Outpost III: Rise of the Spetsnaz

DVD Pile

I can’t claim to a big fan of the Outpost films. I barely remember what happened in the first film and can’t make sense of the second film. This third film is actually set during the Second World War so this is a prequel to others which were set during the present day. This has all the same elements of mad Nazi science that featured in the other two including creation of creatures that cannot be killed.

A special squad of Russian soldiers, the Spetsnaz, come across vehicles from a secret base near the Eastern Front.  They take out the Germans but find themselves facing overwhelming numbers of troops including patrol with a German officer with a zombie like a dog on a chain. The Russians are killed or captured and the prisoners are taken to a secret research lab underground where we can see many mad monsters screaming behind glass windows like some sort of freakshow display.

Three survivors held in a cell are Dolokhov (Bryan Larkin) the leader of the Russian squad, Arkadi (Velibor Topic) and Fyodor (Iván Kamarás) who has been shot.  There’s another prisoner in the cell, an American spy called Captain Rogers (Ben Lambert) who isn’t very useful in fact he’s a bit of a prick. They are being watched by Strasser (Michael McKell), the German officer in charge of the facility who is your typical evil sociopathic Nazi bastard. He wants to use them to test his experimental subjects and we got some impressive fight scenes. Strasser seems pleasantly surprised to see the Dolokhov is more than a match for even the strongest of them, a huge beast they have nicknamed the Childkiller (James Thompson).

Strasser takes Dolokhov and Fyodor deeper into the facility and tells them all about their research in classic villain style while waximg philosophically about the futility of war. In fact he just won’t shut up about their plans to create an army of indestructible super soldiers. The process has still got a lot of problems and we see a headsplodey example of it going wrong with some poor German soldier. Strasser then puts Fyodor through the process which is not really the smartest idea since this time it seems to go right but this just means they have succeeded in creating a super soldier who wants to kill them all.

The film tends to get a bit repetitive with the Russians taking on limitless Germans in narrow corridors but the film did at least seem more coherent than that second film. It has a low budget and this does show in some aspects like the very limited zombie patrol which could have been bigger and used a bit more. The fight scenes are pretty good and I like the physical effects.  The film uses a muted colour palette with a look of mostly grayish green which does give it a dated feel. Overall is it has some decent moments but is a bit draggy.

Rating 6.5/10

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October Horror Day 1

Horror Journal

This year rather than trying to do a full review every day I’m just going to post a diary with short summaries of the films I’m watching this October.

Frankensteins Army

There are some concepts that no matter how badly they are done I’m going to be watching them so I was eagerly anticipating the release of Frankensteins Army which promised to glory in the excesses of mad science. A group of Russian soldiers come across a German village where everyone is dead and underground they discover a mad scientist, a descendant of the famous Frankenstein, who is creating monsters out of fusions of machines and human flesh. The creatures are every bit as effective as the concept promises and Karl Roden is great as the titular Dr Frankenstein. The downside is that the film is more spectacle than story and the film is without a protagonist and feels bit aimless. It is shot in the found footage style and this leads to a lot of confusion during the action as the camera shakes around and it was only when thing quietened down that I could tell what had happened. Overall the film was fun and Frankenstein’s Army would be amazing in a computer game or as a theme for Halloween haunted house attraction, which nicely leads into the next film I watched

Jack’s Motel

On IMDb this film is called “Six Degrees of Hell” which has the benefit of being similar to a line in the dialogue. I mainly picked it up because Corey Feldman‘s name was across the top of the box but his part seems to be a later addition since he only interacts with one other cast member in a kind of wraparound story. This story is set around a Halloween haunted house attraction called Uncle Jack’s Hotel (not a motel like in UK DVD title). Jack gets some powerful magic relics from psychic to decorate the attraction but with these relics comes a supernatural force that brings the horror to life. This one is okay for low-budget horror and it makes great use of the haunted house setting and its cast of actors. I did get a bit confused because some the cast look quite similar which made it tricky to tell what was going on

The Last Exorcism Part II

This sequel continues the story of Nell, the girl who was possessed in the first film. She is determined to create a normal life for herself so she moves into a halfway house and gets a job but the past will not go away and she must face the demonic forces closing around her once more. It’s a very typical horror with nothing to really make it stand out from the crowd but the lead performance is very good.

Texas Chainsaw 

Another sequel, this time to the Tobe Hooper`s classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I was fully expecting this film to be dreadful and while it never approaches the fever-induced nightmare of the original, the story was okay. Apparently after the first film a group of locals laid siege to Leatherface’s family home and killed everyone except a baby and Leatherface . Two decades later and the grown up baby Heather learns she has inherited what looks like a massive plantation house in Texas from her grandmother. Heather goes there to check it out with her boyfriend and a couple of friends and soon the chainsaw engine is roaring again. There is certainly plenty of gore buthat doesn’t substitute for pervasive atmosphere of horror that he original did so well. At least they seemed to mainly use physical effects but it’s a bit vanilla compared to the original and won’t change the genre. It has mainly left me with a desire to see the original again.

 

Review: Devil’s Rock

 Second World War, two Kiwi troops are sent to the German occupied Channel island of Forau to blow up a big gun as a diversion. from the real D-Day invasion plans. After a tense time getting past landmines on the beach Captain Ben Grogan (Craig Hall) and Sergeant Joe Tane (Karlos Drinkwater) make it to the gun with little problem and get to work planting explosives. They hear terrible screams from inside the German fortification and investigate further. They find all the German soldiers dead, brutally slaughtered and their bodies are torn apart. Suddenly a German officer appears and shoots Tane dead and captures Grogan.

When Grogan come round his he is tortured by the officer Colonel Klaus Meyer (Matthew Sunderland) who want Grogan to tell him about the Allies’ invasion plans but Grogan tell him northing. The scream start up again making Meyer very nervous . He scoops up a bucket full of gore from the bodies lying around and leaves to feed whatever is screaming. When returns Grogan demands to know what is going on.. Grogan escapes and chase Meyer through the tunnels of the fortification.

He come to room with magic symbols on the floor and a grimoire full of spells on conjuring demons. And chained to the wall is a woman (Gina Varela)who looks just like his dead wife. She begs Grogan to free her but just then Meyer then enters the room, shoots Grogan in the leg and shoots the woman in the head He explain that the woman is a demon that they conjured to use as a weapon against the allies. She can look like whoever she wants to different people including people that they love. She is not dead and indeed she comes back to life soon after. Meyer proves she is a demon by tossing severed leg down at her and she transforms into a horned demon.

Meyer tells Grogan that he needs his help to send the demon back to hell and if Grogan assists him he will turn himself into the allies and give him all the information he has about the German plans. The two men must put aside their mutual hatred and work together to defeat the demon and escape.

This film has fairly low budget but it does make very good of what money it had, with very authentic sets and realistic looking gore all over the place. The only problem for me is that the film seems to take place when most of the action is already over and instead of onscreen action there is a lot of the characters talking to each other – it is almost like this film is the third act of story padded out to a feature film length.

The acting is great especially from Matthew Sutherland and Craig Hall. Overall the film is okay but a bit long of the dialogue and short on the action.

Rating  6/10

•  IMDb page http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1712578/
• Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Devils-Rock-DVD-Gina-Varela/dp/B004ZJYEJU