in which I dwell on French ladies.

Indoors on my own and off work, I watched a lot of French horror last Friday. Well, three films to be precise, and I now have renewed respect for the French and their bravery in making truly messed up, intense movies.

I am still mulling over Martyrs. I know I enjoyed it but I can't quite form coherent sentences as to why. It's had a funny impact on me really. I would love to study it on a film course (horror/French horror/women in horror/religion in horror - SO much fodder).

This film in particular is completely fucked up, in ways I can't really go into without major spoilers. It's cold and incredibly harsh, unflinchingly showing pain and suffering. Just when you wonder where it can go next, it takes things to degrees you hadn't even considered. I like to be challenged and this certainly did that. Really great stuff.

I also finally watched À l'intérieur which was less thought provoking but no less enjoyable for it. To complete the hat-trick was Haute Tension. All three have mainly women in the cast. Really strong, resilient hero-worship types.

Look, I'll be honest with you and confess something: I've always been a tiny bit sexist against my own gender in movies. I don't know why and I'm not proud of it, but there you go. However, these French flicks are giving me females to be really impressed by.

Mylène Jampanoï.

Morjana Alaoui.

Béatrice Dalle.

Cécile De France.

*blinks*

It is films like this that really hit home to me how much I need to work on my film reviews. I have no idea where to start, what to say or how, with regards to Martyrs.

Perhaps eloquence about it will come with time. I hope so. It deserves more than I can give it, at the moment.

Rather than leave it at that for now however, I'd like to post some images - promotional and otherwise - that I have come across in my post-viewing internet scouring.

This shot genuinely scares me.

Mylène Jampanoï is stunning.

Spiders (2000).

"This is creepy... like a bad science fiction movie."

According to the DVD packaging, the selling point for Spiders is that it's "FROM THE SPECIAL FX TEAM WHO CREATED From Dusk Till Dawn, Spawn AND Wishmaster".

You soon learn why this is the best thing they have to say about it. The film is 89mins of bad acting and poor dialogue, punctuated by moments of exclamation-inducing effects.

Hello!

Please! No more bad acting - just eat me!!!

A killer alien-spider codenamed "Mother-In-Law" is loose in a military facility. Three students smuggle themselves inside after witnessing the space shuttle crash that brought the spider back to earth. Government agents are trying to protect it, the snooping college kids are trying to find out about it and everyone else is just trying to stay alive.

Basically they scrimped in every department apart from the effects. It reeks of TV movie and even the nods to other films and self-awareness don't help it any. It pretty much sucks apart from the scenes involving arachnid-carnage.

Although the locations themselves are great (bunkers, space shuttles, helicopters) the sets give away the budget. Badly dressed sets just remind me of porn films... But I think that says more about me than the film makers.

"How do we make this place look like a lab for spider experiments?""Ummm... Rubber spiders in glass jars of different coloured liquids?!""Okay!"

Don't get me wrong though. I paid £1.99 for this film, I got more entertainment than I was expecting! At nearly forty minutes in, this happened.

I literally cried out. And continued to do so at more or less every moment including effects thereafter. They get steadily more ridiculous as the spider grows into what will eventually be a two storey sized beast, clumping around the university campus.

Even though you are constantly questioning the motives and actions of the supposed heroes, and they always seem to be making stupid and ill-advised decisions, the film doesn't ask to be taken seriously. It just wants to bridge the gaps between men sprouting spider legs and then exploding.

Who can blame them for that?

Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986).

Ahh, another horror puzzle piece slips into place. The music from this movie (the intro/title mainly) is the intro music to just about every Rue Morgue radio show! I recognised it instantly. Suddenly something in my horrorverse makes a little more sense, I love it when that happens.

Friday the 13th Part VI sees the re-birthing of Jason as Zombie Jason, hooray. This is undoubtedly why this film is the first of the franchise I have actually liked in a good while (yes, I have watched every one so far). That, the fact that I am obsessed with the number six, the Rue Morgue connection warming me up nicely AND the "self aware" moments early on...

"I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly."
[cut to Jason standing in front of her, threatening music on the soundtrack]

There is also a moment where a character remarks on "some folks having a strange idea of what constitutes entertainment", while looking right into the camera.

It may sound hokey, but it just plays out as cute - and bear in mind that this was pre "I'LL BE RIGHT BAAAAACK...!!!". Anyway, those are the two most obvious instances in this movie, they happen in pretty quick succession and it isn't at all NUDGE NUDGE. I liked it.

So the plot with this one is that Jason is resurrected by lightning, of course.

Cool! He then continues his normal routine of a rampage in "Forest Green" - a renamed Crystal Lake. The name change was brought about due to the residents wanting to put the blood splattered history of the area way behind them. Alas, it don't mean shit to Jason, he's had a nice long rest in the ground and has awoken all refreshed, ready to gut some motorists/greasers/paintballers/horny teens/night-time picnickers/camp counsellors/children (sadly, this last one is only ever threatened).

What is refreshing about this installment is that people are introduced purely to get killed off a few frames later. We don't even learn the names of some of them. They are plonked in front of us, giving a basic situation to exist within, and then hello Jason - goodbye innards. It's fast, it's fun, it gives the second largest body count in any Friday the 13th movie of 18 corpses, corr (topped later by Jason X with an impressive 28 kills, according to the IMDb).

You know what you are getting here, c'mon. But this one has a lot more hits than misses. Alice Cooper on the soundtrack, hello?! Why did it take me so long to mention that?

Oh yeah, stand out moments in cap form: The James Bond-esque opening titles.

??? I don't really understand it, but I love it!

The gratuitous but clothed crotch-shots of the frisky sheriff's daughter, Megan (Jennifer Cooke) as she helps 'is he crazy/is he not?' Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews), now on his third consecutive film and actor.

This shot all on its own:

I like wondering what he is thinking here. Why look at the arm rather than just cast it away (apart from getting a laugh out of us I mean)? Is he confused, irritated, proud? What's going on in that little head of yours Jason?!

Also we have the practically subliminal peek of a blood-drenched cabin after Jason has paid a visit, shown here in its full glory.

Beautiful. Makes me think of the post murder and rape scene in From Dusk Till Dawn and the flashes of horrific images in The Shining. Which is alllll goood, in my book. I love OTT horror but glimpses of it can be just as satisfying.

And finally the footage of Jason underwater in the lake, chained to a rock. Perfectly lit, eh?

"The only way to kill Jason is to send him back to his original resting place where he drowned in 1957."

This idea of Tommy's isn't true of course, but it makes for a visually arresting climax.

I've a few gripes; I mean, there's some slapstick which it could have done without. There's the quote from the two surprisingly accepting of their fate little boys at the camp...

"So, what were you gonna be when you grew up?"

Hmm, that was a bit much. However that is really all I have on my "con" list. Excuse me, I need to watch the He's Back (The Man Behind The Mask) video again...