This is an optimal opportunity to indulge cinematic entertainment at home. And the fact that P doesn't share my blood-lust, it means that I can watch gory gems like The Hills Have Eyes or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
One of my favourites is the 2002 small-budget UK thriller starring Sean Pertwee Dog Soldiers. Basic premise from IMDb etc., is thus:
The film is about a group of British soldiers on routine patrol in Scotland who come across what seems to be a group of man-eating beasts that turn out to be werewolves. The squad seeks refuge in a rickety farmhouse, where a plucky zoologist reveals the horrifying truth about the beasts, which patrol the surrounding wilderness. They do their best to fight off the constant attack by the flesh eating beasts and only one survive. Dog Soldiers is a triumph of invention over slick special effects, and puts to shame some of Hollywood's more recent efforts.
Anyway, it's an excellent brooding example of its genre and has a brilliant scene where a hungry farm dog mistakes Wurzel Gummidge Jnr's guts (they are hanging out of his ripped stomach) for a string of sausages -- so bites, grabs and tries to run off with them.
To my mind this is brilliant, if slightly sick theatre.
Suffice it to say P wasn't so impressed when she saw it and now has banned all horror flicks. (I might exaggerate slightly..)
So anyway, left to my own devices, this week's entertainment was another and very similar Pertwee -- small group lost-in the wilderness terrorised and picked-off one-by-one by shadow-lurking-nasty -- vehicle, titled Wilderness.
This is the blurb from Yahoo! Movies which is quite accurate.
What do you get when you put a group of violent prisoners, including a couple of drug dealers, an armed robber, a serial sex offender and a murderer, on a supposedly uninhabited island with an unknown hunter and pack of killer dogs? Answer: the coolest, most brutal and terrifying British horror film since 28 Days Later...Or as Time Out describes: A bloody slice of survival horror in which ‘Scum’ meets ‘Dog Soldiers’, with a side order of ‘Lord of the Flies’.
Choice. OK, a degree of hyperbole, but still a cut above most and an entertaining Thursday evening.
Anyway, I hear that Hollywood has got in on the act and is planning a sequel release next year, Dog Soldiers: Fresh Blood.
While the fact of Americans messing around with British classics fills me with mortal dread -- anyone see last year's remakes of The Wicker Man?!!! -- I'll reserve judgement..
Again, here's IMDb's blurb.
A small U.S. Unit are immediately sent in to discover what has happened to the missing British unit. They quickly find the British unit's demolished base camp and the apparent only survivor -- but there are no signs of any dead bodies. What has happened to the rest of these men? Now the Unit hear a distant gun-battle. The American troops race across the moonlit forest to rescue the original British Squad who are trapped in the remote farmhouse. However, a second pack of savage werewolves are in pursuit. The new pack is in fact the surviving members of the SAS team now transformed into werewolves, but they have retained trace memories of their commando training. The new werewolves are faster, deadlier and smarter then the original Highland werewolves. These are true Dog Soldiers - and they are hungry for fresh meat.
The premise for a return is masterful. But I always worry when it's Americans to the rescue.
Anyway, P's home tonight so it'll be some sort of inane chick flick. Sob..
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