Film: Fantastic Factory Presents…
UK Release date: 18th April 2011
Distributor: Arrow
Certificate: 18
Director: Brian Yuzna, Jack Sholder & Paco Plaza
Genre: Action/Adventure/Comedy/Fantasy/Horror/Sci-Fi
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Spain/USA
Language: English/Spanish
Review by: James Noble
Arrow gathers together four films from the Barcelona-based Fantastic Factory label. Headed up by producer Julio Fernandez and producer-director Brian Yuzna, Fantastic Factory specialised in low-budget horror films with an international cast, and shot in the English language. Such a combination seems ripe for either enjoyably kitschy guilty pleasures, or outright disasters.
In Jack Sholder’s Arachnid (2001), a ragtag crew of explorers, pilots and scientists venture to a dangerous jungle in Guam, on the hunt for the mysterious creature whose vicious bites have been killing people in the area. It turns out to be the work of an extraterrestrial spider-like creature, leaving the crew in a desperate fight for survival.
Paco Plaza’s Romasanta (2004) takes place in 19th century Spain, in a small village being terrorised by an unlikely serial killer - the suave, intense Manuel Romasanta (Julian Sands), who claims to be afflicted with a lycanthropic curse.
Two films by Brian Yuzna round out the collection. In 2001’s Faust: Love Of The Damned (based on the graphic novels by Tim Vigil and David Quinn), mild-mannered artist John Jaspers (Mark Frost) sells his soul to the Lucifer-like ‘M’ in exchange for the power and ability to avenge the murder of his lover. However, after doing so, ‘M’ binds him to his unholy contract, and John is transformed into a horned demon with a thirst for violence and carnage.
Finally, Beyond Re-animator (2003) - a belated second sequel to the well-regarded 1985 adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story - Star Trek veteran Jeffrey Combs returns to his role of Dr. Herbert West, who is now in prison after one of his zombie-like creations killed an innocent girl. Contacted thirteen years later by the brother of the victim, who is now a doctor himself, West decides to take his re-animation experiments to their very limit...
As with any box set, the quality levels vary wildly, and Arrow’s Fantastic Factory anthology is no exception, ranging from the solid to the weak. To kick off with the lower end of the spectrum, we have Arachnid, which opens with an unconvincing CGI shot of what looks like an inverted maelstrom. The clear lack of budget setting the tone for what follows, as director Jack Sholder resorts to tried-and-tested ways of getting around his financial constraints - essentially, keeping the expensive and ambitious visuals off-screen, and hoping the work of his actors sells the horror.
Sholder has limited success here - the fleeting glimpses of the alien spider, and the sense of it moving through the undergrowth occasionally arouses tension and suspense, but more often than not just frustrates. It does not help that much of the film takes place in a gorgeous jungle at daytime (presumably to save money on expensive lighting equipment), which dilutes any sense of eeriness or creepiness that Sholder is able to conjure.
Low budget does not necessarily a bad film make, but Mark Sevi’s script lacks the flair and inspiration to overcome the limitations of the production. Main character Mercer (Alex Reid), a plucky female pilot haunted by the mysterious disappearance of her brother, is introduced with very little backs-tory and while, it is revealed in pieces throughout the movie, the fact that the team of explorers is assembled in quick order (the expedition is underway within 15 minutes), without so much as a hint of any motivation among the group beyond cliché (missing brother, scientific curiosity, etc.), the audience is kept at a distance when they should be engaged.
The cast features several almost-familiar faces (male lead Chris Potter featured on the American version of Queer As Folk, and leading lady Alex Reid can now be seen on Channel 4’s Misfits), who play the film absolutely straight when, arguably, the script calls for tongues in cheeks and eyes ready to roll. Had the players shown more signs of having fun with the material, an awareness of the hokey nature of proceedings, the audience might have more fun than they ultimately do.
Faring better is Paco Plaza’s Romasanta, which has similarly obvious budgetary constraints - the English dialogue is broadly ADR’d (to get around a mostly local cast), and sharp, occasionally disorienting editing obscures a monster the production is unable to fully realise - but nevertheless manages to create a nice level of gothic atmosphere and eerie tension. As the murderous Manuel, Julian Sands brings intensity and a certain impassive charisma to proceedings, and has a decent, understated chemistry with leading lady Elsa Pataky (who also features in Beyond Re-animator), even if the pseudo love-triangle in which they are involved never really ignites, and is hindered by the script’s corner cutting (Pataky’s delaying of enquiring after the missing sister and niece that Manuel has murdered is an example of the plot holes the filmmakers are prepared to live with in order to maintain the erotic frisson).
Plaza clearly has a lot of fun with the material, and conjures some striking, memorable cinematic images throughout - the highlight being a runaway burning carriage hurtling through a forest at night-time. And while the non-linear script, at times, runs away with itself, there is enough genuine invention and creepiness here to make it recommended fare for fans of the genre.
Now we come to co-founder Brian Yuzna’s brace of films, to fill out the four-disc collection. Kicking off with an energetic credit sequence accompanied by a heavy metal soundtrack, Yuzna’s Faust: Love Of The Damned sets a tone that shows a clear debt to Alex Proyas’s The Crow, borne out in its tale of a resurrected killing machine driven by a haunted soul and a broken heart. And, for more than thirty minutes, Yuzna sets up what appears to be an intriguing psychological thriller, as Jeffrey Combs’ dogged police detective investigates a massacre committed by Mark Frost’s deranged artist. While the set-up is familiar, the dialogue and characterisation blunt and direct, and the plot bears one rather significant hole (Frost’s character’s habit of veering from catatonic to lucid at the script’s convenience would, in reality, surely torpedo any claim of criminal insanity), Yuzna’s slick editing and interesting choice of framing (showing an admirable feel for, and reverence of, the graphic novel format that is Faust’s origin), wrapped up in a gothic-mystical tone, hold the film together through its first act. Indeed, unlike the previous two films in the collection, Faust feels like solid, undemanding and reliable B-movie fare…
Unfortunately, the budget simply isn’t up to realising the ambition of the second and third act. Upon his resurrection (after being buried alive by the treacherous ‘M’), John Jasper is a sadly all-too-obviously costumed demonic avenger and, while its core audience will be along for the ride thanks to a solid opening half-hour, the artifice of the costume is perhaps a touch too alienating for non-fans, and Frost’s wild-eyed, manic performance - while containing a certain campy fun - prohibits audience identification with the protagonist. It does not help that the stylised characterisation and dialogue tend to verge on the ridiculous, as the filmmakers navigate their cast through a plot that always seems on the verge of falling into one of its progressively more cavernous holes.
That’s not to say the film is without its pleasures. Yuzna certainly has a flair for the grotesque, which should please the core audience, even if the action scenes are somewhat lacking in the excitement department. That said, the scene where ‘M’ reduces his trophy girlfriend (the game and underused Monica van Campen) to a giant pair of boobs and buttocks is visually striking for the wrong reasons, coming off like something out of a Doctor Who writer’s nightmare. Faust is mostly campy fun, but is not the sort of movie to convert non-believers.
Finally, we have Beyond Re-animator, which shares the ‘boxset-highlight’ honours with Romasanta. Beginning with a zombie attack which - while awkwardly shot, and relying on slightly-cheap visual effects - is appealingly sick, the second of Brian Yuzna’s directorial efforts to grace this collection is the superior of the two. Less reliant on manic energy, and anchored by a quietly compelling performance by the reliable Jeffrey Combs, this further updating of H.P. Lovecraft’s mad scientist story refreshes the standard zombie formula by giving the reanimated creatures consciousness and consciences, which brings a certain element of surprise and unpredictability to what ensues.
Setting the action in a prison further creates a sense of claustrophobic tension, and having the cast of characters - while perhaps not as fully developed as they could be - at cross-purposes creates the vulnerability necessary to hook an audience into the outcome of a horror story. Disappointingly, the twisted nature of the relationship between Combs’s West and Jason Barry’s Howard Phillips, the brother of the girl killed by one of West’s ‘creations’ in the opening, is never explored to its full potential, and the film offers the immensely likeable Elsa Pataky little to do with her role as a journalist reporting on the prison, caught up in the ensuing horror. However, all three actors work very hard and (unlike the cast of Arachnid) their straight-faced playing is essential to ensuring the audience is convinced by the premise and narrative.
Hardly essential, but genre fans will likely find much to enjoy with this box set. Though the films themselves aren’t exactly significant, the collection is notable for providing a contrast to the high-quality, sophisticated standard of horror movies produced by Spain in the last several years. As an example of where the genre was at not long before, the films of Fantastic Factory hold a certain academic appeal that is perhaps more consistent than anything on offer in the movies themselves. JN
