Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas Special 22/8/2013)

Not every picture in the programme was available for a sneak preview. So let's whistle through the sight unseens. Howard and Jon Ford kick off proceedings with The Dead 2: India, a follow-up to their harrowing 2010 African odyssey that sends British turbine engineer Joseph Millson on a trek across zombie-infested Rajasthan in the hope he can reunit before it is too late with pregnant girlfriend Meenu Mishra. The undead are also at large in Christoph Behl's The Desert, which is set in a post-apocalyptic Argentina and centres on the cracks that appear in the safe-haven friendship between Victoria Almeida and William Prociuk when Maria Figueras falls for the latter and they recklessly decide to bring the unpredictable Lucas Lagré home from a provisions raid. But, while this claustrophobic chiller trades on simmering intensity, Christian James goes all out for laughs in Stalled, in which janitor Dan Palmer gets stuck in a toilet cubicle as the office Christmas party goes on upstairs and the ravenous victims of an unexpected zombie plague decide to go on the rampage.

The ever-malevolent doll with the genre's wickedest smile makes a welcome return in Dan Mancini's Curse of Chucky. Picking up where Child's Play 3 (1991) left off, the action opens with a dysfunctional family gathering for the funeral of wheelchair-bound Fiona Dourif's mother. But, much as she loathes sister Danielle Bisutti, brother-in-law Brennan Elliott and five year-old niece Summer H. Howell, things begin to perk up when she comes to suspect that the doll she was given a few days earlier (voice by Dourif's father, Brad) may be helping her helping her solve a few problems. Another family occasion turns into a bloodbath in Adam Wingard's You're Next. AJ Bowen warns new girlfriend Sharni Vinson that things might get a little tense when he brings her to meet the folks, as they celebrate their wedding anniversary. But, when one of the party guests gets a crossbow bolt in the eye and the family realises it is under savage attack, the mild-mannered Vinson turns out to be just the girl to have around in a siege.

Along with Simon Barrett, Eduardo Sanchez, Gregg Hale, Timo Tjahjanto, Gareth Huw Evans and Jason Eisener, Wingard is also one of the directors contributing to V/H/S 2, which follows private investigators Lawrence Michael Levine and Kelsy Abbott into an abandoned house, where four videocassettes trafficked by an underground tape sharing community hold the key to the disappearance of a male college student. Joining this on the initial title shelf is Robert Schwentke's R.I.P.D., an adaptation of Peter M. Lenkov's comic book Rest In Peace Department that teams Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds as afterlife cops detailed by boss Mary-Louise Parker to round-up the `deados' who have returned to Earth as monstrous spirits. But Bridges wants revenge on Kevin Bacon, the crooked cop partner who murdered him for his share of a stolen gold haul. Anton Yelchin also sees dead people in Stephen Sommers's take on the Dean R. Koontz novel, Odd Thomas. Despite working as a short-order cook in the California town of Pico Mundo, Yelchim is haunted by murder victims and police chief Willem Dafoe is more than happy to rely on his eccentric powers to clean up some outstanding cases. But when he notices that the mysterious Shuler Hensley is being followed by more than his share of portentous bodachs, Yelchim's `psychic magnetism' goes into overdrive.

Out on sequel row, there is no more terrifying sight than Steven R. Monroe's I Spit On Your Grave 2, as Jemma Dallander's hopes of becoming a fashion model are hideously dashed in New York when she is kidnapped from a shoot, brutalised and taken to a distant country to be buried alive. But she manages to escape her ordeal and channels her fury into exacting her pitiless revenge. Danielle Harris already thought she had conquered her demons when she blew serial maniac Kane Hodder's head off. But sheriff Zach Galligan is convinced she is responsible for the 30-odd corpses in the New Orleans bayou and Harris has to spend all of BJ McDonnell's feature bow, Hatchet III, proving her innocence.

Writer Adam Green has a strict no CGI rule where splatter is concerned and one has to admire the lengths to which the families of Matthew Brodeur, Victor Bariteau and Manny Souza go in Michael Stephenson's documentary The American Scream in order to come up with ways of spooking their neighbours in the seaside town of Fairhaven, Massachusetts each Halloween. Making your own entertainment is also the theme of the debuting EL Katz's Cheap Thrills, as down-on-his-luck family man Pat Healy drowns his sorrows in a bar with old pal Ethan Embry and winds up performing ever-more reckless acts for cash to amuse well-heeled couple David Koechner and Sara Paxton. Another evening goes horribly awry in Jeremy Lovering's In Fear, a claustrophobic real-time thriller that confines new couple Iain De Caestecker and Alice Englert in a Range Rover in the depths of the English countryside. And just to ensure that the action is as authentic as possible, Lovering refused to tell his cast what would happen next, as they become increasingly unnerved by the fact that the directions they were given to a secluded hotel are worryingly inaccurate.

The West Country provides the unsettling setting for Elliot Goldner's The Borderlands, as a team of Vatican paranormalists arrive to investigate the strange happenings at Fr Luke Neal's remote church. Gordon Kennedy and Aidan McArdle are far from convinced. But parish records of unexplained occurrences and a scratching sound in the walls persuade them to set up their equipment in the nave and around the pulpit. Anthony DiBlasi serves up some more Godsploitation in Missionary, as divorced mom Dawn Olivieri realises she might have made a mistake in letting son Connor Christie have a kickabout with Mormon Mitch Ryan, as he has a twisted idea of domestic bliss and, when she rejects his advances, he goes berserk. Complementing this induction into the Church of Splatter Day Saints is James Sizemore's The Demon's Rook, in which the director also stars as the adult version of a small boy who once found a portal into another world. He was taught magic and wisdom by demon John Chatham. But, when he discovers the one secret denied him, Sizemore is forced to flee back through the portal. Unfortunately, he has been followed by a trio of malevolents with the respective powers to possess minds, transform innocents into killers and summon armies of the dead.

The emphasis switches to the supernatural in Vincenzo Natali's Haunter, as Abigail Breslin comes to realise that she, parents Peter Outerbridge and Michelle Nolden and younger brother Peter DaCunha have been endlessly reliving the day before her 16th birthday. But, just as she comes to realise that they have all been dead for some time, Breslin starts to sense the presence of young Eleanor Zichy, who is now living in her old house and is in danger from the same serial killer who slaughtered her back in 1985. If this contains echoes of Groundhog Day, Kit Ryan's Dementamania manages to channel both The Fly and The Office as it follows software analyst Sam Robertson enduring the worst Friday the 13th of his life. Things began badly when he stepped on a wasp on getting out of the shower, but the constant oneupmanship of his jargon-spouting colleagues and being dumped by email tips him over the edge as everyone congregates in the local nightclub.

A night on the tiles has gruesome consequences for Najarra Townsend in Eric England's Contracted. Despite the fact that new strains of sexually transmitted infections are making the headlines, Townsend gets so carried away with a stranger at a party that she takes no precautions. But it's only when she learns that her partner is wanted by the police that the full horror of her virulent STD becomes apparent. Flesh eating of a more sanitised variety informs Jim Mickle's We Are What We Are, a remake of Jorge Michel Grau's Mexican original that tweaks the plotline by having mother Kassie Depaiva die in an accident in a backwoods Catskills town, leaving siblings Ambyr Childers, Julia Garner and Jack Gore to rebel against father Bill Sage and dispense with the family's usual mealtime rituals. The locals begin to suspect something is amiss when Gore bites babysitter Kelly McGillis. But, even though sheriff Nick Damici is distracted by a deluge, doctor Michael Parks and deputy Wyatt Russell are convinced something sinister is going on at the old homestead.

Hispanic horror remains in the middle of a purple patch, as Juan Carlos Medina's Painless and Alex and David Pastor's The Last Days would suggest. The former is a powerful debut that opens with neurosurgeon Alex Brendemühl discovering he is in urgent need of a bone-marrow transplant to cure a lymphoma after surviving the car crash that killed his wife. However, when parents Juan Diego and Angels Poch refuse to donate, Brendemühl discovers he is adopted and his research into his background sparks a flashback to a village in the Pyreneean region of Canfranc in the early 1930s, when a small group of children born with complete insensitivity to pain are joined in their solitary confinement by German-Jewish doctor Derek De Lint, whose hopes of enabling a humanitarian rehabilitation go awry when adolescent Mot Stothart is thwarted in his crush on fellow patient Liah O'Prey and has grown into the monstrous Tómas Lemarquis by the time the Nazis find them in 1944.

The subterranean setting is ingeniously exploited by the Pastor brothers in The Last Days, as humanity falls prey to a deadly form of agoraphobia known as The Panic and Quim Gutiérez is forced to join forces with detested boss José Coronado to cross Barcelona by its sewers, subway and cellars in order to find pregnant girlfriend Marta Etura. The feral gangs menacing the Catalan populace seem positively benign beside the demon lurking beneath the floorboards in Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wiklund's Wither. For centuries, it has lain dormant. But, when Patrik Almqvist and Lisa Henni arrive in a vast Nordic wood to find their isolated cabin locked, friend Jessica Blomkvist volunteers to climb through an open window. Unfortunately, she strays into the basement and, when she starts complaining of feeling unwell, her six companions are left to face a living nightmare.

The other Swedish picture on offer is Lasse Hallström's adaptation of Lars Kepler's ScandiCrime bestseller, The Hypnotist, which marks the director's first outing in his native language for 25 years. Frustrated by a lack of DNA or fingerprint evidence at the scene of a family slaughter, cop Tobias Zilliacus desperately needs to speak to surviving son Jonatan Bökman. However, the teenager is in a coma and Zalliacus is forced to contact discredited hypnotist Mikael Persbrandt in the hope of making contact with his subconscious mind. And the latest in a line of grizzly killings sparks a vigilante fightback in Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado's grimly comic Big Bad Wolves, as maverick Israeli cop Lior Ashkenazi abducts teacher suspect Rotem Keinan, only to be taken hostage himself by the headless victim's distraught father, Tzahi Grad. He is ready to resort to desperate measures to ascertain the truth. But things take an even darker turn when Grad's elderly father, Menashe Noy, shows up at the sound-proofed basement.

This year's programme contains four classic horrors and none has stood the test of time better than FW Murnau's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922), an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula that was one of the keystones of the vogue for Expressionism in Weimar Germany. Making evocative use of their Bremen locations, Murnau and cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner not only capture the sense of dread hanging over the town at the height of the 1838 plague, but also the desperate hunger in the vampire's eyes as he follows estate agent Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) back from his Carpathian home. However, having conquered Hutter, Count Orlock (Max Schreck) allows his lust for his wife, Ellen (Greta Schröder) to get the better of him and he fails to see morning breaking as he feasts on her flesh.

Von Wangenheim and Schröder excel, but it is Schreck who fixes the gaze, as he appears from the shadows cast over Albin Grau's sets and surveys his prey like a ravenous beast. His expression as Hutter cuts his thumb during dinner is chilling. But he takes no pleasure in his bloodlust. It is a curse he has to satiate to avoid the agony of death and the melancholy that pervades every scene of this inhuman tragedy. Whether following the carriage rattling through the Transylvanian countryside, revealing the awful majesty of Orlock's castle, depicting the cargo of coffins on the ship or showing how the sleepwalking Ellen's cry startles the count, Murnau judges each scene to perfection. Ninety years on, the film's terrors have largely abated. But its emotional potency remains undiminished and no one has since surpassed the pathos and ethereality of Schreck's vampire. 

Eschewing such stark gloom, Roger Corman conspires with cinematographer Floyd Crosby to drench Daniel Haller's Gothic interiors in lurid colours for the first of his eight Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, The Fall of the House of Usher (1960). Made in just 15 days for $200,000 this is one of the jewels in the Corman crown and one of the highpoints in the history of American International Pictures. Tautly scripted by Richard Matheson and moodily scored by Les Baxter, it feels too slick to be a B movie, as it follows Mark Damon from Boston to the New England mansion where he hopes to persuade Vincent Price to consent to his marriage to his sister, Myrna Fahey.

Damon is distraught at being denied because, like her brother, his beloved is suffering from an incurable hereditary disease that causes a morbid acuteness of the senses. Price insists that the line must end with them to spare future generations their agony and, when he realises that she intends to elope, he buries his cataleptic sibling alive to prevent Damon from smuggling her away. Butler Harry Ellerbe lets slip the truth about Fahey's condition, but the tomb is already empty by the time Damon prises it open and the burning house is beginning to sink into the swamp, as the raving Fahey attempts to wreak her gruesome revenge on Price.

Filling every inch of the CinemaScope frame with malevolence, Corman demonstrates what a fine director he could be when he took the subject matter seriously. Damon and Price make an admirable doomed couple, but they are upstaged in every scene by the wonderfully urbane Price, whose tormented sadness is tinged with a pragmatic cruelty that seals his fate. The influence of Hammer is readily evident and one of the company's stalwarts is on chilling form in Robert Hartford-Davis's Corruption (1967), which is screening in a newly restored version at FF 2013 to mark the centenary of Peter Cushing. Cunningly bookended, this is one of the grizzliest British horrors of the period.

When model fiancée Sue Lloyd agrees to pose for photographer Anthony Booth, eminent surgeon Peter Cushing so disapproves that a fight breaks out. However, a floodlight falls and burns Lloyd's face and Cushing is forced to attempt a revolutionary technique involving pituitary extract and a laser beam to restore her beauty. Unfortunately, the repair proves temporary and Cushing decapitates Soho prostitute Jan Waters to acquire some live tissues. Colleague Noel Trevarthen suspects Cushing is up to no good and informs Lloyd's sister, Kate O'Meara. But, when the friends of latest victim Wendy Varnals come looking for her at Cushing's country home, the now deranged Lloyd gets hold of the laser.

Owing more than a little to Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (1960) and the gorier byways of American exploitation, this is a surprisingly macabre picture, considering the nature of contemporary British horror. Cushing is typically brilliant as the man of science who allows emotion and hubris to cloud his judgement and he is splendidly supported by Lloyd, as the gold-digging trophy lover. But what is most compelling is what this reveals about Swinging Sixties culture and the price increasingly being placed upon youth and beauty, as the socio-cultural balance began to shift in favour of the postwar generation.

Although it was directed by a Canadian, scripted by an Anglo-Jamaican and contained a clutch of Poms in the cast, there is only one place that Wake in Fright (1971) could possibly have come from. Adapted by Evan Jones from a novel by Kenneth Cook, Ted Kotcheff's bristling Outback saga was hailed as a gem by Martin Scorsese after it screened in competition at Cannes. However, it didn't go down as well in Australia, even though it was subsequently claimed as one of the cornerstones of Ozploitation, and the original negative was about to be destroyed when its worth was recognised and it resurfaces here in a spanking new print prior to its release on DVD.

Frustrated at being shunted into the sticks to pay off his further education bills, teacher Gary Bond is looking forward to Christmas back in Sydney. But, in order to catch a flight from Tiboonda township, he has to stop off in the remote mining town of Bundanyabba. Cop Chips Rafferty convinces him there are worse places to spend a night and Bond begins to think he can pay off part of his debt after he goes on a winning streak playing the penny toss game, two-up, in The Yabba's only bar. However, Bond has one too many beers and, having lost his winnings, winds up accepting the hospitality of Al Thomas, only to get into an argument when he prefers the company of Thomas's daughter, Sylvia Kay, to the increasingly rowdy ockers.

He gratefully accepts the protection of downgraded doctor Donald Pleasence, who gives him a pill to cure his hangover and persuades him to join buddies Jack Thompson and Peter Whittle on a kangaroo hunt that culminates in Bond clumsily stabbing a wounded animal to death. Following a brawl with Thompson and Whittle, the quartet trash the bar. But, after Pleasence makes advances in the night, Bond treks across the desert in the hope of thumbing a lift. But the truck takes him straight back to The Yabba.

Taking its title from the old maxim `may you dream of the devil and wake in fright' and revealing the depths of depravity masked by the most urbane exterior, this terrifying dark night of the soul is unflinchingly photographed by Brian West to locate the characters in their spirit-crushing locale. But, while the film lambasts Aussie attitudes to machismo and the mythical relationship with the landscape, this also offers a sobering perspective on the kind of parochialism that had characterised countless Hollywood Westerns. The performances are exceptional, with Bond and Pleasence making the most curious pair of kindred spirits and their parting is every bit as touching as that of a cowboy hero and the drunken quack after a shootout to clean up the town. Nick Cage considers this the finest film ever made about Australia and its rediscovery is exceedingly fortunate. But one suspects its precise dissection of the national psyche will still seem pretty raw four decades on.

As ever at FrightFest, there are some intriguing world horror items on show and this year's pick is Eitan Gafny's Cannon Fodder, which introduces zombies into the already complex situation in the Middle East. Following on from Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado's Rabies (2011), this represents another confident step forward for Israeli genre cinema, as it plays with conventions and caricatures in taking broad satirical swipes at a crisis of the utmost gravity.

Summoned from his honeymoon for what he is promised will be his last mission, Liron Levo is placed in charge of an Israeli Defense Forces Special Ops unit comprising Roi Miller, Emos Ayeno and Gome Sarig. He has never met them before and isn't entirely sure he can trust such macho hot heads on a mission to enter Southern Lebanon and abduct the third highest ranking member of the Hezbollah leadership. But time is short, as the military intends launching an imminent attack and Levo needs to act with surgical precision and timing. However, on crossing the border, he quickly discovers that terrorists are the least of his concerns, as zombies are roaming the wilderness and they don't care which side their next victim is on.

Influenced by the likes of Samuel Fuller, George A. Romero and John Carpenter, Gafny combines action and gore with admirable brio. He even finds time for parodic homages to pictures like John McTiernan's Predator (1987). But, while the make-up effects devised by Todd Debreceni and the Canadian Complexions outfit are as effective as Erez Yohanan's heavy metal score, this is also an acerbic assault on Israeli xenophobia and the macho disdain for anyone who challenges the Zionist master plan. Consequently, the dialogue is often uncompromisingly frank and Levo and his comrades ably convey a mindset that proves as cruel and bloodthirsty as this terrible new foe.

The action is even more gleefully extreme in Ernesto Diaz Espinoza's Bring Me the Head of Machine Gun Woman. But this Chilean homage to old school grindhouse has very little to say in socio-political terms and seems entirely content on melding pastiche tropes with video game visuals to create a wild ride that will appeal almost exclusively to aficionados of LatinXploitation. Bullishly played and driven along by a pumping score by Rocco, this may not be subtle and it is most certainly not politically correct. However, Espinoza achieves what he sets out to do and proves he knows his subject every bit as well as Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino.

Games-mad DJ Matia Oviedo works in a Santiago nightclub run by gangster Eric Kleinsteuber. However, he has the habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and is caught eavesdropping in the gentleman's restroom as Kleinsteuber is giving a couple of henchmen orders to eliminate gun-toting bounty hunter Fernanda Urrejola. Faced with execution, Oviedo offers to do the hit himself and reasons that his experience in gaming environments will make him a decent hitman. But twiddling your fingers and thumbs and filling killing machines full of lead turn out to be two very different things and Urrejola is anything but an easy target.

Naturally, mayhem ensues and Espinoza relishes staging gun battles than make Hong Kong heroic bloodshed stand-offs look like coy exchanges of pleasantries. Editing with cinematographer Nicolás Ibieta, he cuts a touch too frenziedly in places. But the pair creditably create video game visuals that manage to lampoon as much as they glamorise the cartoonish violence. They also poke fun at the tendency for female action heroes to be scantily clad and Amazonian. But, while Urrejola is clearly in on the joke, she is often presented in a fetishised way that doesn't always feel entirely knowingly retro. She makes an imposing presence, however, and her sober ruthlessness tempers Oviedo's irksome tendency to overact.

While nodding towards Ti West's House of the Devil (2009), Juanra Fernández harks back to Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's The House That Screamed (1969) and Claudio Guerín's The Bell of Hell (1973) in exploring the growing gap between the generations in recessional Spain in For Elisa. Strapped for cash and unable to hold a conversation with her mother than doesn't end acrimoniously, twentysomething Ona Casamiquela accepts a babysitting job to pay for a post-graduation trip. Leaving boyfriend Jesús Caba and his drug-dealing pals in their rundown apartment, she finds herself in the elegant abode of Luisa Gavasa, a piano prodigy from the 1960s who has become a recluse and surrounds herself and daughter Ana Turpin with a large collection of antique dolls. These would be enough to unnerve anyone, but it soon becomes clear that Gavasa shares personality traits with both Baby Jane Hudson and Annie Wilkes and that she plans to involve Casamiquela in some extremely peculiar games.

Creepily designed by Daniel Jarque and photographed with a stifling intensity by David Valldepérez, this may be a little derivative, but it is still mightily effective. Initially seen bawling down the phone to her mother, Casamiquela exudes the sense of expectancy that is driving a wedge between post-Francoite parents and kids raised on instant gratification, who are finding the real world is much tougher than their favourite movies or TV shows. But, having scored his political point, Fernández concentrates on trapping Casamiquela in a world of twisted innocence that dispenses with tea, biscuits and nursery rhymes and replaces them with obsession, uncertainty and terror. He might have sustained the brooding atmosphere and air of debased nostalgia for longer before confronting Casamiquela with Turpin's unhinged specialness. Moreover, he should have handled Caba's last-minute rescue bid with much more finesse.  But this is often splendidly ominous, while the performances of the female leads are deliciously delirious.

Robin Entreinger also sticks to tried and tested formulae, as he marries a New Year's Eve party with the making of a snuff movie in Sadik 2. Inviting comparisons with Anthony Waller's Mute Witness (1994) and Wes Craven's Scream (1996), this may lack the viscerality to qualify it for the New French Extremity cadre. But it has a winking wit and makes a virtue of its rough and readiness and, even though it rather collapses in on itself in the last reel, it makes a solid follow-up to Entreinger's debut, Victimes (2012).

Alexandra Bialy has assembled her friends in a rented house in the Alps to see in the new year. They may have lost their mobile phone signal, but they figure it won't effect them, as they have everyone they love around them. Bialy is particularly smitten with Mathieu Coniglio and has no idea he has pictures of naked men on his phone. Valentin Bonhomme also has an unrequited crush on Goth girl Marjolaine Pottlitzer, while slasher freak and aspiring auteur Guillaume Levil tries desperately to coax Guillaume Gamand into appearing in his next homemade short. But, what the friends don't know, is that the camera is about to roll in the basement on a scary movie and that producer Guy Bonhomme has cast them in the starring roles.

Co-scrpting with Jean-Nicolas Laurent, Entreinger keeps things light, even after the action acquires a darker tone and he is ably served by a lively ensemble. Cinematographer Virginie Trottet and make-up artist Maëla Gervais also make valuable contributions. But, as was often the tendency during the nouvelle vague, Entreinger occasionally allows the self-reflexivity to become a touch too smugly congratulatory at the expense of the picture's own personality. Moreover, while it becomes increasingly nasty, the second half is never particularly frightening. The same could not be said, however, for Bobcat Goldthwait's Willow Creek, which opens in a cringe-inducingly goofy manner before presenting one of the most chilling under canvas sequences in movie history. The denouement is much less inspired, but this is every bit as engaging and offbeat a two-hander as God Bless America (2011).

Keen to visit Bluff Creek and see where Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin famously shot footage of a Sasquatch in 1967, Bryce Johnson coaxes actress girlfriend Alexie Gilmore into spending his birthday weekend making an amateur documentary. She feels uncomfortable driving on winding roads while holding a microphone and teases Johnson about his belief in a creature she is convinced is entirely mythical. After recording a couple of excruciating pieces to camera en route, the pair arrive in Willow Creek, where Johnson interviews a visitor centre attendant, bookshop owner Steve Streufert, a retired park ranger and singer-songwriter Tom Yamerone with differing degrees of success. They visit a museum, where even Johnson is tempting to mock the exhibits. Indeed, he puts on similarly silly voices while scarfing down a Bigfoot burger in the local diner, surveying a mural showing a Sasquatch helping labourers build the town and while being warned against venturing into the Trinity National Forest while interviewing a carved wooden critter beside their motel.

Gilmore is keen to move to Los Angeles to further her career and is prepared to humour Johnson as much as she can. However, she questions his wisdom when he ignores a warning to turn back from a snarling bruiser and takes an alternative road deeper into the woods. She also becomes bored with filming everything, as they struggle across the difficult terrain. But she forgives him when they set up camp in what appears to be an idyllic spot and Johnson finds a glorious mountain stream for a bit of skinny-dipping. On returning to their tent, however, they find their belongings have been ransacked and Gilmore has to be persuaded to stay the night.

Once darkness falls, however, the mood changes completely, particularly after Gilmore turns down Johnson's marriage proposal by suggesting that they live together in LA  He reluctantly agrees and they settle down to sleep. But Johnson is disturbed by knocking sounds in the middle distance and strange cries piercing the nocturnal silence. They try to reassure each other that there is nothing to worry about, only to huddle closer together inside their sleeping bag when they hear something moving around outside. Gilmore screams when the entity touches the tent and they survive the night. But they get lost trying to find their way back to the car the next morning and are nowhere near as lucky in striving to lay low.

While it succumbs to the odd `found footage' cliché and just occasionally takes liberties with some of the Northern Californians playing themselves, this is a hugely enjoyable caper that is superbly played by the genial Johnson and the perky Gilmore and photographed with a keen eye for character and landscape by Evan Phelan. Ultimately, everything turns on a missing person poster. But the shivers are palpable during the audacious long take lit by the camera bulb and driven by the couple's wide-eyed responses to Frank Montes's expertly judged sound mix. Running some 20 minutes, this scene alone would make this memorable. But Goldthwait also finds time to satirise American belief systems and the tourist mentality, while also commending the zeal of amateur enthusiasts, musing on the danger of doubting what cannot be disproved and emphasising just what a divided country the United States actually is.

Town and country clash again in Cameron and Colin Cairnes's 100 Bloody Acres, a comic Aussie chiller that suggests the spirit of Wake in Fright is still very much alive, albeit with a knowing wink at the camera. Set in a remote country hamlet outside Stockport, South Australia, the action opens with bashful hick Damon Herriman stealing a corpse from the scene of a traffic accident and bundling it into the back of he van he uses to distribute the organic blood and bone fertiliser he produces with his older brother, Angus Sampson. He is supposed to be making a delivery to best customer Paul Blackwell, but he gets waylaid when he spots Anna McGahan broken down at the side of the road with boyfriend Oliver Ackland and their British buddy, Jamie Kristian.

McGahan and Kristian have already incurred the wrath of local biddy Chrissie Page for snogging beside the grave of six charity workers who mysteriously disappeared a few years earlier. But, while Herriman knows Sampson will give him hell for stopping, he is so smitten with McGahan that he offers them a lift to the music festival they are supposed to be attending. He  hides the body under sacks of manure and ushers the boys into the back, while he tries gauchely to flirt with McGahan in the cab as they sing along to old country songs on DJ Ward Everaardt's local radio show. Herriman is also hoping to hear the commercial he has recorded with Simpson, but they arrive back at the farm before it plays and he is instantly reprimanded by his sibling for bringing strangers to their home.

Having already found the corpse, Ackland and Kristian are under no illusions that they have been abducted by a mad man. But it's only when she is locked in an outhouse that McGahan senses something is deeply wrong. The trio are soon bound and gagged and forced to watch as the brothers feed the cadaver into the mincing machine. Unfortunately, even though he had lost several fingers when Harriman slammed down the truck shutters, the driver isn't quite as dead as he had thought and he tries unsuccessfully to winch him out of the blades. The distraction gives Kristian the chance to escape. But, as he had taken a tab of acid after Ackland had informed him of his plan to propose to McGahan, his flight is less than co-ordinated and Simpson is able to recapture him after a bizarre interlude in a fairytale tourist attraction.

Meanwhile, McGahan has started trying to seduce Harriman in order to put him off his guard. But he spots an opportunity to drive a wedge between the lovers and asks her in Ackland's earshot about her infidelity with Kristian. However, as he leaves them to start bickering and name calling, Simpson gets pulled over by motorcycle cop John Jarratt, who congratulates him on the hilarious advert and is about to ride away when he hears knocking from inside the boot. Arriving home with another victim for the crusher, Simpson is furious when Harriman informs him that he is having second thoughts about their operation and, in the ensuing struggle, Kristian loses the top of his hand. This is grabbed by Page's dog when she comes to check up on the brothers.

She has always been something of an auntie to them. So, it comes as a surprise to Harriman when he sees them engaging in a vigorous bout of cunnilingus when he comes to steal the keys to help McGahan escape. Having believed Simpson's lie that Harriman was out of town for a while (as he plans to kill him along with the strangers), Page is appalled to see him and her scream sparks a burst of gunfire that reduces Page and Kristian to grinder fodder. But the fleeing McGahan has realised that marriage to Ackland would be a bigger nightmare than remaining in the sticks and she rushes back to prevent Simpson from slaying Harriman and the picture ends with Ackland being run over by a furious Blackwell as he comes to collect his overdue order.

Dismissed by domestic audiences, this is bound to please the wider genre crowd. But the debuting Cairnes brothers take greater pains than most horror directors to develop their characters, with the result that it is possible to root for heroes and villains alike as the comic carnage begins. Sporting an Amish beard, Simpson cuts the most menacing figure, but his deadpan delivery and perverse peccadilloes keep him from becoming too hissable. Kristian amuses as the feckless Pom, while Harriman and McGahan make an unexpectedly quaint couple, as they croon along to songs everyone else has long forgotten. Cinematographer John Brawley makes deft comparisons between the open spaces of the Adelaide Hills and Tony Cronin's rundown interiors, while the Cairnes deserve great credit for producing such a witty script and for including one of the most grotesque sex scenes in screen history.

Completing the triptych of ghoulish chucklers is Duane Journey's Hansel & Gretel: The 4:20 Witch, which was released Stateside under the less obscure title, Hansel & Gretel Get Baked. Essentially a pantomime with a lot of dope and a little bit of gore, this is a highly entertaining and deliciously subversive retelling of the Brothers Grimm fairytale. But, while it gleefully tosses away a teasing plot point about the Third Reich, it over-lingers on a sub-plot involving a gang of Latino drug dealers. Moreover, it rather stumbles through the labyrinthine last reel to reach the fiery finale that neatly sets up the possibility of a sequel. Given the strength of the female lead performances, few would complain if a second showdown came to pass. However, Journey and co-scenarist David Tillman will need to pay much more attention to character depth and put a bit more zing into their one-liners.

When Molly C. Quinn and new boyfriend Andrew James Allen run out of a new brand of Black Forest dope that buddy Eddy Martin scored off a little old lady in Pasadena, Allen goes for fresh supplies while Quinn tries baking some gingerbread. Little does Allen know that the Doberman sharing Lara Flynn Boyle's forbidding pile has already dispensed with prying electric man Cary Elwes and she soon has designs on the stoned slacker as he shares a pipe on her couch. He makes the fatal mistake, however, of tampering with the gingerbread house on the table (which contains documents pertaining to her Nazi past) and is soon being basted for the oven while strapped to the kitchen table. Having snacked on a plucked eyeball and chainsawed a leg for an aperitif, Boyle decides to leave Allen in agony, while she fends off Quinn's questions about her missing beau.

Older brother Michael Welch escorts Quinn off the premises and assures her that Allen will turn up. But Quinn is not convinced and confronts Martin and his sassy girlfriend Bianca Saad, as well as chiding cops Yancy Butler and Lochlyn Munro for not taking the case more seriously. However, things become complicated when Martin's supplier, Reynaldo Gallegos, takes exception to an old dear dealing on his patch and he pays Boyle a visit with henchman Celestin Cornielle. By the time he arrives, however, Boyle has sucked the life force out of Allen and Martin and has rejuvenated into a vampish siren who quickly turns Gallegos into a zombie and locks Cornielle in a cage in a maze lined with marijuana plants.

Determined to get to find out what Boyle is up to, Quinn breaks in through the back, while Saad keeps her talking in the front room. As this flirtatious tête-à-tête becomes increasingly steamy, Quinn finds Cornielle and leaves a trail of Skittles to help her navigate the maze. However, the stoned Saad eats these to quell her munchies and they find themselves trapped as Boyle kills Cornielle, guns down the snooping Butler and Munro and prepares Welch for the oven after he realises she is a witch on seeing her true self in a snapshot he had taken with his trusty camera. Despite besting Gallegos in a pitiless struggle, Welch proves no match for Boyle. But his screams bring Quinn and Saad to the kitchen where Boyle manages to survive a roasting to fight another day.

Revelling in the opportunity to play against type, Lara Flynn Boyle and Molly C. Quinn make spirited adversaries in this lively, if not entirely original horrification of a beloved children's story with more than a little disconcerting action of its own. Indeed, Journey and Tillman might have been wiser to stick more closely to the original outline or make more jokes along the lines of Welch being asked to look after Quinn by his parents while they visit the Stiltskins. But this rattles along effectively, with the budgetary restraints only occasionally hampering the sweep and scope of Journey's ambition. Considering his Twilight status, Welch is left with far too little to do and his character is far too sketchily defined. But this consistently amuses and its flaws only frustrate because they prevent the picture from hitting the highs (ahem) it should.