Great Googly-Moogly, but if'n this ain't the ickiest flick to come out o' England in a dog's age! And I thought that the UK was fettered with some of the world's most harsh and overbearing censorship conditions! I guess they managed to sneak this one past the "board", so to speak, because "Cradle of Filth" is a super gory, goofy, and occasionally scary good time! Sorry, but movies like this make me revert to gleeful idiot mode, 'cos it just doesn't get any stickier than this. Alex Chandon, English micro-budget splatter purveyour extroidonnaire, really delivers the gore groceries in this weird little homage to the '80's splatter flicks that we all know and love.
I should state, for the record, that this film doesn't break any new ground...it doesn't tread any new territory...it doesn't even bring anything even remotely original to the ghoul-gathering. But, and this is important, no one has done such an exemplary job bringing so many gross-out sequences to the screen for so little money in a very long time.
Shot on digital video, and apparently edited over weekends on a laptop computer, "Cradle" is an anthology in the mold of "Creepshow" and that tells four stories plus one wraparound sequence that loosely ties it all together.
The synopsis...
It seems that a former professional hypnotist named Kemper (David McEwen) started using his talents to influence children to come to him so he could do very feeeelthy things to them and then butcher them. After being locked away in an "Arkham"-like asylum, this sicko decides to use some weird and arcane rituals to influence a creepy goth-dude known only as "The Man" (played by Cradle of Filth frontman Dani Filth) to take horrific revenge on those people who even are remotely connected to those responsible for his incarceration and subsequent misery. Meanwhile, a somewhat perverse and haunted police inspector is trying to solve the "cases" presented in each of the stories, and slowly begins to figure out the connection. While no bonus points are awarded to figure out what the connection is, it is this background that provides the framework around which the stories are built.
The stories breakdown as follows:
First up, we have a tale about a really hot (but blazingly stupid) goth-chick (the quite amazingly attractive Emily Bouffante) who has the misfortune of meeting the aforementioned "Man" in a dance club, and taking him home for a night of unexpectedly rough and semi-demonic sex. What follows is a shocking chain of events that borrows liberally from "The Thing", "Jacob's Ladder", "Repulsion", and in one specific scene "Alien". You'll know it when you see it. This is arguably the most "enjoyable of the stories. I'd go so far as to say that this episode is something of a "cautionary tale", which evidently has the moral of "If you're a hot 'n' horny goth chick, don't go fucking about with strange demon-possessed goth dudes in clubs!"
The next tale, featuring a pair of female would-be burglars, has the dumb-ass duo breaking into the home of an old man who is rumored to have a large stash of money. It seems that the old man isn't home, but surprise surprise! The old bastard is there, and he ain't happy about these two gals trying to take his loot. The girls manage to kill him, but as the saying goes, you just can't keep a good man down...heh heh heh! This is a pretty standard "revenge from beyond the grave" tale in the style of EC comics, and seems like a direct lift out of "Creepshow". Even the opening music for this sequence is eerily similar to some of the music in that film. I guess it's a homage, of sorts. This one is the least gory of the four tales, but despite that and its general lack of freshness, it's still a fun little episode that provides some decent scares and even a few laughs.
The third tale features an apparently wealthy man and his gorgeous wife who seem to have it all...except that the man can't seem to "get it up" since he lost his leg in a tragic accident some time before. In a weird bit of filmic exposition, this guy is established as not being a very good person, so our sympathies aren't exactly focused on him. He wants more than anything to have a normal sex life with his perpetually horny wife, so he formulates a plan to get himself a new leg. He murders an old "business associate", hacks off his leg, and brings the iced-down leg to a surgeon who gets forced at gunpoint to attach the leg to our hero's stump. After a period of therapy and rehabilitation, our hero's life suddenly comes crashing down around him, and the cycle of horror-film justice is completed. This story, in my mind, is the strongest of the four. It is the least derivative of any particular movie, and pays more tribute to the old "Man with the Golden Arm" stories than anything else. So, for me, this one works the best. Plus, it's as gory as hell.
The final story concerns a regular-Joe-type who works for a dot com company, and whose job is to find sick and disgusting sites on the internet (the question of "why" is never addressed). He comes across a site called "The Sick Room", a kind of do-it-yourself snuff movie site where, for a fee, one can choose a victim and have them abused and tortured or even killed in a variety of gory, ultra-violent ways. The dude gets fired from his job for abusing company policies, and then he becomes disturbingly obsessed with finding out more about the Sick Room and who's behind it. He finds out, all right...oh yes he does. This story, obviously, is a tip o' the hat to Cronenberg's "Videodrome", but it takes that idea to new, splattery heights. This segment is probably the creepiest of the four.
Finally, we get an extended wrap-up segment where the aforementioned police inspector has a final showdown with the antagonists. It's all gory, goofy, whacked-out fun.
Now, this DVD release from Image Entertainment is the full uncut version, running approximately 120 minutes. The widescreen transfer is nice, and the film looks damned good considering it tends to have that "shot on digital video" feel to it. The sound is decent...plenty good enough, though it's not likely your kick-ass surround set up will be justified by this one. The DVD contains a few special features, including a pair of trailers, a huge gallery of production stills, and a Making-Of featurette. That last one is a pretty nice feature. I always like seeing "making of" documentaries for lower-budget movies like this, if only because the creativity, commitment, and passion of all involved really has a chance to shine through. All in all, this DVD is an excellent package, but it would have been nice to have a commentary from Alex Chandon...maybe a future release will...who knows.
"Cradle of Fear" has developed a richly-deserved reputation among a certain element of UK society. It's as gory as they say it is, all right, and it actually manages to be one of the best horror anthology films ever. Despite its meager budget, unknown cast, and threadbare plot, it manages to generate some pretty potent shocks and some fairly vivid imagery. It's finally been given the release it deserves here in the states, and it's a film that every splatterhound should actively seek out. True, there are times when the film feels a bit like an advertisement for Dani Filth's band "Cradle of Filth" (but only in his scenes), but that's hardly avoidable seeing as how he was very likely the "star power" that helped this flick get made in the first place.
Derivative and a bit laggy, but still highly recommended...but only in this uncut form. I can't imagine what a cut print of this would look like, but suffice it to say, I'm sure it would be a huge waste of time and money.
Great Googly-Moogly, but if'n this ain't the ickiest flick to come out o' England in a dog's age! And I thought that the UK was fettered with some of the world's most harsh and overbearing censorship conditions! I guess they managed to sneak this one past the "board", so to speak, because "Cradle of Filth" is a super gory, goofy, and occasionally scary good time! Sorry, but movies like this make me revert to gleeful idiot mode, 'cos it just doesn't get any stickier than this. Alex Chandon, English micro-budget splatter purveyour extroidonnaire, really delivers the gore groceries in this weird little homage to the '80's splatter flicks that we all know and love.
I should state, for the record, that this film doesn't break any new ground...it doesn't tread any new territory...it doesn't even bring anything even remotely original to the ghoul-gathering. But, and this is important, no one has done such an exemplary job bringing so many gross-out sequences to the screen for so little money in a very long time.
Shot on digital video, and apparently edited over weekends on a laptop computer, "Cradle" is an anthology in the mold of "Creepshow" and that tells four stories plus one wraparound sequence that loosely ties it all together.
