Pan (2015) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

December 20, 2015Posted in2015, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Family, Fantasy

Pan2

***½/**** Image B Sound A Extras C
starring Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Levi Miller
screenplay by Jason Fuchs
directed by Joe Wright

by Walter Chaw Paired with Hanna, his take on the Little Red Riding Hood story, Joe Wright’s Pan suggests that the director’s closest career analogue is that of J.J. Abrams. Wright’s askew take on Anna Karenina hints at a sympathetic penchant for ebullient reinterpretation–no less so his adaptations of Atonement (by an author essentially making a career of taking a piss) and Pride & Prejudice, which, in its sparseness and emotional economy, could stand alongside Andrea Arnold’s magnificent Wuthering Heights. Hanna, his best film, achieves at least a portion of its greatness through its bull-headed perversity. No premise is too fanciful to be presented seriously by Wright. In Pan, when we’re introduced to the pirate Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman), a Fury Road‘s collection of orphan miners sing-chants “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in obeisance to their monstrous overlord. It’s something born of Brian Helgeland’s anachronistic A Knight’s Tale and of Terry Gilliam in its antic set design and costuming and of David Lynch, even, in a sequence where Blackbeard dons a mask aboard his flying ship to breathe deep something that resembles the Spice. There’s another sequence in which a pirate ship, a 16th-century galleon, engages in midair with a trio of British Hawker Hurricanes (I think) defending Mother England against the German blitz before breaking through the clouds for a brief, weightless moment.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

December 16, 2015Posted in2015, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Star Wars, Theatrical

Forceawakens

***½/****
starring Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Max Von Sydow
written by Lawrence Kasdan & J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt
directed by J.J. Abrams

by Walter Chaw I was four when I saw Star Wars. It was the first time I’d seen a film in a theatre; it was the first film I’d seen, period. I didn’t speak a word of English. It was overwhelming, and I’m discovering, after watching J.J. Abrams’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens (hereafter Star Wars 7), that it imprinted itself on my DNA. Thirty-eight years later, I collect the toys my parents couldn’t afford to buy me when I was a kid–the ones I played with at friends’ houses, when I pretended to be Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) as a child of immigrants doing his best to fit into a society that promised blond and blue-eyed messiahs. My office is full of these toys. They are fetishized relics for me. I hold them and they possess a totemic value. The curve of a molded plastic stormtrooper’s helmet reminds me of the department store where I looked at it through the packaging–and of my delight at my mom one day buying me one, which I opened on the way home in the backseat of the family car.

Blind Chance (1987) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

December 15, 2015Posted in1980s, 2015, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Drama, Poland, The Criterion Collection

Blindchance1

Przypadek
***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Boguslaw Linda, Tadeusz Lomnicki, Marzena Trybala, Monika Goździk
written and directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski

by Bryant Frazer Before Krzysztof Kieslowski became the standard-bearer for the latter-day European art film with ravishing portraits of unspeakably beautiful women living their lives under unutterably mysterious circumstances, he was a gruff but adventurous chronicler, in both documentary and narrative films, of lives lived in the rather more drab surroundings of communist Poland. Well, money changes everything. It was the arrival of funding from Western sources that bestowed the gift of abstraction: Beginning with the internationally celebrated The Double Life of Veronique in 1991, it made Kieslowski’s expressions of ennui beautiful. But in the 1980s, Kieslowski had less time for beauty.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

December 14, 2015Posted in2015, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Espionage, Thriller, Tom Cruise

Roguenationblu1

***½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Alec Baldwin
screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie
directed by Christopher McQuarrie

by Walter Chaw At some point, sneakily, wonderfully, Tom Cruise became our Jackie Chan. It happened when the storyline shifted away from his essential ickiness–the Scientology thing, the Katie Holmes thing, and all the attendant nightmare gossip–and onto his fearlessness and absolute willingness to perform his own stunts wherever possible. (I realize of course that said storyline may never shift for some.) There were murmurs when he did the rock-climbing in the second Mission: Impossible flick–the one where he recruited John Woo, who was at the time the best action director on the planet. Those murmurs turned to grudging admiration once it was revealed that Cruise let himself be suspended for real outside the Burj Khalifa in Brad Bird’s superior Ghost Protocol; and now, with Christopher McQuarrie’s fleet, intelligent, immanently professional Rogue Nation, for which Cruise hung from an airplane in flight and held his breath for six minutes, Cruise’s bravado is a big part of the draw.

Macbeth (2015)

December 10, 2015Posted in2015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, France, Shakespeare, Theatrical, UK, War

Macbeth2015

***½/****
starring Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Paddy Considine, David Thewlis
screenplay by Todd Louiso & Jacob Kokoff and Michael Leslie
directed by Justin Kurzel

by Walter Chaw In a season awash in Terrence Malick shrines, Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth has the temerity to evoke Andrei Tarkovsky instead. Maybe certain moments from Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha, married to the saturated minimalism of Tarkovsky’s Stalker. It’s beautiful, in other words. Stunning enough that its self-consciousness is just another approach to centuries-old material, and a comfortable part of the whole. There are two approaches left to Shakespeare, I think: to acknowledge the centuries of intense scholarship around the canon that has uncovered the archetype (mostly Jungian, sometimes Freudian) mooring the tales, or to ignore them. This Macbeth understands that the Scottish Play is splashed red–all passion and portent and looming storms flashing low on the horizon. Every incident is portent. I mumbled along with the “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech that I memorized for extra credit in eighth grade and marvelled at how Kurzel rolled it into a greater thematic conversation about the lust between these two people, Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) and his Lady (Marion Cotillard). It’s as interesting an interpretation as Ethan Hawke’s Melancholy Dane pondering choices in the aisles of Blockbuster Video. Muting the dialogue, swallowing it as Fassbender does here (or burying it, as in the various battleground sequences–Banquo (Paddy Considine) calls out his warning choking on blood and dirt), has the effect of placing the words of the story as secondary to its indelible images. It’s Macbeth as mythology, seeking to explain how eternity metastasizes in the space between a couple who have lost a child.

Krampus (2015)

December 7, 2015Posted in2015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Horror, Theatrical

Krampus

**/****
starring Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Krista Stadler
written by Todd Casey & Michael Dougherty & Zach Shields
directed by Michael Dougherty

by Walter Chaw I used to have a collection of short stories edited by Isaac Asimov, The Twelve Frights of Christmas. Ramsey Campbell’s “The Chimney” is anthologized therein, and though it’s not directly a Krampus story, it’s sort of a Krampus story and was, at least, the first time I’d been introduced to the concept of something like an anti-Santa. It’s a great story. Michael Dougherty’s Krampus is not great, but with all the lulls and jokes misfiring, it does give you plenty of time to think about other things. (I didn’t like his Trick ‘r Treat either.) What works about the film are its first twenty minutes or so, where Dougherty seems to be setting up an unpleasant, nasty little commentary on the commodification of Christmas. There’s trouble, though, when the parts of your movie that work are the parts that compare best to Jingle All the Way. I’ll say, too, that there’s genuine delight in the appearance of weird snowmen on the lawn during a blizzard blackout, stranding a shitty family alone with their thoughts while a German alpine demon lurks about outside–as well as hope, however self-deluding and fleet, that Dougherty’s going to pay off the early abduction of the second-most sympathetic child of six. Alas, it’s ultimately as compromised as Trick ‘r Treat. The last five minutes are a masterpiece of playing both sides against the middle and pandering to an intended middlebrow audience. Like its PG-13 rating, Krampus is a devil’s bargain between horror film and family film. It’s the kind of thing that only really worked when it was Gremlins.

Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight (1995) [Collector’s Edition] + Tales from the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood (1996) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Discs

November 30, 2015Posted in1990s, 2015, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller, Vampire

Talesfromcrypt3

Demon Knight
***/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A
starring Billy Zane, William Sadler, Jada Pinkett, Brenda Bakke
written by Ethan Reiff & Cyrus Voris & Mark Bishop
directed by Ernest Dickerson

Bordello of Blood
*/**** Image B Sound C+ Extras A
starring Dennis Miller, Erika Eleniak, Angie Everhart, John Kassir
screenplay by A.L. Katz & Gilbert Adler
directed by Gilbert Adler

by Walter Chaw I didn’t have HBO as a kid. Didn’t even have cable. When I went over to friends’ houses, I would spend a lot of time wanting to watch MTV to try to catch up on all the popular culture I was missing. “Remote Control”, the first Jon Stewart show, “Dream On”, “The Kids in the Hall”–each of them represent gaping holes in my pop education. Lump in the Walter Hill-produced “Tales from the Crypt” anthology program with that group of things I knew about but only by title and reputation. My first exposure to the EC Comics-inspired/adapted-from show was through reprints of “Tales from the Crypt” and “Strange Tales” comics during the early-’90s industry boom. Then Ernest Dickerson’s fantastic Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight (hereafter Demon Knight) satisfied every single expectation I had of something seeking to honour the ghoulish, sometimes puerile depravity of William Gaines’s seminal source material. It’s as gory as it is corny and smart as hell for recognizing that those were the only requirements. Doesn’t hurt that the practical-effects work is goopy and inventive. Oh, and the cast is exceptional.

San Andreas (2015) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

November 29, 2015Posted in2015, Action, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Disaster Movie, Drama, DVD, Thriller

Sanandreas1

**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B
starring Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, Alexandra Daddario, Paul Giamatti
screenplay by Carlton Cuse
directed by Brad Peyton

by Bryant Frazer Back in the 1970s, Hollywood thrillers broke a sweat trying to depict a single terrible event–just one burning building, overturned luxury liner, or airship disaster. These days, the imagery has gotten a lot more freewheeling. Armed with powerful computer algorithms that generate cartoonish eruptions of earth, fire, wind, and water, today’s VFX supervisors have a mandate to make bad things happen on screen–all of the bad things, preferably at the same time. In San Andreas, the terrible, horrible, no-good very bad day includes a disintegrating Hoover Dam and a container ship that cartwheels end-over-end into the Golden Gate Bridge. Skyscrapers collapse in on themselves, generating 9/11 flashback clouds of dust and debris that blast through city streets. A tsunami and its attendant flooding sends murky water pulsing through the floors of submerged high-rises, trapping helpless victims inside like goldfish behind glass. It would all be a little hard to take if the visual effects were more convincing (they’re cartoonish) or the action scenes at all naturalistic (ditto), but director Brad Peyton isn’t especially ambitious. His operative aesthetic is purely Theme Park.

Creed (2015)

November 25, 2015Posted in2015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Sports, Stallone, Theatrical

Creed

***/****
starring Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad
screenplay by Ryan Coogler & Aaron Covington
directed by Ryan Coogler

by Walter Chaw I love this movie. I do. It’s not perfect. The love interest is underbaked and the fight choreography of the final match is unfortunately disjointed. But I love this movie–unconditionally, I guess. The story goes that Ryan Coogler, the young director of Fruitvale Station, pitched Sylvester Stallone on the idea of rebooting Rocky with Apollo Creed’s son. (Something the Indiana Jones series needs to do with a grown-up Short Round, by the way.) The auto-critical analysis of the film is that it’s essentially a father/son intrigue, which lends some insight into the Rocky/Mickey relationship of the original Rockys, and there are enough references to same to gratify the cultists. What I liked most about Stallone’s willingness to take a shot on a fresh idea from a minority perspective–this is the first instalment of one of his two venerable franchises not to spring from a Stallone-written script–is that it feeds into the idea of Stallone as an auteur maybe, a canny cultural anthropologist definitely. Every Rocky, every Rambo, is distinctly a product of its time. I don’t feel qualified to talk about this, but to the extent that I understand the theory, I’m sold.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015)

November 22, 2015Posted in2015, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

Mockingjay2

***/****
starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Donald Sutherland
screenplay by Peter Craig and Danny Strong, based on the novel by Suzanne Collins
directed by Francis Lawrence

by Walter Chaw The first four hours of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (hereafter Hunger Games 3.2) are interminable. Because I barely remember anything from any other movie in this series (I had to go back and reread my reviews, not just to refresh my memory, but to affirm that I’d even seen the previous films), everything that wraps up loose threads, the two (count ’em) times characters are forced to give Biblical genealogies to the probable delight of ardent fans, the deadening nonsense involving love triangles, all that jazz, is exactly like watching paint dry. It’s bookkeeping. They could just be moving their lips and making smacking noises. I like how the late Philip Seymour Hoffman handles these scenes: chin to the chest, looking for all the world like he’s counting minutes. It’s not unlike that part of The Sound and the Fury (which is my favourite book, by the way, so I’m not really complaining) that most people skim. And for good reason. Moby Dick has one, too. I’m saying this in the vain hope that you lay off in the comments section. Oh, I also still hate the silly Dickensian names. They’re stupid and desperate.

Spectre (2015)

November 7, 2015Posted in2015, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Espionage, James Bond, Theatrical, Thriller

Spectre

***/****
starring Daniel Craig, Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Ralph Fiennes
screenplay by John Logan and Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and Jez Butterworth
directed by Sam Mendes

by Walter Chaw My favourite James Bond movie is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: the first without Sean Connery as Bond, and the first and only featuring Australian model George Lazenby in the role. It’s the one where Bond falls in love, marries, and, in the end, is unable to protect his new bride from her demons. I like it the best because, despite a few typically silly Bond moments, it has Bond’s Moriarty, Blofeld (Telly Savalas in that film), acting as the spear in our hero’s side, and it has Bond attempting to address his own failures as a human being and being taught, essentially, that the world is a cold place. I like it the best because it feels melancholy and hopeless. Bond is psychotic, you see, a serial philanderer and killer given license to do both by a broken state and the illusion of order. He’s a rapist in Fleming’s novels (and consider the conquest of Pussy Galore in Goldfinger)–literally in some instances, in others just given to taking advantage of women in extremis. It’s a very particular ruling-class fantasy punctuated by gadgets and automobiles–film noir, except the code our ambiguous hero plays by is more Humphrey Bogart’s from In a Lonely Place than Bogey’s from The Maltese Falcon.

Echoes (11/6/15)

November 6, 2015Posted in2015, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog, Directors: David Lynch, Echoes
Return to Oz (1985, d. Walter Murch): The Straight Story (1999, d. David Lynch): Note that there are other Disney movies that begin with the company's name over a starfield (The Black Hole, Toy Story 2), but given Lynch's history of paying tribute to The Wizard of Oz, these two seemed less of a coincidence.

Nightbreed: The Director’s Cut (1990) [Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack] + Clive Barker’s Lord of Illusions (1995) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Discs

November 1, 2015Posted in1990s, 2015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

Nightbreed1

Clive Barker’s Nightbreed
**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A
starring Craig Sheffer, Anne Bobby, David Cronenberg, Charles Haid
screenplay by Clive Barker, based on his novel Cabal
directed by Clive Barker

CLIVE BARKER’S LORD OF ILLUSIONS
*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras C+
starring Scott Bakula, Kevin J. O’Connor, Famke Janssen, Daniel Von Bargen
written for the screen and directed by Clive Barker

by Walter Chaw Clive Barker’s too-brief directing career, capping his time as the Stephen King-anointed prince of horror (“I have seen the future of horror and his name is Clive Barker,” went King’s famous endorsement), produced three cult classics: Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and Lord of Illusions. His Hollywood trajectory traces the familiar tale of enfant terrible allowed full reign on his first project, only to find subsequent efforts bowdlerized by non-believers. Director’s cuts of Nightbreed and Lord of Illusions have circulated in some form over the years, with fans claiming–particularly in the case of Nightbreed–that masterpieces had been corrupted, hidden from sight. It’s the kind of intrigue that forms the basis of much of Barker’s work: the hidden grotto, arcane knowledge secreted away, art too beautiful for human eyes. There’s something of the fury of H.P. Lovecraft’s cult of personality in this–something more of the cosplay phenomenon. Each of Barker’s movies evokes the absolute acceptance that outsiders encounter at genre conventions: they are explosions of the internal, actings-out of repressed desires. Find in this explanation of the coda, surprisingly sticky despite the bad pun, to his short-story anthologies: “Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we’re opened, we’re red.” Clive Barker is the Douglas Sirk of splatter.

The Sentinel (1977) – Blu-ray Disc

October 28, 2015Posted in1970s, 2015, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Disability, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory

Sentinel771

*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Chris Sarandon, Cristina Raines, Martin Balsam, John Carradine
screenplay by Michael Winner and Jeffrey Konvitz, based on the novel by Konvitz
directed by Michael Winner

by Bryant Frazer Death Wish director Michael Winner tried his hand at a boilerplate horror flick with The Sentinel, another in the long-running cycle of American horror films that doubled as scary religious propaganda, with the faith of Catholic priests the last bulwark against harrowing incursions by Satan himself on our mortal realm. It’s not a good movie, but it has a hell of a supporting cast–Christopher Walken, Eli Wallach, and Ava Gardner, just for starters–and that specific, vaguely gritty time-and-place authenticity that you could only get by shooting on location in New York City in the 1970s. For this type of genre piece, that ensures a small kind of immortality, but Winner, indifferently adapting a best-selling novel and barely directing a lead actress who hates him, brings to it a certain je ne sais quoi that pushes it over the line into the sleazeball hall of fame.

The Food of the Gods (1976)/Frogs (1972) [Double Feature] + Empire of the Ants (1977)/Jaws of Satan (1981) [Double Feature] – Blu-ray Discs

October 26, 2015Posted in1970s, 1980s, 2015, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller

Frogselliott

THE FOOD OF THE GODS
**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
starring Marjoe Gortner, Pamela Franklin, Ralph Meeker, Ida Lupino
screenplay by Bert I. Gordon, based on a portion of the novel by H.G. Wells
directed by Bert I. Gordon

FROGS
**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
starring Ray Milland, Sam Elliott, Joan Van Ark, Adam Roarke
screenplay by Robert Hutchison and Robert Blees
directed by George McCowan

EMPIRE OF THE ANTS
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C-
starring Joan Collins, Robert Lansing, John David Carson, Albert Salmi
screenplay by Jack Turley, story by Bert I. Gordon, based on the novel by H.G. Wells
directed by Bert I. Gordon

King Cobra
***/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C-
starring Fritz Weaver, Gretchen Corbett, Jon Korkes, Norman Lloyd
screenplay by Gerry Holland, from a story by James Callaway
directed by Bob Claver

by Jefferson Robbins If THE DISSOLVE had lasted, Keith Phipps’s fine recurring genre feature “The Laser Age” might have gotten around to the SF subcategory of Nature Gone Wild–the movies that set animals against humanity, such as The Swarm, Night of the Lepus, Squirm, and Prophecy (The Monster Movie). Distinctly a 1970s phenomenon, as we fretted over the northward migration of killer bees and the health of our DDT-soaked bald eagles, the films usually boasted critters who turned on us bipeds after stewing too long in our toxic effluents, perhaps gaining bestial superpowers as a result. They were cheapies, by and large, although with The Swarm director Irwin Allen tried to pull off the same broad settings and large aging-star cast he’d managed in his previous disaster flicks. As a trope, humanity vs. nature works best in isolation, when solitary heroes or groups of victims are besieged in the sticks, with no outside help forthcoming.

The Rioting Pants: “Me and a Douche and a Bag”

October 26, 2015Posted in2015, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog
by Bill Chambers Hey, folks: I debated long and hard about whether to post this here and I hope you'll forgive the self-indulgence. This is a recently-posted music video I animated and edited for The Rioting Pants, my brother's band; linking it because it's seasonally fitting, a kind of monster rally inspired by "Scooby-Doo" as well as those Hanna-Barbera videos that used to clog the gaps between Saturday-morning cartoons. It ain't up to the level of Pixar but it is entertaining, in my humble and biased opinion. Be sure to select the 1080p viewing option for the full HiDef experience--I worked…

Needing Bigger Boats: FFC Interviews Larry Fessenden

October 24, 2015Posted in2015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Horror, Interviews

Larryftitleillustration by Bill Chambers

It was within the first six months or so of trying this thing out professionally that I reviewed Larry Fessenden's third film (and masterpiece), Wendigo. I was moved, deeply, by its observation of childhood and innocence lost. I was taken by the care of its presentation. It was thematically tight. And technically? On point, including a fantastic stop-motion, practical conception of the titular bogie. It's a lovely bit of myth-making that understands why we make myths in the first place. Years later, when Fessenden directed his "aquatic" film Beneath for basic cable, certain wags would brand it his Jaws–knowing, famously, that Spielberg's maritime yarn was among Fessenden's favourites. The boat they missed is that his Jaws is actually Wendigo: childhood's end; death of the father; the parents' inability to protect their young; and, yes, the creation of myths to contextualize what it could and explain the rest away.

Review Round-Up: 10/16/15

October 23, 2015Posted in2015, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blog
Opening nationally this week are Steve Jobs, about a guy named Steve who's given personalized tasks; and Suffragette, about a T-shirt campaign gone horribly wrong. In case you missed these reviews the first time around, Walter Chaw covered both at Telluride.

The Legacy (1978) – Blu-ray Disc

October 20, 2015Posted in1970s, 2015, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Mystery, Scream/Shout! Factory, UK

Legacy1

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring Katharine Ross, Sam Elliott, Roger Daltrey, John Standing
screenplay by Jimmy Sangster, Patrick Tilley and Paul Wheeler from a story by Sangster
directed by Richard Marquand

by Bryant Frazer One in a spate of post-The Exorcist, post-Rosemary’s Baby potboilers about ordinary people confronting ancient evil in the modern world, The Legacy has an enduring reputation as a big slice of horror cheese and not much else. Certainly, it’s derivative–just another old-dark-house yarn set in the English countryside, spiced up in ’70s fashion with a sinister, Satanic backstory that never quite clicks together. It’s one of the last horror movies to come out in the handsomely-mounted classic style favoured by Hammer before contemporary slashers and body-horror changed the game completely in the 1980s, but what it lacks in originality and coherence it makes up for in comfy genre atmosphere. Co-scriptor Jimmy Sangster was one of the top dogs at Hammer Film Productions (his writing credits include Horror of Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein) and Welsh director Richard Marquand was a BBC documentarian making his fiction debut (he would go on to direct Return of the Jedi). That’s not a world-beating combination, but if you like your occult thrillers played straight, The Legacy‘s workmanlike style is an asset.