Parky at the Pictures (DVD 19/7/2012)

Divided into five segments, John Little's Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey (2000) covers pretty familiar territory, as it revisits the dojo of Yip Man, the modification of Wing Chun into Gung Fu and Jeet Kune Do (or `the way of the intercepting fist'), the impact of the TV shows The Green Hornet and Longstreet and the success of Lee's big-screen outings for Golden Harvest and Warner Bros.

Drawing on home movies, archive footage and exclusive interviews with widow Linda Lee Cadwell, co-star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, students Taky Kimura and Dan Inosanto and Hapkido grandmaster Ji Han Jae, Little also examines the ideology that underpinned Lee's martial skills. But his primary concern is an extended discussion of the unfinished picture, Game of Death, which was released with additional footage featuring a double that was shot by Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse. In addition to outlining the original storyline and presenting 33 minutes of rare footage (which was originally discovered in a shed by Hong Kong movie expert Bey Logan in 1999), Little also dubs Lee's Hai Tien character in some of the restored sequences.

The highly reverential result is squarely aimed at devotees rather than the casual viewer who might have watched Rob Cohen's 1993 biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story to see what all the fuss was about. And much the same verdict has to be passed on Little's Bruce Lee: In Pursuit of the Dragon (2011), a true fanboy homage that visits the locations where Lee shot his handful of features and attempts to show how much they have changed in the four decades since he last set foot there.

But, from the moment the camera alights on Little gazing in wonder at the ice factory used in The Big Boss (1971), it is painfully evident that this matters more to the director than it will to even the most obsessive fan. The discovery that only a park remains in Macao from the making of Fist of Fury (1972) further saps the morale of the uncommitted, although a whistlestop tour of Rome and meetings with Anders Nelson and other cast and crew members on the surviving sets from Way of the Dragon (1972) sets the venture back on track before Little heads to Hong Kong for a guided tour of the Golden Harvest studio and the locales utilised in Enter the Dragon (1973).

Unfortunately, Little seems more preoccupied with ticking places off than exploring their cinematic or wider historical significance. Yet he forgets to mention Game of Death at all and, thus, this peters out with one wondering why it wasn't simply released as a DVD extra rather than as a feature documentary in its own right.

For the remainder of this week's column, we shall have to content ourselves with brief overviews, as little here is of much consequence and few of the titles under discussion would be improved by extensive analysis.

DEAD BALL.
Eight years after showing how a little league team could crush some rampaging zombies in Battlefield Baseball, director Yudai Yamaguchi reunites with star Tak Sakaguchi for Dead Ball (2011), a sporting splatterfest that owes as much to 1970s exploitation movies as manga comics.

Having accidentally killed his father and traumatised his brother with a sizzling pitch, 17 year-old Sakaguchi is doing time at the Pterodactyl Juvenile Reformatory run by Miho Ninagawa, whose grandfather was a Nazi go-between. In addition to serving vomit for breakfast and ordering regular cavity searches, Governor Ryosei Tayama also forces inmates to play baseball. He wants Sakaguchi to lead a team of murderous girls from St Black Dahlia High School, which is run by Ninagawa's fascistic role model, Mickey Curtis. But, following a tip from naive cellmate Mari Hoshino that his brother died in mysterious circumstances while doing time for terrorist offences, Sakaguchi is more intent on using the big game for his own purposes than hitting any home runs.

Wildly over the top without being remotely amusing, this sub-standard schlocker makes a virtue of the bargain-basement effects created by Yoshihiro Nishimura and Masae Miyamoto's Nazi-Goth chic costumes. But the reliance on gross-out gags and scantily-clad psycho babes means this has outstayed its welcome long before a robot and Kim Jong-il put in belated appearances.

HELLDRIVER.
Since making an infamous impact with his 2008 debut, Tokyo Gore Police, Yoshihiro Nishimura has developed an international fan base with the cult favourites Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009) and Mutant Girls Squad (2010). Now he returns with Helldriver (2001), a sci-fi splatter movie set in a near-future Japan that has been divided by a giant wall designed to keep the healthy away from those suffering from an alien-induced undead syndrome. The leader of the rabid rejects is zombie queen Eihi Shiina, who is planning an attack on the protected world. But the authorities have hired her teenage daughter, Yumiko Hara, to train a band of raw recruits to keep the flesh-feasting menace at bay.

Produced under the auspices of the Nikkatsu Sushi Typhoon label that has come to dominate extreme J-horror, this overlong, flashback-strewn romp may not always be easy to follow. But it boasts standout turns by Yumiko Hara and Eihi Shiina (who made her name in Takashi Miike's Audition, 1999). But like Roger Corman before him, Nishimura (who started out devising SFX) has the sense not to take his pictures too seriously and stuffs the action with plenty of throwaway cross-cultural gags. Consequently, it's just about possible to laugh off the kitschy effects and such ridiculous incidents as Shiina's use of antler-like headgear to control her minions and one monstrous mother's employment of an umbilical lasso to ensnare a victim.

TOMIE UNLIMITED.
Initially feted for his work in the AV porn industry, Noboru Iguchi graduated to J-horror with A Larva to Love (2003). Subsequently known for The Machine Girl (2008) and RoboGeisha (2009), he scored a sizeable cult hit with Tomie Unlimited (2011), the eighth in a series of features dating back to 1999 that was inspired by a bestselling manga by Junji Ito.

Teenager Moe Arai has always been outshone by older sister Miu Nakamura. She joins the school photography club and develops a crush on Kensuke Owada, only he is, of course, besotted with Nakamura. However, all Arai's troubles seem to be over when she and best friend Aika Ota see Nakumura killed by a falling piece of cruciform scaffolding from a building site. But, in fact, her problems are just beginning, as she is deeply traumatised by the accident and begins having nightmares. Then, on the eve of what would have been Nakamura's 18th birthday, she knocks at the door of the family home.

While Arai fears the worst, parents Kouichi Ohori and Maiko Kawakami are delighted to see their daughter again. Indeed, Ohori becomes increasingly touchy feely. However, the joy is short-lived and he feels compelled to destroy Nakamura and dice her corpse into tiny pieces. But he continues to be haunted by the presence of her undead head, while Arai is disturbed by the fact that Nakamura has started passing herself off as a new girl at school and nobody seems to recognise her or the danger she poses.

Physical regeneration and the murderous nature of desire are potent themes, but Iguchi seems more intent on lashing the gore than offering any Cronenbergian insights into body horror. He's well served by Arai, Nakamura and Ohori, whose pseudo-incestuous urges are much more disconcerting than any of the slashing on display. But the CGI effects are disappointing and the monstrous denouement is just plain silly.

YAKUZA WEAPON.
Some of the biggest names in contemporary Japanese exploitation cinema come together for Yakuza Weapon (2011), an adaptation of a Ken Ishikawa manga that was co-directed by Yudai Yamaguchi and Tak Sakaguchi, choreographed by Yuji Shimomura and boasts special make-up effects by Yoshihiro Nishimura. Bursting with combustible action and hard-as-nails performances, it harks back to the classic crime thrillers directed by Kinii Fukasaku, while also adding a touch of Shinya Tsukamoto-style body horror and some harum-scarum Takashi Miike eccentricity.

While fighting mercenaries in the South American jungle, Tak Sakaguchi learns that mobster father Akaji Maro has been assassinated and returns home to find that the family offices have been appropriated by former underling Shingo Tsurumi. He attempts to unnerve Sakaguchi by kidnapping old love Mei Kurokawa, but winds up hideously scarred and on a life-support machine after Sakaguchi rescues her in an attack that costs him an arm and a leg. As Tsurumi plots with Jun Murakami to raise an army of mind-controlled sidekicks, Sakaguchi is rebuilt with a Gatling gun arm and rocket-launching knee, which come in handy when he is called upon to rescue the abducted Kurokawa for a second time. However, he also discovers that his nemesis has installed a nuclear device in his late father's corpse.

Complete with a mechanical cameo by Cay Izumi as Murakami's naked assassin sister, this is a gleefully bizarre slice of mayhem that keeps beggaring belief with each new outlandish development. Yamaguchi and Sakaguchi ensure that the action is as cartoonish as possible, while the latter competes with Tsurumi to see who can deliver the most over-the-top performance. The result is often messy and occasionally plain daft. But the surfeit of dark humour helps it stay the right side of puerile.

YATTERMAN.
Always one to do the unexpected, Takashi Miike produces a live-action parody-cum-homage  of a 1970s children's anime show in Yatterman (2009). As narrator Yoichi Yamadera explains, the title character takes the form of two people: the blue-clad Gan Takada (Sho Sakurai) and his pink-attired girlfriend Ai Kaminari (Saki Fukuda), who live beneath the toy factory founded by Gan's father. In partnership with their mechanical dog Yatterwoof and robotic sidekick Omocchama, the duo lead a double life in protecting the city of Tokyoko from the nefarious Doronbow Gang, comprising the sultry Lady Doronjo (Kyoko Fukada) and her odd-looking henchmen, rat-faced boffin Boyacky (Katsuhisa Namase) and pig-faced muscleman Tonzra (Kendo Kobayashi).

As the story opens, the Dorombo villains have just destroyed much of the city. But Gan and Ai have managed to rescue Shoko Kaieda (Anri Okamoto), whose archaeologist father was searching for the missing three pieces of the Skull Stone. Naturally, Doronjo wants the stone for herself and opens a bridal wear shop fronted by a gun-toting robot named Virgin Roader to raise funds for an expedition to Narway. However, the scheming Dokurobei (Junpei Takiguchi) is also after the pieces and the scene shifts to Ogypt following reports that another segment has been found there.

Adding to the confusion, Ai becomes jealous of Gan's friendship with Shoko, while Doronjo is forced to open a sushi restaurant to fund Spencer, a giant mecha-squid who will supposedly help them locate the final fragment in the Southern Halps. But, as the skull begins to take shape, reports come in from around the world of mysterious disappearances and Omotchama vanishes before he can warn Gan and Ai that the whole world will vanish if the Skull Stone is ever assembled.

Strange alliances are forged in order to prevent catastrophe and, as in any good superhero adventure, good eventually triumphs over evil. However, Miike clearly has a lot of fun subverting conventions along the way. He introduces plenty of saucy humour, yet also employs quaint animated interludes to emphasise the make-believe nature of the Yatterman and Dorombo characters and their feud. But, for all the knowing retro pastiche of Yuji Hayashida's production design, Daisuke Iga's costumes and the musical numbers composed by Masayuki Yamamoto, Masaaki Jinbo and Ikuro Fujiwara, this suffers the same fate of Roger Vadim's Barbarella (1968) of looking great, but never quite gelling.

DEMONS.
As the son of giallo pioneer Mario Bava, Lamberto Bava had much to prove when he embarked upon his own directorial career. He got off to a solid start with Macabre (1980) and A Blade in the Dark (1983), but misfired so horrendously with Monster Shark and Blastfighter (both 1984) that old mentor Dario Argento stepped in to produce Demons (1985), which he also co-scripted from a story by Dardano Sacchetti.

Opening eerily on the Berlin U-bahn, as student Natasha Hovey accepts tickets to a screening at the renovated Metropol cinema from masked man Michele Soavi, the story takes a grizzly turn when prostitute Geretta Giancarlo transforms into a demon in the bathroom after scratching her face on a hideous mask in the foyer. One fanged frenzy later, her friend Fabiola Toledo similarly changes into a ravenous monster and bursts through the screen, terrifying Hovey and her companions Paola Cozzo, Urbano Barberini and Karl Zinny.

Trapped inside the locked building, Barberini and Hovey are among the few to escape infection and they ride through the foyer on a convenient motorbike slashing at the demons with a sword. As a gang of punks break into the cinema and several of the creatures escape into the city, Hovey and Barberini are winched to safety by a helicopter crashing through the roof. However, Soavi is waiting for them and, although they manage to defeat him, one of the pair is set to succumb to their basest instincts before the movie ends.

Complete with references to Nostradamus and a thumping metal soundtrack by Claudio Simonetti, this gaudily manic comedy horror dispenses entirely with restraint in its quest for cheap laughs and gory thrills. The plot is negligible and the acting inconsistent at best, although Nicoletta Elmi and Bobby Rhodes steal scenes as a bemused usherette and the pimp attending the show with Giancarlo and Toledo. However, Bava and Argento make effective use of their locale, while Sergio Stivaletti creates some memorably make-up effects.

DEMONS 2.
Such was the success of Demons (1985) that director Lamberto Bava and writer-producer Dario Argento rushed out Demons 2 (1986), an imitative sequel that is perhaps most notable for the fact it marked the acting debut of 10 year-old Asia Argento. Once again based on a story by Dardano Sacchetti and co-written by Franco Ferrini, this relies heavily on the effects created by Sergio Stivaletti. But, working on a smaller budget, Bava exercises marginally greater control and, consequently, the action is often tighter, if still far from subtle.

Sulking at being jilted by her boyfriend at her birthday party, Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni watches a TV re-enactment of some teenagers disturbing a demon in the grounds of an old castle. Bizarrely, the reanimated creature notices Cataldi-Tassoni watching it and bursts through the screen to attack her. She transmogrifies in the now expected manner and her oozing bile seeps through the floorboards of her tenement block to turn all of its residents into slavering maniacs.

Meanwhile, pregnant Nancy Brilli manages to fight off her attacker and is rescued by husband David Edwin Knight, who has just survived his own brush with danger in a broken elevator with neighbour Virginia Bryant. Gym instructor Bobby Rhodes is less fortunate, however, as a rearguard action using makeshift weapons in the basement ends in disaster. But Knight strikes a blow for the uninfected when he causes a gas explosion that kills everyone except Cataldi-Tassoni and a couple of her party guests. She tries to stop Knight and Brilli reaching the roof, but they manage to get away in time for the birth of their child.

Sticking closely to the original movie's enclosed peril format, this offers few surprises. Indeed, it often seems as though Bava was intent on paying homage to such directors as George A. Romero, David Cronenberg and Joe Dante. But he has the odd moment of inspiration, such as the tele-screen assault and the transformation of a pet dog, which encapsulates the duology's emphasis on fun rather than fear.

DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK.
Inspired by the writings of Welsh mystic Arthur Machen, Guillermo del Toro reworks the scenario of a 1973 John Newland teleplay that had terrified him as a boy to create Troy Nixey's Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010), a chiller in the old dark house tradition that also has connections to Del Toro's own supernatural studies, The Devil's Backbone (2001) and Pan's Labyrinth (2006).

A prologue shows 19th-century wildlife painter Garry McDonald murder housekeeper Edwina Ritchard in the hope that her teeth will appease the creatures dwelling in an ash pit beneath the fireplace in Blackwood Manor. However, they demand children's teeth and the anguished artist is dragged to his doom after he pleads with his tormentors to release his kidnapped son.

The scene shifts to the present, as nine year-old Bailee Madison arrives in Rhode Island to live with father Guy Pearce and his new girlfriend, Katie Holmes. They are busy renovating Blackwood Manor for clients Alan Dale and Trudy Hellier and ignore the warnings of groundsman Jack Thompson to keep out of the cursed cellar. However, the music from Madison's night light wakes the ash pit homunculi and they call out to her from behind the sealed fireplace. She breaches the covering and finds one of Ritchard's teeth in the grate and is surprised to find an old coin under her pillow when it disappears the next morning.

Pearce is convinced that Madison is acting up when some of Holmes's clothes are slashed and he refers her to psychiatrist Nicholas Bell. But Holmes comes to suspect her claims about malevolent fairies might just be true after Thompson survives a pitiless assault and urges her to check out McDonald's book at the local library. Librarian James Mackay confirms her fears and reveals that one of the evil sprites periodically adopts human form. But Pearce refuses to listen to her tall tales, even after Madison is attacked in her bath and Holmes uncovers a McDonald mural depicting the devouring of his son.

Suffice to say, not everybody makes it out of Blackwood Manor alive. But many viewers simply won't care, as, despite the care that Nixey and Del Toro take in building suspense, their good work is largely undone by the woefully unterrifying nature of artist Chet Zar's CGI critters. That said, the script also has its flaws, most notably in its clunky expositionary passages and its strained association with the myth of the tooth fairy. However, the bed crawler sequence is genuinely disturbing and young Bailee Madison impresses as the plucky heroine, who forms an unexpected attachment with her rival for Pearce's affections.

DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS.
Despite the success of its Gothic revivals in the late 1950s, Hammer struggled to balance the books in the ensuing decade, as its Technicolor chillers were expensive to make and often only just managed to recoup their costs. Indeed, by 1965, the studio was shooting pictures back-to-back on shared sets to keep the budgets down. Thus, Don Sharp's Rasputin, The Mad Monk had to rub alongside Terence Fisher's Dracula Prince of Darkness, which saw Christopher Lee reprise the vampiric role he had last played in 1958, after refusing to appear in The Brides of Dracula (1960). He claims that he remained silent in this picture because his dialogue was too atrocious to deliver. However, scenarist Jimmy Sangster always insisted that he never wrote any.

A decade after the Count had been dispatched by Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing, seen only in a prologue flashback), English siblings Francis Matthews and Charles Tingwell pass through Central Europe with their wives Suzan Farmer and Barbara Shelley. Ignoring the warning of monk Andrew Keir, they set out for Karlsbad and have to take shelter in a remote castle after coach driver John Maxim refuses to go any further as night closes in.

The travellers are welcomed by Philip Latham, who explains that his late master left instructions that his home should always be open to those in need. However, Latham bludgeons Tingwell after he ventures into the crypt to investigate a noise and uses his blood to revive Christopher Lee, who makes Shelley his first victim. The following day, Matthews and Farmer beat a retreat, only for Shelley to lure the latter back and she is only saved from Lee's embrace when Matthews bursts in and makes a crucifix out of a broken sword.

Despite being given sanctuary at Keir's monastery, the pair are soon imperilled again, as acolyte Thorley Walters allows Lee to gain access to the hospital wing and Farmer has to receive emergency treatment after Shelley bites her. But Keir succeeds in staking Shelley after placing a cross on her coffin to prevent her from returning at daybreak and he and Matthews drive Lee into a frozen lake after a desperate horseback pursuit to deliver the unconscious Farmer from his clutches.

Lushly photographed by Michael Reed and cannily designed by Bernard Robinson, this may seem a little creaky some five decades on. But Les Bowie's resurrection effect remains spine-tingling in an age of supposed CGI magic, while the commitment of the expert cast cannot be faulted. Andrew Keir is suitably earnest as the vanquishing monk, whose duel with the hissing and writing Shelley seethes with malice and sensuality. Yet, even though he has little to do, Lee still dominates proceedings with a measured display of predatory potency.

THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY.
One of the original video nasties, Lucio Fulci's The House By the Cemetery (1981) has frequently fallen foul of the good guardians at the BBFC. However, the concluding episode in the unofficial `Gates of Hell' trilogy - after City of the Living Dead (1980) and The Beyond (1981) - can finally be seen in its awful entirety. Indebted to pictures as diverse as James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) and Stuart Rosenberg's The Amityville Horror (1979), this supernatural chiller may seen tame in comparison to today's torture porn offerings. But the blend of gore and giallo was ground-breaking back in the early 80s and helped establish Fulci among the new generation of Italian schlockmeisters.

After an opening sequence in which Daniela Doria is stabbed in the head while searching for her boyfriend in an old dark house, New Yorker Giovanni Frezzi learns that parents Paolo Malco and Catriona MacColl plan to move to a house where an academic recently committed suicide after murdering his mistress. Even before they set off for New Whitby near Boston, Frezzi has misgivings after a young girl (Silvia Collatina) appeals to him from a photograph of Oak Mansion not to come there. But his folks are soon settling in after collecting the keys from realtor Dagmar Lassander, who hires Ania Pieroni as a babysitter.

While Malco conducts research at the local library, Collatina shows Frezzi a grave in the grounds belonging to Teresa Rossi Passante and claims she is not really dead. MacColl finds the tombstone of Passante's husband (Giovanni De Nava) inside the house and her fears that something is amiss are confirmed when Malco is attacked by a bat in the basement. They demand to be rehoused. But, before she can help them, Lassander is murdered with a poker by a figure emerging from the interior grave.

By now, Malco has discovered that De Nava was a 19th-century surgeon who performed illegal experiments. But, when he leaves for New York to unearth more clues, Pieroni is beheaded in the basement and the entire family finds itself battling with the rotting corpse of a 150 year-old monster, who slays for the blood it needs to replenish its dying cells. Only one member will survive, thanks to the intervention of Passante and Collatina, who turns out to be her daughter. But there is no guarantee of a happy ending as the picture closes in a fug of bleak winter grey.

Remarkably restrained compared to the slashers that Fulci produced after the success of Zombi 2 (1979), this unabashed exercise in Grand Guignol earned notoriety because of the poker and decapitation sequences and the scene in which De Nava rips out Malco's throat. But, as is so often the case, the more effective moments are much quieter, such as when Frezzi notices Collatina beckoning to him through the window in the photograph and when a distraught MacColl is dragged down the stairs during the finale. Fulci overdoes the zooming, but he sustains the atmosphere well and knows exactly how to time a jolt.

THE REPTILE.
Keen to find an alternative revenue stream to its Gothic cycle, Hammer hired John Gilling to shoot The Reptile and The Plague of the Zombies back to back in 1966. The latter has recently been reissued in cinemas as part of the Made in Britain season. But the former is even more adventurous in its bid to introduce a note of sinister colonial revenge to the studio's traditional blend of period propriety and gushing gore.

As with Zombies, the action opens in Cornwall, as Grenadier Guards captain Ray Barrett and wife Jennifer Daniel move into the Clagmoor Heath cottage he has inherited from his late brother. Fretting about the `Black Death' they believe responsible for a spate of mysterious deaths, the locals give the newcomers a frosty reception. But they are befriended by landlord Michael Ripper and the comely Jacqueline Pearce, who is cruelly mistreated by theologian father, Noel Willman, who lives alone with his mute Malay servant Marne Maitland.

When local eccentric John Lurie dies in horrible circumstances, Barrett sends for Willman. But he resists all entreaties to assist and dismisses Lurie's black-faced, mouth-foaming demise as an epileptic fit. He also grows angry when Pearce invites Barrett and Daniel to supper and smashes her sitar when she attempts to play for them. Thus, when Ripper exhumes Lurie's corpse and Barrett notices it bears a neck wound similar to the one found on his late sibling, he deduces that the marks tally with a cobra bite and that the answers to the mystery somehow lie in Willman and Pearce's past excursion to Borneo.

Building to a wonderfully melodramatic finale, in which Barrett has to fight both Maitland and Willman while a blaze threatens to engulf Daniel and Pearce, this is a fascinating snapshot of mid-60s attitudes to primitive religions and alien cultures. Despite the fact that transcendental meditation was about to rival drug-taking as the new hip phenomenon, the suspicion attached to anything even remotely exotic is hugely revealing. Yet the screenplay written by Anthony Hinds (who was the son of Hammers founder) also challenges the social and religious status quo. Essentially, however, this is a serpentine variation on the vampire myth and, while the performances are admirable and Gilling builds tension with typical assurance, this lacks sufficient menace to engross.

THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD.
Partly inspired by a novel by John Russo, who collaborated with George A. Romero on Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dan O'Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead (1985) owes its place in movie history to the fact it coined the concept of zombies feasting on human brains, rather than simply fresh flesh. However, O'Bannon only landed the directing gig after Tobe Hooper decided to make Lifeforce (from an O'Bannon script) and he persuaded the producers to drop the intended use of 3-D and allow him to undertake an extensive rewrite to introduce more comedy and a little nudity. The result proved so successful that a franchise was born, although it had to fend for itself without the nurturing cult nous of Russo and O'Bannon.

Keen to impress new boy Thom Mathews at the Uneeda medical supply warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky, James Karen shows him the drums in the basement containing the cadavers of failed experiments. Unfortunately, however, he succeeds in reanimating one victim with a blast of toxic gas and boss Clu Gulager suggests they lure it to the local morgue in order to cremate it.

Meanwhile, Mathews's girlfriend Beverly Randolph arrives to pick him up with their punky pals Miguel A. Núñez, Jr., John Philbin, Jewel Shepard, Brian Peck, Linnea Quigley and Mark Venturini. While the others wait in the nearby cemetery, Randolph goes in search of Mathews.and finds herself locked inside a cupboard with a ravening zombie trying to break down the door. She is rescued when the gang seek shelter in the warehouse after Gulager, Mathews and Karen unintentionally cause a contaminated rainstorm by leaking zombified smoke into the atmosphere. But Venturini is killed in the attempt and, when they take a shortcut through the graveyard to get to the mortuary, Quigley is attacked by the monsters rising from their graves.

News of these risings prompts Gulager and mortician Don Calfa to barricade themselves in, even though Karen and Mathews are beginning to look less than healthy. Randolph insists on staying with them, however, after they are locked in the chapel. But more mayhem ensues when Mathews attempts to eat Randolph and gets blinded with acid, while Karen throws himself in the incinerator to prevent himself from turning. With cops and paramedcis being gnashed on the street outside, Gulager calls the number on the side of the body part barrels and Colonel Jonathan Terry launches an attack designed to clear the area in time for the President's forthcoming visit.

At times threatening to spiral out of control and not always as hilarious in its `splatstick' antics as it strives to be, this is an archetypal midnite matinee movie that was clearly designed to delight fanboys rather than more discriminating viewers. Nevertheless, it still has its genre-bending moments, with Gulager and Calfa revelling in roles named after the Sesame Street characters Burt and Ernie. The Tarman and Half-Zombie puppets designed by William Stout and Tony Gardner are also highly memorable. Moreover, the picture is directed by O'Bannon at such a rattling pace that, even when the odd gag or sequence misfires, another one soon comes along to take its place.

SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK.
Such was the fashion back in the 1980s to adapt anything and everything penned by Stephen King that the law of diminishing returns eventually had to kick in. Sadly, Tom McLaughlin's Sometimes They Come Back (1991), which was gleaned from the Night Shift collection, is one of the casualties of this undiscriminating Kingmania. It hardly helps that the picture was produced for television, as this seriously limited the horror scope. But the plotline isn't the most original and the cast don't exactly throw themselves into it.

In 1963, Tim Matheson witnessed brother Chris Demetral being murdered by a gang of local ne'er-do-wells, who perished shortly afterwards when their car was struck by an oncoming train. Ever since, he has suffered from nightmares. But Matheson is determined to return to his hometown and take up a post at the high school and wife Brooke Adams and son Robert Hy Gorman are happy to support him.

No sooner has Matheson settled in, however, than some of his students start to die off in what appears to be a series of suicidal accidents, with one lad crashing his motorbike into a quarry and another girl hanging herself. Compounding the tragedies, however, Matheson becomes convinced that members of the greaser gang are replacing his lost students and begins to suspect that they are assembling to kill him in revenge for what befell them three decades earlier.

However, while Robert Rusler tries to lure sole surviving gang member William Sanderson into joining them (so they can supposedly deliver themselves from Hell by destroying the only witness to their crime), Matheson has an unexpected reunion with Demetral, who warns him that Rusler needs one of Matheson's relatives for their scheme to work. Naturally, Adams and Gorman are stupid enough to leave the church where they cannot be touched and Matheson has to confront the thugs alone in the hope that Demetral can escape their spectral clutches and assist him.

Laden with hazy flashbacks that make the action feel more mawkish than menacing, this is less than enthralling and only King die-hards are going to go along with its countless contrivances, clichés and caricatures. The climactic appearance of a ghost train apart, the story is devoid of excitement and lacks any palpable sense of dread. It is astonishing, therefore, to recall that this resounding misfire spawned two equally awful sequels: Sometimes They Come Back...Again (1996) and Sometimes They Come Back...For More (1999). The good news, however, it that they haven't been reissued...YET!