at a plot that seems to be based on something a producer’s five year old nephew came up with (because that sort of thing is par for the course in direct to video action cinema), for Crackerjack 2 contains a baker’s dozen of strangenesses much stranger than its mere plot. Like, why retcon the first movie out of existence in this way when you might surely have found another way to make Jack crack again (or just pretend he never got better)? Why make Becker the killer of Jack’s wife when you’re not going to milk that for all it is worth (and it would in fact have been better to make Mister Smith the wife killer)? Usually, I’d answer that with the idea the producers had a script with a different hero (such as he is) around somewhere and  only changed a few character names to attach themselves to the success of the first film. But then, can Crackerjack have been actually so successful it’s worth that kind of effort? As I said, the mind, it boggles.

It boggles even more at the producers’ decision of casting Judge Reinhold of all actors willing to do everything for a pay check in the world as the new Jack. Reinhold surely is one of the thespians least fit to play a cop on the edge role, leading to a performance that fluctuates between awkward, just plain ridiculous (though it’s clearly not supposed to), and what the hell is that man doing there!? One can’t blame Reinhold for lacking in enthusiasm for the role though, and if you give actors points for relish – which I do – Reinhold certainly wins the movie, even compared with a scenery chewing Sarrazin who loves to be evil and an absolutely outrageous (just look at all the grinning SMG air shooting she does at the slightest provocation!) performance by Katerina Brozová as Sarrazin’s (evil) girlfriend.

Also not good for one’s mental health while watching are the script’s regular attempts at call-backs to the first movie (yes, the movie that can’t have happened in the world this one takes place in), with the marine attack from the first film replaced by a less creative airborne attack on the empty train that is at least realized in miniature effects of equal adorableness, and certain scenes virtual mirrors of ones in the first film without need or reason.

If all this sounds as if Crackerjack 2 were a giant mess of a movie that makes the writing in the first one look like Shakespeare (well, more like Zschokke), and has the creative independence and intelligence of a PR shill, that’s exactly what it is. It’s also a great big heap of fun to inflict this thing on one’s brain. If one’s brain can take it, of course.

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Doom (2005)

The (soon to be space) marine squad of Sarge (The Rock), consisting of people will charming nick names like Duke (Razaaq Adoti), Destroyer (Deobia Oparei) and Goat (Ben Daniels), are sent to the Mars science base on a search and destroy mission. You see, something horrible has happened in the genetics lab there, and now hungry things are around you probably wouldn’t want to get back to Earth, nor to the main part of the Mars base.

Odd man out in Sarge’s team is Reaper (Karl Urban), who is basically an intellectual – at least in comparison -l who gave up on these pursuits because of the expected family trauma and is slumming with the psychopaths now. Reaper’s not too happy his estranged sister Samantha (Rosamund Pike) is coming with the group to rescue some research material, but if you think this isn’t the kind of movie that’ll end with a nice bit of family reunion, you’ve never seen a film before.

Of course, before new peace between siblings the gods have put a bunch of genetic mutations that need killing, and the revelation of the fact that mindlessly following orders leads to evil. Go figure.

I know, by all rights, I should be quite set against Andrzej Bartkowiak’s adaptation of First Person Shooter godfather Doom but I do have a heart for Aliens lite movies about shooty guys and monsters running through dark corridors. And that, if you ask yourself this highly important question, is exactly the sort of movie this is.

It’s a bit of a disappointment that Doom keeps away from the insane hell parts of the game series’ basic plot and replaces it with the usual dumb and careless experiments with alien DNA (oh, spoiler), as is the related fact that the more beloved monsters from the game make cameo appearances and most of the monsters our protagonists spend their time fighting are of the usual infected and alien suits type. However, it’s pretty clear something more lavish just wasn’t in the budget, and the film does do its best with the things it can afford, resulting in many a tight action scene, lots of shouting, and a smidgen of blood and goo.

If I say it’s all in good fun, I’m probably again sounding like I’m damning with faint praise, but Doom really is a fine bit of corridor shooter (oh, hi, Doom 3 meet Doom). It’s well paced, and using the genre typical character archetypes well. You wouldn’t exactly call the characters three-dimensional. or the treatment of their types subversive, but they do work well in the context of the film they are in. The script even surprises once or twice by being slightly more clever than strictly necessary. First when it slowly shifts its bad ass protagonist from Sarge to Reaper (a trick that probably worked even better in 2005 when the audience wasn’t used to Karl Urban as a leading man), and a second time when it actually starts to argue that, you know, shooting and explosions is fun and all, but from time to time you should probably think through the ethics of what you’re doing; which isn’t a thing you’d expect to find in this sort of shoot ‘em up film, and is even integrated into the plot well enough it actually works.

I also can’t help but feel sympathetic towards a first person shooter adaptation that includes a perfectly silly and cheesy, yet also intensely loveable, first person shooter sequence; I’m pretty sure Paul W.S. Anderson was quite put out when he saw Doom and realized he could have used over-the-shoulder cam in one of his Resident Evil films (which might explain a certain backwards slow motion scene in one of his RE films as a very particular kind of overcompensation). There’s really something irresistible about a film that uses that sort of scene without really breaking its perfectly straight (if one-liner lined) face for me.

Plus, the violence is fun, fast, and plenty, leaving Doom a much more entertaining piece of cinematic art than I’d been led to believe.

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Hidden Assassin (1995)

aka The Shooter

(This write-up is based on the shorter US cut of the movie that excises about ten minutes of scenes meant to deepen characterization and make the plot clearer).

US Marshal Michael Dane (Dolph Lundgren), one of those people who abduct foreign nationals from countries the USA don’t have extradition treaties with, is doing a small favour for his old friend, CIA agent Alex Reed (John Ashton) and Reed’s boss Dick Powell (Gavan O’Herlihy). The CIA thinks that professional assassin Simone Rosset (Maruschka Detmers) has already killed a Cuban ambassador for kicks, and is now planning to slaughter the participants of a historic peace conference between the US and Cuba in Prague, so they’d be very thankful if Dane could catch her and bring her to the US.

Catching Simone turns out to be quite difficult for Dane, and catching and keeping her even more so, because she is just the decisive bit more competent at the whole cat and mouse game. Consequently, it takes quite some time and effort, and some rather unpleasant lies to Simone’s girlfriend Marta (Assumpta Serna) for Dane to reach this goal. Not that he’s all that happy about it – he neither likes the CIA way of going about things, nor does he seem to like to morally compromise himself; he has also taken quite a shine to Simone until his head and his penis are pulling into very different directions when it comes to her.

At least on an ethical level, Dane’s life becomes easier when people probably working for the CIA are trying to kill Simone before he can bring her out of the Czech Republic.

Ted Kotcheff’s Hidden Assassin is one of the more surprising vehicles for that loveable lug, Dolph Lundgren. As we all know, while Lundgren is one of the more likeable action specialists of his generation (which automatically puts him in a higher league than Seagal and Norris), his thespian skills have their limits mostly in glowering, looking like the nicest guy ever to bash your head in, and two kinds of smiles, which results in a limited repertoire of roles, so much so that most of his films aren’t even trying to get anything else out of him.

Even though Kotcheff’s film isn’t going against the trend completely, its script (by Yves André Martin) does provide Lundgren with a slightly more complex character than usual, as well as with a backstory that is actually connected to what’s going on in the rest of the film on a thematic level. Given his acting limits, Dolph really does comport himself very well here, not exactly giving a subtle performance but a convincing one; that he’s doing his usual good job in the action sequences is a given anyway.

It’s quite interesting to see how well the script’s slightly slicker execution (why, there’s actually a reason for people to do what they do, and it even makes sense in context) turns your generic Lundgren vehicle into, well, an actual movie, the sort of film where the action becomes more exciting because it carries meaning beyond going through the action movie motions. Not that Kotcheff is bad at directing the action sequences – there are some fun cheap chases through the mean streets of Prague (prettier as Sofia - there, I said it), a simple yet pretty great final rooftop chase, as well as some of the always entertaining train top shenanigans (though none including a motorbike), and other moments of the kind of joyful anti-gravitational nonsense that make action cinema so delightful, all of them done with great competence and providing thrills big enough I’m not even going to call them mandatory thrills.

On the other hand, I don’t want to oversell the script’s depth or perceived depth. This is – at least in the shorter US version – still very much an action movie and not a character study, and certainly also not on the level of the rarefied kind of action movie where the action is part of the character study, too. It just knows how to enable the action better. Plus, there’s no hilariously earnest scene where a hallucinatory George Clooney holds a ridiculous pep talk, so it’s already better than Gravity.

Adding to this, there are also all kinds of nice little touches giving Hidden Assassin a distinct personality of its own. I particularly enjoyed Gavan O’Herlihy’s and some of the minor actors’ shameless scenery chewing, as if they had drunkenly stumbled in from one of Lundgren’s later direct-to-DVD films; or how much more competent at the whole action hero business Detmers’s Simone seems to be, at least until the film feels the need to get out the refrigerator.

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In short: Frankenstein's Army (2013)

At the tail-end of World War II, a small squad of Russian soldiers is traipsing through Eastern Germany, all the while filmed by Dimitri (Alexander Mercury), a man in the process of making a propaganda movie that'll make Stalin happy, and that, of course, is providing the footage we are watching. The soldiers catch an emergency broadcast of other Russian troops and make their way to a small village seeking to help their comrades out.

Unexpectedly, the village is mad science central, and soon enough, the soldiers have to fight off rather lively and aggressive dead people with various metal parts screwed onto them. The situation doesn't improve when it turns out that one of them has kept some rather crucial information from them, and they can't just do what any sane person confronted with the kinds of grotesque nightmares they encounter would do and just run. And that's even before they meet the creatures' creator (Karel Roden), who comes from a long line of mad scientists.

Said grotesque nightmares really are the core joy of Richard Raaphorst's fine piece of low budget horror. Frankenstein's soldiers are created with such an obvious joy and love of detail, as well as a demonstrating such a good working idea of craziness, that I'm perfectly okay with how simple Frankenstein's Army's plot and characters are, and how "no shit, Sherlock" - though perfectly fitting the material - its theme (humanity is a horrible, self-destructive species; totalitarianism is the highest and most horrible expression of these urges, and look how horrible we truly are) is. We are, after all, here to watch bloody violence and improbable creatures (personal favourite: slug guy or the poor creature with an airplane propeller for a head), as long as the film gives us a tiny reason to watch them. For once, talking about "grand guignol" style filmmaking seems like absolutely correct terminology for a movie.

The film's POV stylings aren't truly believable but are realized with a love for detail comparable to that of the creature designs. While I don't buy the whole set-up at all - even after the mandatory plot twist - Raaphorst puts a lot of actual effort in to add visual artefacts appropriate to the era without ever going so overboard with them they become annoying. When it comes to the staging of scenes, the director generally prefers the effective or atmospheric shot to the believably in character, something which may annoy people who want their POV films to be "realistic" but which is an approach I prefer when used as it is here - to make the movie a more effective horror film. This also leads to Frankenstein's Army being one of the increasing number of POV horror movies where you get a good look at everything you'd care to see (and some things you rather didn't).

The film's final joy is veteran actor (seldom seemed that phrase more fitting) Karel Roden's absolutely unhinged performance as the film's big name mad scientist. It's not just a perfect bit of scenery chewing but really the only way the man who created the things we see throughout the film could have been played - not as a realistic mentally ill man, but a raving lunatic with tendencies to mock politeness.

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