Jennifer's Body (2009)

So, it looks like Megan Fox has been dumped from the Transformers franchise, after confirming to the press that Michael Bay is the thundering asshat that we all knew he was. Poor Megan Fox. Bay is a capricious and vengeful God; He giveth acting careers and He taketh them away. In the light of that news, what better time to review her 2009 Diablo-Cody-penned horror-comedy flop Jennifer's Body? Well, maybe back when it came out. Or when it came out on DVD. Or when the news about her ejection from the Transformers sequel came out a week or so ago. I only watched this movie on a whim at my sister's place a couple of days ago, so give me a break. Jesus.

Although the trailers made it seem like Megan Fox's Tits: The Movie, the main protagonist is actually her character's best friend Needy, played by Amanda Seyfried. The two are childhood friends, and have remained BFFs even though Jennifer has grown up to be a super-hot cheerleader and Needy a just-as-hot-but-wearing-dorky-glasses-and-tying-her-hair-back-so-you-know-she's-supposed-to-be-ugly nerd. One night Jennifer convinces Needy to come with her to a bar too see a lame indie rock band, but the bar catches on fire and the band kidnaps Jennifer so they can sacrifice her in a black magic ritual. The band mistakenly believe that she's a virgin (yeah right) so the sacrifice goes horribly wrong and she turns into an immortal cannibal succubus.

This is one of those allegorical horror films that's all about the trial and tribulations of being a teenage girl, like Ginger Snaps or Teeth, but it isn't as explicitly about puberty and burgeoning female sexuality except in the context of Needy and Jennifer's relationship. It's more about how Jennifer's rampant fucking/murdering drives a wedge between them and highlights the inequalities in their friendship. Needy has always been fairly indulgent and desperate for approval from Jennifer (oh, I see what you did there) and Jennifer's transformation into a sexy cannibal has only exacerbated things. For instance, Jennifer barfs evil black goo all over Needy's kitchen floor and doesn't even help clean it up. Eventually Needy realises that her friendship with Jennifer is not healthy and has to move on (by killing her).

I did appreciate that they didn't paint Needy as a desperate loser (in fact, she has a long-time boyfriend who is really sweet and probably the smartest character in the whole film) but she is a pretty passive protagonist. For most of the film she just stands around while Jennifer menaces and taunts her. Hell, when the bar catches on fire she just stands there and watches the flames spread across the ceiling beams. Do something, girl. Having such a useless protagonist really makes the middle of the film drag, but it's a nice moment at the end when she finally finds her balls. She has a Rambo-style power-up scene when she gears up for the final battle, a cliche I always love. It ends on a surprising bummer though, with Needy a violent inmate in a correctional facility. This isn't a spoiler, since it's part of the opening scene. It then flashes back to show what happened to get her there, followed immediately by a flashback within the flashback. Ouch. Shades of Dragon Wars.

In the wake of the Great Juno Backlash of '09, the studios played down Diablo Cody's involvement, but all of her trademarks are present and accounted for. Set design is a non-stop kitsch parade, with ugly wallpaper, hideous 80s style prom dresses a wide variety of ironic t-shirts. There's also gratuitous pop-culture name-dropping, for instance Needy is a big Evil Dead fan for no reason. Then, of course, there's the stylised dialog, which I didn't mind so much in Juno, but it grated on me a lot more here. A lot of this movie sounds like the executive producers brought in a focus group of teens to make the dialog sound more "real", and so the teens just started making up phony slang for shits and giggles, as is their wont. "Yeah, 'salty' is a word to describe someone who is hot. It's really popular on Twitter. You may want to include a line to explain it or the audience might get all freaktarded." Probably the biggest groaner is when Fox tells someone to "movealong.org".

I think part of the reason I didn't mind the Diablo-Cody-isms in Juno is that it had a solid emotional core that seemed really sweet and genuine. This film didn't work for me on that level, so when that kind of stylised dialog runs head first into a dramatic context it's really jarring and awkward. The worst part is during a scene at a funeral for one of the victims. After a bunch of goth types spout some goofy poetry (making fun of goths? How cutting edge) the grieving mother stands up and gives an outraged speech that does not approximate anything that has been said by any human being ever. She uses terms like "I have a monopoly on pain" and describes her son's corpse as looking like "lasagna with teeth" (a line which Cody must be particularly proud of, since she uses it again later). It's pretty bad.

Also working against this movie was the unfortunate decision to focus all the marketing around Megan Fox, who had become a walking punchline by this point. Even though I don't think she's a great actress, I don't think it's fair to judge her solely on her performance in Transformers. Michael Bay's notoriously poor direction of actors is partly to blame. To her credit she's much better here, although it should be no surprise that she does an alright job at playing a creepy, emotionless sex demon. Seriously, have you looked into those eyes? She's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. She's got the emotionless, hollowed-out look of a porn star but ironically she never appears nude. Oh, except you see her ass in this one. Some of her boobs too. Have at it, boys.

Mirrors (2008)

You try to avoid looking into evil mirrors when

your wife has such an awesome rack.

I loved Haute Tension (except for the twist ending) and I thought the The Hills Have Eyes remake was one of the best things to come out of this horror remake boom, so I had some high hopes for Alexandre Aja. I knew this one wasn't well received, but horror rarely gets good critical reviews, especially when it's this well produced, so I thought it was worth a shot. Apparently it's based on a not-great Korean horror film called Into the Mirror, which I haven't seen, but unlike many Asian horror remakes it's rated R, so it's possible for adults to enjoy it and not just tiny, tiny babies.

Kiefer Sutherland plays Ben Carson, a former NYPD Detective who shot an undercover cop about a year ago (we know this because he keeps year-old newspapers lying around), turned to drink, lost his job, his family etc. Now he's living with his sister Angela (Amy Smart) and taking mystery drugs to help him overcome his alcoholism. Until he can get reinstated he's taken a job as a nightwatchman at a huge, derelict department store that was burnt-out in a fire five years ago, but hasn't been refurbished due to an ongoing insurance battle. It's kind of weird because it's this enormous, beautiful building just sitting vacant in the middle of Manhattan. Can you imagine the taxes?

Anyway, all the creepy mannequins and blackened fixtures make it a good setting for a supernatural horror film. It seems that the previous nightwatchman, Gary Lewis, had an obsession with mirrors and would spend his evenings polishing up all the mirrors in the building. I don't know why, since his reflection is clearly an asshole who made him slit his own throat in the opening scene. Carson doesn't know this though, so he's pretty freaked out when he sees weird stuff in the mirrors, like his own reflection giving him sass or people burning from bad CG fire. Carson even catches on bad CG fire himself and it's a little embarrassing when he starts rolling around on the floor groaning and screaming. Quick, somebody find a bad CG fire extinguisher!

At this point I figured that the department store was hell of haunted, but it turns out to be something much more ridiculous. In fact, it's pretty amazing how quickly Carson leaps to the conclusion that these ghastly visions are something evil-mirror-related. I guess he's a pretty good detective after all. He's also helped along by Gary Lewis, who posthumously sends him a conspiracy theorist starter kit, full of newspaper clippings about the department store fire and mysterious mirror-related deaths. He stumbles across another convenient clue when he finds Gary Lewis' wallet lying around the department store. It contains a scrawled note reading "Esseker".

I figured this note was a "redrum" kind of deal but it's not, it actually refers to Anna Esseker, a schizophrenia patient from an old mental institution that's walled-up in the basement of the department store. Obviously, right? Luckily he's got one of those detective buddies who will look up any piece of information he wants, no questions asked, so soon he's got his hands on a big file of exposition. It seems that back in 1952, before ethics committees, Anna was given an experimental schizophrenia treatment where she was strapped into a room full of mirrors and forced to look at her own reflection for days on end. A couple of days later all of the other patients butchered each other, Anna disappeared and the institution was closed. I guess everyone forgot after that, I mean who would remember an incident like that?

Firstly Carson heads to the creepy farmhouse where Anna used to live. Apparently she suffered from violent seizures that were a danger to herself and others, so her brother shows him the basement dungeon where they used to lock her up. I don't know why they still have it after 56 years, maybe they rent it out as a bed-and-breakfast. He also discovers that after the incident at the institution Anna was shipped off to a convent with a strict no-mirrors policy, and there she remains, so Carson heads there to meet her. She tells him that she wasn't schizophrenic at all, she had a terrible case of Satanitis, and the demon is now trapped in mirrors, or some stupid shit.

While all of this is going on he freaks out his family by getting crazier and crazier. His sister asks the perfectly reasonable question "Why don't you get a normal day job?" but he responds "It's not that simple." Well, no actually, it really is. In fact, his poor sister cops it worst of all, a literally jaw-droppingly gory death while she's taking a bath. Poor Amy Smart. He also freaks out his cleavage-happy wife and adorable moppet kids by going on crazy rants, painting over all the mirrors in their house and even busting some caps at an evil mirror in their front yard. I don't blame them for thinking he's insane, his behaviour is pretty crazy, even for a guy being haunted by evil mirrors. Just calm down, will ya? Jeez.

Eventually his wife experiences some mirror hauntings for herself, so it's a race against time as Carson takes the nun back to the mental institution at gunpoint so she can face her demons or whatever. He straps her into the creepy mirror room and after thrashing around for while she just straight-up explodes, along with every mirror in the joint. This would have made a fine ending (and in fact in did, until poor test screenings forced them to change it) but instead Anna turns into a CG demon thingy and starts chasing Carson around and throwing him through walls. As the building starts collapsing all around him he impales her on a gas pipe and, shouting "Eat this, bitch!" (it's not exactly "Let off some steam, Bennett"), shoots the pipe until it explodes. In addition to the unnecessary demon fight, they also added a twist ending. Audiences these days expect a twist ending in their horror, even if it's stupid and nonsensical, and this one makes the twist ending of Bruno Mattei's Rats: Night of Terror look perfectly reasonable.

There are some creepy moments in this film (the misbehaving reflections are pretty good) but overall the premise is far too silly for a movie that takes itself this seriously. Alexandra seems to be aware of this fact, since he seems to be working way too hard to make things scary. There are so many ominous shots of mirrors, complete with overbearing musical stings, that I think it would make an good drinking game. Just don't don't look at your reflection in the shot glass. There's a pretty funny part where Carson smashes his rear-vision mirror in frustration, only for the camera to hold on an extended shot of his car's side mirror. "You can't escape us! Mirrors are everywhere." It's almost as hilarious as the evil trees in The Happening.

Although it's not all that scary, I did enjoy Kiefer Sutherland's batshit performance. He does a lot of hoarse whispering and shouting for no reason, what other people refer to as his Jack Bauer voice but since I've never seen 24 I'll have to take their word for it. He screams, he cries, he gets to say ridiculous lines like "Stay away from the water! It creates reflections!" without a trace of irony. We're talking almost Nicolas Cage levels here, the DEFCON 4 of overacting. Highly enjoyable.

There's probably a good movie in here somewhere. If they had stuck with the haunted department store I think it could have been a pretty good horror film, but it just tries to do too much. Instead of focusing on one thing it spirals out into a greatest-hits of supernatural horror, with spooky mental institutions, creepy farmhouses, demonic creatures and exploding nuns. I'm not going to write Aja off completely, but consider my faith in him soundly shaken.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

I've been looking forward to this film for a while and by the time the trailer was released in Australia - basically a stream of hyperbolic pull-quotes from various newspapers, websites and probably your mum, calling it the "scariest film ever made" - the hype had reached such epidemic proportions that it nearly turned me off the whole thing. Going in I was naturally a bit skeptical, but luckily I really enjoyed it, probably the best example of... well, I used to call them Blair-Witch-style films, but there are so many of them now that that comparison seems a bit quaint and old-fashioned, like referring to modern video games as Space Invaders. It's a documentary-style horror film. You know what I'm talking about.

Here is a plot synopsis: Micah (Micah Sloat) and Katie (Katie Featherston) set up a video camera in their bedroom in order to gather proof of some ghostly activity in their new house. During the day Micah films their conversations as they discuss their situation and what they are going to do about it. During the night he mounts the camera to a tripod and films their bed as they sleep. These sequences are where the movie really shines; time-lapse photography punctuated with ghostly happenings that are breathlessly suspenseful. At around 90 minutes it's the perfect length, it could have easily worn out the formula if it had gone on much longer.

I liked that the two leads weren't Hollywood actors. They look like normal people you might actually see or talk to in real life. They are both good actors but there is a rawness and a realism to their performances that makes them a lot more believable. You aren't constantly aware that they are annoying movie characters like in Cloverfield and the acting never gets as hammy as in The Blair Witch Project. Micah is a bit of a douchebag but he's a believable douchebag. It's understandable that he'd be really fascinated and excited by it at first, and then later that he'd want to stay and protect his girlfriend and try to take care of things himself. It's less understandable why he would sit on all that footage instead of showing it to somebody. I bet Ghost Hunters would pay a fortune for that shit.

A couple of times they call in a psychic who is a pretty funny character. He tells her that the presence in their house isn't a ghost, it's a demon, which blows because that means it's completely random and malicious, and pretty much anything you do will just piss it off more. Sucks to be you. Also, leaving the house won't do jack because it's tied to Katie's presence (a pretty clever way of dodging the usual plothole of the couple just packing their shit and leaving the house). Then he gives her the number of his demonologist friend and leaves. They are unable to contact him and, faced with some serious feces/fan interaction, they call in the psychic again. He basically says "I'm pissing this thing off more by just being here. You're on your own." and leaves. What an asshole!

This film also does a great job of integrating the camera into the story and the Paranormal Activities are kept on such a a small scale that you can (usually) understand why they would pick up a camera and try to document it instead of running for their lives. I must have shouted out "Just put the camera down, you fucking idiot!" only half a dozen times or so, which is a new record. Even more importantly, the camera is kept relatively steady. Micah actually holds the camera like a normal person; pointing it at his subject; panning and zooming steadily and sparingly. Then during the night scenes, when most of the spooky shit happens, the camera is mounted on a tripod. Hallelujah! Nice to have a film that doesn't assume modern audiences won't fall asleep from boredom if the camera isn't leaping around like a Jack Russell terrier. At the showing I went to you could hear a pin drop during those night scenes. They were as engrossed as fuck.

I had a couple of minor problems with the film. There was a part where Micah spread talcum powder on the floor to try and get evidence of the demon's presence and, well, they looked like oversized bird feet. Maybe they thought that hooves were too cliche, but I couldn't shake the feeling that she was being haunted by Big Bird. Also, I wasn't really happy with the way the film ended, with Katie covered in blood and the bad CG etc. It was too much. I would have preferred if they had cut out that final part and ended things a little more ambiguously. I'm sure it would have pissed off a lot of teenagers, but they're too busy giggling during the dramatic scenes and twittering their facebooks or whatever so fuck 'em.

This film probably isn't for everyone. In fact, I know it's not for everyone because when it finished I heard a guy say incredulously "Was that supposed to be scary?" Sorry, guy. Also, you probably won't like it if go into it expecting a huge payoff. About an hour in a oujia board catches on fire and this qualifies as one of the more over-the-top moments of the film. Those people who hated The Blair Witch Project and can't get over the double-artifice of the fake documentary style probably won't like it either. It worked for me, though. I don't think I've ever been so scared watching so little happen. If you can buy into the fake documentary style then I think you will enjoy it and movie magic will happen etc. You will believe a door can move.

Guy N. Smith Book Review - Fiend

The Politburo are left in a bit of a pickle when the Party Chairman, Andre Keschev, keels over from a fatal stroke while on a hunting trip. Beloved by both the party and the public, Keschev's presence is essential at an upcoming world summit in Geneva. In desperation they call on Anton Yafremov, a Russian occultist with an interest in the dark arts. He uses his black magic to bring Keschev back to life, but as we learned from Pet Semetary, when you pull this kind of stunt they never come back quite right. Soon Keschev is building up Russian military power and bringing the world to the brink of war, much to the alarm of the Politburo. There's only one option left. Assassinate Keschev. But how can you kill something that's already dead?

Firstly they assign two top KGB assassins to murder him during the talks in Geneva. Instead of a gun they are instructed to use a wooden stake under the assumption that he is a creature of darkness and firearms would be useless. I don't know, I'd at least try first. Take his head off with a sniper rifle or blow him up with a car-bomb. Let's try a few established methods before going all Van Helsing on his ass. Naturally their attempt fails and Keschev easily slaughters the assassins and blames the whole mess on the CIA. In fact, it's only at the very end of the book that someone has the bright idea of marching into his office and blasting him with a shotgun. It doesn't kill him but it does put a sizable hole in his torso that remains there for the rest of the book. A+ for effort.

Probably the weirdest assassination attempt is when they try to use an attack dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback to be precise, to maul Keschev as he is wandering the grounds. Yafremov uses his black magic abilities (I guess?) to inhabit the body of the dog and attack him, only for the dog to be killed by Keschev and Yafremov driven insane as a result. He gets sent to a mental institution, surprising the staff when he grows a bony ridge along the length of his back. Very Tales From the Crypt but a little out of place amongst all the political intrigue.

After shipping all the Russian Jews off to concentration camps (this is not a particularly subtle book) Keschev starts purging the Christians. This hampers the conspirators' efforts to arrange an exorcist, especially when their prime candidate, the head bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, is driven completely batshit by demonic forces. Keschev then goes about systematically murdering all of the members of the Politburo he suspects of conspiring against him, which is everyone. One gets trampled to death by a wild boar, another gets eaten by rats (scrotum first), others are crucified in Cathedral of St. Michael, it's a complete mess. Who can stop the Kremlin Beast?

The main character, if there is one, is Sergey Prokop, a KGB operative turned Kremlin paper pusher, who is blackmailed into assisting a beautiful British spy named Ursula Ramanninov. She is a famous Russian dancer and he falls in love with her even though he rightly suspects she's a honey pot. She's certainly an improvement over his fat drunken bitch of a wife, whose born again Christianity soon earns her a date with the secret police and their spiked dildo of doom. Ramanninov and Prokop gradually piece together the truth of the situation and formulate a plan to kill Keschev. However, with tensions rising and Soviet troops marching through Afghanistan and beyond, can they complete their mission before the world erupts into nuclear war?

Usually Smith's protagonists are misogynistic and one dimensional, but at least they're proactive. Prokop, on the other hand, does pretty much fuck all except get ordered around by other people and mope about his horrible wife. At one point he is assigned to protect a politican during a visit to Keschev's dascha. After completely failing at that task, a prostitute confides in him about her fear of Keschev. His response is to give her a knife and wish her luck, which goes about as well as you'd expect. Also, during the climax of the book Prokop just sits around biting his nails while Ramanninov does all the work. What an asshole.

Like in Warhead, Guy N. Smith tries to combine cold war tension with supernatural horror, but I think he's more successful here. The Russian perspective was interesting and it's always scary to have a crazed madman with their finger on the button. It's one of Smith's longer books and while the cat-and-mouse between Keschev and his conspirators is quite enjoyable it does gets a little repetitive after a while. Some decent suspense is generated as the cast of characters is whittled down and it ends in a decent and somewhat surprising climax. This is a pretty good one.

Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978)

D'awwww! Cutest satanic Hell hound ever!

If the 1970s were to be believed, Satanists were everywhere. Sure they had their two-pronged strategy of recording hidden messages in heavy metal music and corrupting the youth through Dungeons & Dragons (apparently sweaty teenage nerds were Satan's prime demographic) but did you know that roving gangs of Satanists were also seeding happy suburban communities with devil dogs? It's all documented in this made-for-TV movie from 1978, which I'm assuming is 100% true and historically accurate. Yep, evil Satanic cults were picking out the finest breeding bitches they could find and after an occult ceremony, replete with purple robes (one guy is wearing huge sunglasses with his outfit which is actually pretty awesome), candles, pentagrams, chanting etc, the poor dog is up-the-duff with a whole litter of devil dogs.

A couple of months later, happy suburban couple Mike and Betty Barry are driving home after making the final preparations for their daughter Bonnie's 10th birthday party. Uh-oh! It seems that their poor dog Skipper is roadkill. Their neighbour claims he was run over by a mysterious black station wagon. Sure, a sedan would have been more menacing but Satanists need plenty of room in the back for devil dogs. You'd think somebody would have at least moved Skipper's corpse out of the road; he must have been there a while because when Mike picks him up he's as stiff as a board.

Bonnie is inconsolable, but luckily a way-too-friendly farmer pulls up out front offering locally grown fruit and vegetables. After pointedly offering the boy a shiny red apple (symbolism!) he reveals a big pile of puppies in the back of his truck, claiming he has to get rid of them before sundown (or he stuffs them in a bag and drowns them in the bathtub, I assume). Who could turn down an offer like that? Of course the guy is a Satanist in a rather elaborate disguise, but what I want to know is, are the fruits and vegetables evil too? Did some poor suburbanite buy a harmless-looking eggplant only to end up making the Baba Ghanoush... of Beelzebub?

Bonnie names her new dog Lucky and the whole family immediately falls in love with him. Everybody that is, except for the housekeeper, Maria. Confronting Mike, she says the puppy gives her a "scary feeling all over" and begs him to get rid of it. Mike condescendingly replies "Let me think about this, Maria" and all but makes a "cuckoo" gesture with his finger, but Maria is proved right when Lucky uses his psychic puppy powers to burn her alive with the candles from her own Catholic shrine of warding. Cut to a year later and Mike knows there's something suspicious about that dog, especially when it tries to hypnotise him into sticking his hand into a whirling lawnmower blade. Could've been a tense moment but it's a TV movie so you know nothing is going to happen.

Unfortunately, that's one of the big problems with this film. Don't be fooled by the DVD with the angry dog and firghtened Haley-Joel-Osment-looking kid on the cover. Devil dog doesn't actually maul anyone in this film; in fact he doesn't even growl or bare his teeth (except for the rare times he appears in his true demonic form). The neighbour's great dane is mauled to death, presumably by devil dog, but it occurs off screen and it's corpse is discreetly covered by a white sheet with nary a drop of blood to be seen. The neighbour himself also suffers an offscreen death at the hands of devil dog, but it's apparently by drowning in the pool. Come on, he's a satanic hell hound! Let's see some claws and fangs! All devil dog does is stare. He stares and he stares, and any dog owner will tell you that staring is pretty typical behaviour for a dog. It's one of their favourite things to do.

In one particularly hilarious scene, devil dog has a staring competition with Betty as she sits in an easy chair reading a magazine. Every time she looks up she is shocked to see that devil dog has moved a little bit closer, which might be scary for an inanimate object but I'm pretty sure that it's normal behaviour for a dog. Nevertheless, Betty is so terrified that she flees into the bedroom with devil dog trotting lethargically after her, his corrupting influence transforming her into a super-slut. Suddenly she's wearing low-cut dresses and wants to bone Mike in the neighbour's pool. Scandalous! Before long Betty and the two kids are standing around giggling like hyenas while playing table tennis (aka the devil's tennis).

Bonnie and Mike receive a visit from Charlie, the school counsellor, who reveals that both of the children have been lying and stealing. Their son has even blackmailed his way to class presidency! Mike is concerned but Betty is now part of Team Devil Dog and tells Charlie, in a safe-for-TV manner, to go fuck himself. Charlie vows to look into things further but devil dog ain't having none of that shit. He runs to Charlie's house in slow motion with spooooky music (although I like to imagine the Baywatch theme song instead) and reveals his true form: a dog with a wig, devil horns and a cheesy filter effect. By this stage I was hoping for a good old-fashioned mauling but instead Charlie goes insane with fear (what a pussy) runs out into the street and gets splattered by a passing car.

By this time Mike thinks there is definitely something Satan-y about all this and his suspicions are confirmed when he follows his wife and kids up to the attic and finds them performing occult rituals and painting pictures of demons. Naturally the family GP thinks he's nuts but when Mike sees a news report about a dog that mauled a bunch of people (shit, why couldn't the movie have been about that dog) he knows something has to be done. He grabs a pistol, loads devil dog into the car and drives out into the desert, but when he tries to give Lucky a .44 caliber lobotomy the bullets have no effect. Foolish mortal, devil dog cannot be destroyed by mere bullets!

Mike then visits a crazy old woman in an occult bookstore who tells him to hold a mirror to the face of his sleeping family to see the true nature of their souls. When he does so his daughter Bonnie looks like Regan from The Exorcist, so I guess they fail the Satan test. Next Mike is off to Ecuador to find more information about the demon (apparently it's from Ecuador or something) and it just so happens that his cab driver's great grandfather is a Shaman who knows all about devil dogs and speaks perfect English, so that's handy. It seems that Mike is the chosen one, the only one with the power to defeat the devil dog bla, bla bla, and he gives Mike a tattoo on the palm of his hand that he can use to destroy the devil dog once and for all.

It probably won't surprise you to learn that Mike's final showdown with Lucky is pretty lame, but as Mike loads his back-to-normal family into the car for a well-deserved vacation, his son asks, pointedly: "What about the rest of the dogs in the litter?" Do I smell a sequel? Well, no actually. It's really hard to imagine what the makers of this film were thinking. A cute puppy with Village of the Damned style glowing eyes and a dog that just stares at people are not exactly the stuff of nightmares, unless you have some really fucked up nightmares. I still think it's worth a watch and it's pretty entertaining for a 70s TV movie but one thing's for certain: The wallpaper in the Barry household is far more frightening that anything conjured up by Devil Dog.

Demons III: The Ogre (1988)

Hope you like scenes of people wandering around in dimly lit cellars

It's never a good sign when a film has the title X [numeral]: The Y, where creature Y has no relation to creature X. It's a good indication that an unrelated film has been shoehorned into the franchise. Demons III: The Ogre bears absolutely no relation to Demons or Demons 2, save being written and directed by Lamberto Bava, and that's nothing to brag about. It was originally an Italian TV movie, which is worse because it means it's even cheaper than usual with no blood and gore.

The film begins in Portland, Oregon with a young girl in the midst of a terrible nightmare. She finds herself in a spooky house and like any sensible person, heads down to the darkened cellar, teddy bear in tow. She finds a slimy, pulsing cocoon hanging from the ceiling, but wakes up before the creature inside fully emerges.

Many years later, Charel (Virginia Bryant), a bestselling horror author (not that you'd realise from her writing), and her family are taking a working-vacation to an ancient Italian villa in their comfortable and luxurious Jeep Cherokee Chief. The family consists of Charel (pronounced "Cheryl", by the way), her husband Tom (Paolo Malco, from House by the Cemetery) and son Bobby (Patrizio Vinci, with a shocking dub, though not as bad as the same-named son from House by the Cemetery). On their journey, they stop in at a village where the locals grow hostile upon mention of the villa, and the camera holds on a random bunch of orchids for a really long time (that's what pros like Bava call "foreshadowing").

Although the film doesn't bother explaining it, Charel is the little girl from the beginning of the film, and upon arrival she realises that it's the same villa from her childhood nightmares. She even finds her childhood teddy bear in the cellar! During their stay, she keeps coming across evidence of an ogre infestation, like hand-prints in the flour. When her husband arrives they're always gone and if you think he does anything other than belittle her and call her crazy, then you haven't seen too many haunted house films.

When he's not too busy slapping her or denigrating her life's work, he goes hiking with her son so we can be treated to repetitive scenes of Charel wandering around the house alone, for minutes on end. She does find a hidden room full of random junk, but it's never referred to again.

The spooky ambience inspires her, and soon she's feverishly writing out her latest masterpiece, A Drawer Full of Teeth - Fantastic Novel by Charel Bates Mancuso (way to toot your own horn). She also befriends a local, Anna (Sabrina Ferilli), who may or may not be a witch, and her sister Maria (Stefania Montorsi) comes to babysit so Charel and Tom can play grab-ass in the tub. It is also revealed that the ogre is attracted to orchids, but I don't know what that has to do with anything. Eventually, Maria falls victim to the ogre during a game of hide-and-seek. Enraged by her ugly 80s knitwear, he tears the jumper from her body and kills her.

Soon Charel realises that everything she is writing in her story is coming true, and with a bit of investigation she discovers Maria's bloated corpse, among others, in a (surprisingly deep) fetid pool of water in the cellar. Tom is still not convinced, and upon reading a chapter where Anna is molested by the ogre (a scene that is played out as he reads), dismisses her writing as the "sexual fantasies of a bored, frustrated housewife"; nothing turns a woman on more than ogre rape!

Eventually their son goes missing, and Tom and Charel find him in the cellar, along with the ogre. Tom manages to stun it by smashing it with a huge barrel of wine (nooooo! What a waste!) while Cheryl heads out to their Jeep Cherokee Chief, where their son is already reclining in the plush interior. She runs over the ogre several times but, thanks to it's hardy construction and excellent safety features, the vehicle is undamaged. Upon death, the corpse fades away (try explaining that to the insurance company).

The next morning they are packing up their Jeep Cherokee Chief to leave (it's roomy interior providing ample storage for their luggage) and a throwaway line reveals that Maria came home that morning and Anna is fine, so I guess it was all in her mind after all? During the credits, they are sure to thank Renault Italia for the generous loan of the Jeep Cherokee Chief.

The ogre is a deformed monster in a ruff and tunic that make him look like a ren faire reject. The outfit and the other artifacts Charel finds might make you think that the origin of the ogre is explained during the 90 minute runtime. It isn't. Neither is it's connection to orchids, the old man who paints pictures of the ogre cocoon, or Anna's connection to witchcraft. Perhaps all that had to be jettisoned to fit in all the crucial scenes of Charel wandering around the cellar?

Some scenes, such as where Charel discovers Maria's body underwater, work very well. The villa is also a pretty spooky place, though if you've seen one haunted house, you've scene them all. Since this was a TV movie, there's no gore and the budget is limited, but that's no excuse for the movie being so utterly dull. Fans of the gory, action-packed Demons and Demons 2 are advised to stay away.

The film also suffers for having no likable characters. Charel is a hysterical ninny; at one point she's frightened to death of a cow. Tom is an insensitive tool who manhandles her more than the ogre. I would probably skip this film except for the stunning shots of the fabulous Jeep Cherokee Chief, available at a Renault Italia near you!