Tokyo Horror Movies / Yami Douga (2012)

Director: Kazuto Kodama
Starring:?.Japan. 1h 4m

This collection of unrelated creepy tales seems to have been a for runner for the popular V/H/S series (despite them being released in the same year) This Japanese collection just feels like a raw pre runner to the more polished American effort, but as per usual the raw unabridged versions always have that curious edge to them, and like time and time before, Japan finds a new way to creep out the cinematic world.

A team has painstakingly recovered and viewed a number of home\hand made movies accidentally capturing spooky events, but they don’t leave it there, they track down the stories behind each video trying to get to the bottom of the mystery.

It has an incredibly Japanese approach, each movie has a text intro and a warning before each gory moment giving faint at heart viewer a chance to skip the worst moments, (imagine doing that for the Serbian Film (2010). it would twice as long) and the spooky events are typically Japanese also, floating screaming heads, cursed grave sites and the only country with a pass to have white clad long haired spirits aka yūrei, and uses them sparingly, instead the emphasis is on making this look like a genuine investigation and raw footage, with candid interviews, phone research and multiple lines of enquiry.

It’s never really detailed why they are producing the anthology,other than to show off their hard work. The film’s themselves look really on point, apart from a few really bad effects here and there, the authenticity of the video’s are a highlight, either they were filmed on vintage devices or the touch up is out of this world.

The stories range from a fishing trip with an extra ghostly passenger, and in more complex stories elaborate rituals are performed in the woods awakening screaming heads and after all of the night’s shenanigans there’s a nasty twist in the end of the story, but the kicker for most audiences is a particular gory story involving a pregnant woman who owes money to a violence sado sexiual yakusa boss, the opening story is an emotional kicker involving the ghost of a homeless girl seeks help from beyond the grave, it’s sad and moving as well as creepy and has a touch of Lake Mungo (2008) about it. Overall the Tokyo Videos of Horror is never really all that frighteningly scary, as it just feels so surreal, but you might want to check your playback during the day from now on.

Luckily there’s a series of films to watch now and much like the Yami Shibai series there are good and bad collections but all have that very unique Japanese strangeness about them. Probably something more attuned and welcomed by the found footage fans than the average horror collector but overall something that just has to be experienced to be fully understood.

Tokyo Videos of Horror (2012) Japanese found footage anthology featuring movies that have accidently captured creepy paranormal events frightening and deeply affecting several people. Quirky J-Horror much like VHS is a great start to the series of freaky scares. pic.twitter.com/CkQwcZFPTY

— Admit 1 Film Addict (@admitonefilmadd) March 6, 2021

 

Rating: 5/10

Related: V/H/S (2012), Lake Mungo (2008),McPherson Tapes (1989)
Lists: Found Footage Anthologies

 

 

The Haunting In Connecticut Ghosts of Georgia (2013)

Director: Tom Elkins
Starring: Abigail Spencer, Chad Michael Murray, Katee Sackhoff., Cicely Tyson. USA. 1h 40m

Originally this movie had nothing to do with the original Haunting In Connecticut and it really shows! Sadly Gold Circle, the studio behind both movies, decided to try and capitalize on the success of the first movie by bolting this on under the same title, the only connection is that both movies deal with “real life” hauntings.

Fiend (1980)

Director: Don Leifert.
Starring. Don Leifert, Richard Nelson, Elaine White, George Stover, Greg Dohler, USA. 1h 30m.

A gothic styled ghoul horror with a touch of mom and pa sleuths is the strange workable combination that Don Leifert had forged together for his follow up to the B Movie cult classic The Alien Factor (1978). Starring in his second feature but taking on an entirely different role is adaptability is certainly one of his strong points and I have to say despite all the limitations with budget, he seems constantly determined to develop wonderful psychotropic movies and I think I’m a bit of a fan already and I’m only 2 films in.

Burial Ground : The Nights of Terror (1981)

Director: Andrea Bianchi.
Starring. Karin Well, Cianluigi Chirizzi, Simone Mattoli,Antonella Antinori, Pietro Barzocchini. Italy. 1h 25m.

AKA Nights of Terror, Zombi Horror, The Zombie Dead, Zombie 3

This seems to be one of the long-lost zombie films of the 80’s, but there’s a reason why this isn’t talked about that much in the same circles as Fulci, Argento and D’Amato.

During the 70’s and early 80’s Italian cinema became saturated with dark tales of zombies and ghouls coming back from the dead to feast on the living. While Burial Grounds seems to follow all the popular trends of the golden age it somehow does this without much of a narrative. but still remains a fan favourite and is admittedly a very unexpected thrilling viewing experience.

Zombie Vs Shark

In the summer of 1979 Lucio Fulci released Zombi 2 also known as Island of the Living Dead, also known as Nightmare Island and sometimes known as Zombie Flesh Eaters, and possibly many other titles. This bold and sensual movie was intended as an unofficial sequel to George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), it was quite a popular theme for Italian directors to make unofficial sequels to American releases, for me the most iconic would be Alien 2 : On Earth (1980) which was Ciro Ippolito and Biagio Proietti’s attempt to make an earth bound sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 cult classic Alien. It’s as different as day and night to Alien and the intended sequel Aliens, but it’s a really wacky but thrilling lower budget movie. It’s brilliant that the ambition to make a daring sequel spurred on a wonderful director to try and achieve something new, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Aterrados /Terrified (2017)

Director: Demian Rugna.
Starring. Maxiiliano Ghione, Norberto. Elvira Onetto. Argentina. 1h 28m.

We who are about to be scared Salute you Argentina!! Thank you so much for breaking the rules and making a truly terrifying movie!! (you see what I did there?)

I get really annoyed when people give up on a genre, be it music, art or indeed beloved Cinema, for the amount of media being produced you can be guaranteed to find something to tickle your fancy but the only thing stopping you from finding it is effort and if you’re searching for that next buzz, then I always suggest that you try something not aimed as the masses for profit.

Ghost Stories (2017)

Director:Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman
Starring: Andy Nyman, Paul Whitehouse, Alex Lawther, Martin Freeman. UK. 1h 32m

By the time I had seen the trailer for this movie it was already being slated by a lot of the horror community, apparently it just isn’t scary enough, and looking back I can see where they are coming from, while I wholeheartedly disagree. If I were 18-19 and now venturing into the horrific side of cinema I think I would also be confused and high disappointed but this drama based horror, my hype train would be derailed and I left in tears.

There’s nothing quite like Ghost Stories out in the market today, there are no strange Swedish cults, no crazy CGI monsters, and no hint whatsoever of creepy clowns or a Sharknado. The main reason, well it’s based on a stage play and therefore it won’t be like all the rest, it’s been dutifully adapted in a pretty sensitive manner to really play off the original stag setting. The star of the production a character named Phillip Goodman (Nyman), speaks to the audience about his history and current job, which involves poo pooing the cold readers, fake psychics and charlatans who fool us into believing there’s an afterlife and a paranormal world around us, is this the life of Darren Brown?

They Found Hell (2015)

Director: Nick Lyon.
Starring. Chris Schellenger, Katy Reece, Austin Scott, Laurie Kynaston, USA. 1h 27m.

For a movie made with a “low” budget and special effects from about 20 years ago, it’s not terrible but it’s lacking a bit of energy in places but for a TV horror it’s quite different from the normal gumpf that you get served on a regular basis, but this seems to be by pure accident more than intent. Lyon’s falls into many of the typical horror traps, but it seems to be his style as he’s the father of a huge range of ‘tastrophy movies that all swim in the same stream, but somewhere in there is a fairly interesting story but delivered by a bunch of wailing idiots…

They thought they opened the portal to somewhere cool…

Some bright hopeful students successfully create a portal but unfortunately for them they open a doorway into hell, for some reason the film doesn’t show them coming together for this project, which is that touch of background that really introduces the characters but we’re landed into a situation where giant craters that lead into hell are being reported on the TV and the students are in the thick of it.

Bed of the Dead (2016)

Director: Jeff Maher.
Starring. Colin Price, Alysa King, Gwenlyn Cymyn, Dennis Andres, George Kirssa, Hamza Fouad. Canada. 1h 25m

After watching the long lost and brilliant psychotropic Death Bed : The bed that eats (1977) , I chanced upon this modern gore thriller about a similar piece of haunted furniture and thought I’d see how far we’d come in terms of awesome cinema and to sum it up in one sentence, watch the 1970’s classic instead..

This film is based on one wishy washy idea then introduces another and another then forgets to actually define why any of this is happening! But it all respect it has a respectable level of cinematography, effects and tries to be devious with a semi intelligent plot but it runs out of steam after the initial 20 minutes and fades from memory.

1922 (2017)

Director:Zak Hilditch .
Starring. Thomas Jane, Molly Parker, Neal McDonough. USA. 1h 48m.

This hot and melting messy murder film is quite an interesting brooding moralistic thriller. At first the rocky love affair between Wilfred Jane) and his feisty wife Arlette (Parker) is something on parallel to a Tennessee Williams play,  but it’s no secret that he’s planning to kill his wife for her land and cash, but it doesn’t seem plausible until he slowly bullies his son, Henry into helping him hold her down and slit her throat in a torrid gurgling bloody mess. He disposes of her corpse down the well soon after then the rats appear, crawling in and out of her corpse, the scene shocks him but he has some cleaning up to do and a lot of police dodging, until the Henry discovers that his teenage true love is pregnant and he has to escape the town and the two go on the run leaving Wilfred alone on the farm with the ever present rats for company.