You Can't Dance on Someones Grave!

The remainder of the weekend was occupied with a variety of films of varying quality. We began with black & white version of The Mist. How good is this film? Rhetorical by the way as we all know The Mist is amazing. I'd forgotten how good it, and everyone in it, was. This is only emphasised when viewed in black and white. I captures the atmosphere of the mid-fifties horror/sci-fi films and also makes the creature effects more believable. The end is still one of the best I've seen in a long time, and possibly the only true horrific moment in the whole film.

This was followed by The Gravedancers. This film was chosen based on the delivery of the line, "You can't dance on someones grave!" Unfortunately I can't post it here as it only seems to be part of the trailer on V-Plus. The film stars Dominic Purcell of Prison Break fame, Clare Kramer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame and the always watchable Tcheky Karyo. The film begin as a rum of the mill haunting film. Friends get drunk, dance on graves and get haunted. About half way in though things started to get interesting. The ghost effects were pretty creepy, and by the end things get quite insane. Not to give anything away, but basically a giant head chases a car though the house. It's a pity the film takes so long before it gets interesting. So based on the 'matter of fact' delivery of one line, this film was pretty much a winner.

Unlike Sickle, which only cost a single British pound, but was just poor. It was filmed on digital so it looked bad, and not a lot happened. Shots were repeated, characters reappeared in scenes even though they'd just left, and there was a hell of a lot of walking. I should really be careful here, I don't want to just sound mean as the issue of reviews is hitting close to home since the DVD release of Ten Dead Men. However, Sickle was pretty rubbish. However, on the DVD was a trailer, fortunately not for Sickle, but for Skinned Deep, a 2004 horror film directed by Gabriel Bartalos, the special effect/make-up artist on films such as Leprechaun and Basket Case 2. It also stars Warwick Davis as a guy called Plates, and, you guessed it, he throws plates at people. This film looked mental, and was worth the pound spent on the DVD.

We ended on Earth Alien, starring Eric Roberts and Arnold Vosloo. This was also only a pound, but far better than Sickle. It's about a cop who teams up with an alien to hunt down another alien who is killing humans for their skin. Poacher style. I don't have much more to say on this. It was ok, things exploded, cars were chased, guns were shot. Pretty straight forward really.

In between these viewings we seemed to watch the trailer for Clifford over and over. For some reason this film only seems to be available on Xbox Live and nowhere else. It still looks bizarre and will be tracked down eventually. If only to fit in with a screening of Shakma.

Anyway the weekend came to a close, and onto the trains we went. And what a crappy journey. The train I was on somehow let off the emergency brakes stopping the train only after about an hour of travel. Then we couldn't get the brakes off and just had to wait for a technician. Finally we moved to the next station, all got off and awaited the replacement train, which then had to alter its journey to include all the stops form the original train. I ended up getting in about two late. Which nicely brings my February tour of Britain to a close, and fuels my temporary hate for trains. I know Brother Chris eventually had some problems also on his journey. It just goes to show, no one should travel on a Sunday.

Oh, and you can't dance on someones grave.