halloweenfest evening six: a triple feature

Kill List: (2011. dir: Ben Wheatley) Gruesome and grim as fuck kitchen-sinker about two schlub assassins trying to avoid, then giving into and going about, their given trade. Only then it turns out to be about something else entirely. Astonishingly well done, and utterly disturbing. The characters are so completely realized that once the closing teeth of the guetapens become apparent, it matters, gut-wrenchingly, to us, the helpless spectators. It's too soon to tell, of course, but this may well turn out to be one of the enduring classics of the horror genre.

Fingerprints: (2006. dir: Harry Basil) A lame-assed horror-of-the-week from the Urban Legend category, but sometimes, as after watching something as dread-inspiring as Kill List, a lame-assed horror-of-the-week is actually a relief. A lot of high-school angst, all-adults-betray-you moral lessons, but also some weirdly alright performances and some toasty warm lighting which makes for a comfortable, easy ride. Had I watched it in any other context, I'd have been impatient and malcontent, and I cannot, in good conscience, recommend it. The plot makes little sense, and it works satisfactorily neither as a slasher film nor as a ghost story, with the exception of a few spooky images involving a little girl and writing on a mirror.

These Are the Damned: (1963. dir: Joseph Losey) Eccentric Carnaby Street offering from Hammer, directed by the inestimable Joseph Losey.

Whilst on holiday in Weymouth, dirty old Yank tourist MacDonald Carey takes the virginity of sexy mod-bird Shirley Anne Field, earning the wrath of her weirdly possessive teddy boy brother (Oliver Reed, as wonderfully smouldering and conflicted as ever). He and his leather-clad gang chase the couple onto the grounds of a military stronghold, and that's when things get weird. These "damned" are not the hell-wreaking teds, as one first imagines, but the bizarre children imprisoned here in a dungeon built into a cliff-side, children with strangly ice-cold flesh and no experience at all of the outside world.

Those early black and white Hammer films fascinate me; it's as if they're still groping for their particular niche and so have not yet settled into any kind of safe boundaries. There's some cheese and some awkwardness, but Reed is devastatingly handsome and Viveca Lindfors is on hand with her magisterial alchemy and her spot-on, always unconventional choices.