Trick ‘r Treat is an anthology film unashamedly in the mould of Creepshow and Tales From the Crypt, which themselves largely took their cues from the horror comics of the 50s and The Twilight Zone. It tells four separate but overlapping stories set in a small town celebrating Halloween. As with almost all anthology movies, these vary in tone and impact, but since the film a whole runs to a lean 79 minutes none are allowed to outstay their welcome. All comply to the tried and trust formula of a spooky setup followed by a gruesome twist ending. The slightest story, “The Principal”, features a brilliant turn from Dylan Baker, channeling the likes of Re-animator’s Jeffery Combs, propping up an otherwise fairly thin plot. “Surprise Party” and “The School Bus Massacre Revisited” are more substantial, the former boasting a terrifically full-on conclusion and the latter featuring some genuinely impressive atmospherics.

Like Creepshow, Trick ‘r Treat concludes with a one-hander featuring a veteran actor being tormented in his home; but instead of EG Marshall and thousands of insects, here we have Brian Cox and a pumpkin-headed demon called Sam. This segment is the undoubted highlight of the film. Sam is a brilliant creation; in a twisted take on A Christmas Carol, he pops up throughout the film as a warning to those who fail to respect the traditions of Halloween, but he reserves particular ire for Cox’s cantankerous Mr Kreeg, whom he pursues until he changes his ways. Cox gives a no-holds-barred performance, and the fight descends into some hugely enjoyable Evil Dead II-style slapstick/splatter.

As you might have guessed, Trick ‘r Treat isn’t hugely original, but Dougherty’s brilliantly witty, atmospheric direction holds everything together. In anchoring everything to a single town, he creates a real sense of location that is at once familiar but at times hauntingly alien; in “Surprise Party”, for example, the town’s festivities very quickly move from being jovial to threatening. The film is filmed with memorable and striking imagery: the aforementioned Sam, the decayed school bus half submerged in the lake, Kreeg’s front garden filled with carved pumpkins. The mood may predominantly be light-hearted, but Dougherty shows such craft it’s hard not to be dazzled.

The main point of divergence between Trick ‘r Treat and its predecessors is Dougherty’s decision (apparently taken during post-production) to cut between the stories rather than telling them in series. The downside to this is that the first 20 minutes or so are largely fairly leisurely-paced setup, to the extent that I was starting to wonder whether or not the film had been somewhat over-praised. Nevertheless, once all the stories are in motion, he delivers a genuine thrill ride that largely avoids the pacing problems that blight other anthologies.

Perhaps inevitably for a film that wears its influences so strongly on its sleeves, Trick ‘r Treat feels simultaneously very 80s and very 50s. But in an era where mainstream horror is becoming increasingly po-faced and misanthropic in its shocks, to see a modern, studio genre film that revels in a sense of well-crafted scary fun is hugely refreshing. It’s obviously a travesty that mainstream audiences were denied the opportunity to see this film on the big screen, but it points to bigger problems in Hollywood’s current handling of horror. This film easily stands alongside the likes of Creepshow and Carpenter’s Halloween as a definitive Halloween movie, one that you will want to watch – in company – every October. Yet the studios seem content to mark Halloween with the grungy nastiness of the Saw films rather than something far more inclusive, accessible and in keeping with the spirit of the season like this. (British readers who think this is overstating the case may like to reflect on just how widely Halloween is celebrated in the US). And Trick ‘r Treat impresses because despite the gore, murder and dismemberment, it retains the atmosphere of good, clean fun. So chalk this up as yet another horror blog telling you to buy this film, watch it, and tell your friends. As Sam is keen to stress, Halloween traditions must be respected…

And the plot is simple, Incredibly so. Omitting the spoiler ending, it centres entirely on a man trapped in a telephone box. Given that simplicity, there’s not a great deal I can say about the nuts and bolts beyond observing that they’re perfectly calibrated to serve the purpose of the film. La cabina has the wonderful grittiness that’s so often a feature of Spanish film, from the look and sound through to the willingness to conceive of and present average characters to convey added realism (those who’ve seen Timecrimes will know what I mean). By average, I of course don’t wish to disparage the efforts of Jose Vazquez. He takes possession of every second of the role of ‘Man in the phone box, and the virtues of the gritty, simplistic approach can be observed in contrasting this with something like Phone Booth.

What La cabina manages to capture perfectly is the collective psychological blindness that emerges in totalitarian societies which allows most people to live a ‘normal’ life. While the crowd surrounding the phone box are initially sympathetic and concerned, once it becomes clear that they are powerless to help they quickly turn their backs in an attempt to ignore – or mock – the obvious elephant in the room, or ‘Man in the phone box’. In drawing out his reaction and that of the various characters who stumble across him, Mercero dances between light drama, comedy and Twilight Zone-esqu eeriness with such effortlessness that the impact of the ending is doubly horrific.

This reaches its apotheosis when the box is eventually removed; no-one seeks to question the circumstances of this or batters an eye-lid that someone can be randomly plucked from the street by seemingly faceless authority. Not that La cabina is a simple tirade against authority, for on some levels the state is presented as hapless and incompetent rather than chilling. The police who turn out to assist are more reminiscent of the German officers in ‘Allo, ‘Allo than they are the ruthless agents of the Franco regime. It’s nevertheless astonishing that La cabina secured a release during the Caudillo’s lifetime.  Its message is nuanced but clear; in some societies, people can and do disappear in circumstances as brazen as from a public square in broad daylight surrounded by large crowds. You’ll be hard pressed to find a film that conveys the true horror of that fact better.

Largely based on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents veers between taut, psychological thriller and ghost story with such seamless accomplishment that it’s easy to see why the distributors were baffled as to how to bracket it. In the red corner, we have all of the hallmarks of the Poe-esque ghost story: the Gothic mansion, whose beauty and tranquillity is forever stained with family tragedy and shame. Into this is added the external innocent, in our case Deborah Kerr’s Miss Giddens, a Governess who has been sent to take charge of two orphans kept at a distance by their benefactor uncle. At first enchanted with her new life, Miss Giddens rapidly comes to discover that this is a corrupted Eden; stifling under the oppression of a collective and hidden shame, and, perhaps, something supernatural to boot.

If this was as far as it went, The Innocents would still be hailed as a ghost story of stunning execution. Clayton was blessed with seeming to catch a few of his cast and crew at the peak of their game, and cinematographer Freddie Francis was undoubtedly one of them. Much has been written about his pioneering use of hazing and blurring in the scenes involving the apparitions. Rightly so, as without it the latent ambiguity of Miss Giddens experiences would be lost. However, that one aspect of his work has to be set in the context of his genius for giving the entire film an ethereal aura, which is at one and the same time intoxicating and deeply unsettling. He was undoubtedly assisted in this by the wonderfully tense screenplay of, among other, Truman Capote and Sir John Mortimer (how often do you get to write that?). It rockets along, and in avoiding the pacing pitfall suffered by most period piece ghost stories gives The Innocents a very modern feel. By lulling the viewer into this dreamlike state, Clayton has us perfectly positioned to share Miss Giddens’ journey with her.

Which leads us into blue corner; the psychological dissection of our intriguing protagonists. Cinema studies of the human conditions work best when they have a cast decent enough to carry them off. Here, Clayton was again fortunate in drawing a once-in-a-career performance out of Kerr. She wrings out the hidden frustrations, anxieties and desperations of Giddens with an increasingly startling and unsettling intensity, perfectly balancing her position as both victim and tormentor. It’s a testament to his performance that the ten-year old Martin Stephens (he of Village of the Damned fame) provides a perfect counter-foil to an actress at the top of her game. The two of them dominate the screen as they seek to define and determine the nature of their relationship, and through that the truth behind what is happening at Bly House. Descending from sweet playfulness through to mutual (and even paedophilic?) dependency, we’re left with the wonderful frustration of asking whose story has this been all along: his or hers?

Whether through design or default, The Innocents will always provoke debate between those who see it as a ghost story and others who view it as a character study. It doesn’t matter one way or the other; Clayton provides a textbook example of how to do both.

The exploding head in question occurs around 15 minutes into the film, and its fame (or infamy) does little to rob it of its impact. It’s a superbly realised moment, both technically (it’s far more accomplished than the similar rupture at the start of Dawn of the Dead) and directorially, hitting a huge crescendo after a seriously creepy buildup in which Michael Ironside’s rogue telepath (or “scanner”) Revok engages in a battle of wills with a hapless fellow telepath giving a demonstration of his abilities. It’s the high point of a sensational opening half hour that both thrills – Revok, head of an underground group of scanners who are plotting a world takeover, subsequently unleashes some serious carnage on the cops who try to arrest him – and tantalises us with a central plot arc that promises much excitement to follow.

Unfortunately, that excitement never really comes. The main plot, in which tortured scanner Cameron Vale is enlisted by security firm ConSec to infiltrate and bring down Revok’s organisation, sadly fails to fulfill its undeniable potential. Apparently production on the film started while the script was still unfinished, and this would serve to explain some of its problems; after a blistering start, the pace slows down almost unbearably, and the action degenerates into a series of somewhat disconnected, vaguely unsatisfactory setpieces, which increasingly rely on the scanners showing hitherto unmentioned abilities in order to further the plot. One example is the sequence in which Vale successfully blows up a computer using his mind via the telephone, which allows the use of some fairly impressive pyrotechnics, but does little to shake the suspicion that everyone was making it up as they went along.

The other problem is that the film criminally underuses Michael Ironside, whose sneering, understated performance is one of the highlights. Revok is undoubtedly the most interesting character, and it’s perhaps understandable that Cronenberg wished to preserve his intrigue by keeping him to the shadows, but considering how strongly his presence is felt at the start of the film and how the climax depends on him, his presence is sorely missed in the middle and would have livened things up no end. It’s always a pleasure to see Patrick McGoohan, here in the role of Dr Paul Routh, but he’s unfortunately hampered by an accent that is presumably American but often wanders into several other nationalities. Stephen Lack’s performance as Vale is a genuinely mixed bag; initially his wide-eyed rabbit in the headlights persona is well suited to the scenes in which he discovers the power of his own mind for the first time, but when required to be commanding and heroic he quickly looks out of his depth.

The climactic showdown between Revok and Vale is pretty decent and definitely raises the excitement levels somewhat but it still falls some way short of the balls-out mind war you might have been expecting at the beginning. Which brings us back to that exploding head. In that one scene, the film simultaneously excels itself and peaks too soon; it’s a textbook lesson in how one iconic moment can raise the levels of expectation to a point where disappointment can only follow. Scanners’ reputation in the public mind rests on a single shot; it’s probably best enjoyed as “The One Where The Guy’s Head Explodes” and nothing more.

To sum it up, Diary of the Dead is an interesting film with some excellent bits, but is ultimately flawed. Freed from the shackles of the studio machine that discernibly limited his directorial freedom in Land of the Dead, Romero takes us back to the origins of his zombie holocaust in Diary. Jumping around in time somewhat, the meltdown is moved from the 1960s to contemporary America, and is centred on a group of student filmmakers caught up in the mounting chaos.

That might sound a bit Blair Witch Project, but it’s used as an effective plot vehicle (in the first half of the film at least) as it allows Romero to narrate the stories of several disparate groups of survivors as his motley crew attempt to travel to safety. There is a real richness in these bit characters, especially Samuel, the deaf Amish superman. I also think it’s a nice development of the set-up in Night of the Living Dead. There, Romero effectively replicated a cross-section of society within the pressure cooker of the besieged farmhouse. In the intensity of that atmosphere, he toyed out the complexities of the human psyche (and all of its attendant unpleasantness) with a real panache. It’s a mark of his skill as a director that he is able to transfer a similar intensity of experience to what is, at heart, a relatively simple drive through bandit (rather, zombie) country. The same depressed frustration at seeing positions of safety surrendered because of the human proclivity to petty bickering is, alas and enjoyably, a common occurrence in Diary.

It’s also great to see Romero really go to town on the cadavers that have been so instrumental to his success. Matt and I have said elsewhere that the zombies are always secondary players in the Dead series, and Romero himself is on record as saying that he had never intended to be the man who makes zombie films. Diary has some of the best set-piece scenes in the entire Dead series (keep a look out for the defibrillator, the acid and most especially, the clown). In a perverse way they demonstrate Romero’s genuine affection for his subject matter, which is a nice reward for their 40 year service in his cause. They’re also continuing evidence of his sprightly imagination, which bodes very well for future Romero-Grunwald output.

So why is opinion so divided? A beauty of the Dead series has always been the ambiguity and complexity of Romero’s message. As mentioned above, the zombies are only ever used to exaggerate his observations on contemporary society. In Diary, he forgoes some this ambiguity and fixes his colours to the mast in a contradictory, at times patronising and, ultimately, unsuccessful way.

The story is principally centred on Jason Creed, an obsessive filmmaker whose aim is to document every aspect of the growing crisis. It’s an interesting idea, and one that could have worked. In the first half of the film, there is a real sense that his motives are a pure and necessary counter-foil to the lies and distortions being perpetrated by the mainstream media’s coverage of the crisis. There’s a certain nobility of purpose in his actions, which helps to excuse the fact that he is an annoyingly unpleasant individual (indeed, the most annoying character in the history of the series).

In seeing events through his hand-held camera, and in referencing video-streaming and YouTube, Romero manages to successfully integrate contemporary social and technological developments into the story to the extent that they become a seamless thread of the plot and offer genuine comment on what makes society tick in 2008. Anyone who has suffered through Halloween: Resurrection will know that it is all too easy to clumsily and pointlessly graft the apparel of such technology onto a horror film, with disastrous results. By any measure, you have to applaud Romero, a man in his late 60s let’s not forget (sorry George).

The film decisively fails around the half-way point, when it becomes apparent that Creed’s growing narcissism is not going to be challenged by either his band of travellers or the crisis in general. At that point, his polemic against the twisted mainstream media and his quest to capture the unfolding events become confused, patronising and, worse, boring. His constant harping on about the need to ensure a record lives on is reminiscent of pot-smoking students who lounge around all day bemoaning the faults of society whilst doing nothing to address them. Fine when you’re in college perhaps, but not during the conquest of humanity by the returning undead.

Sometimes you feel as though you have missed something, as his companions, who at first vent their annoyance at his unwillingness to get involved with the business of survival, suddenly convert to his school of smugness. The fascinating topic of media manipulation built up in the first half of the film is drowned out by a feeling that at least society is pulling together and trying to do something to address the problem. There’s an interesting exchange between Professor Maxwell and Creed in the hospital, the gist of which is that in an extreme survival situation (difficult to think of a more severe on than this) it’s both understandable and desirable the media/government establishment tries to keep calm and carry on. It’s a shame this baton isn’t picked up and developed further, which results in Creed being free to brow-beat his companions and the audience into following his own flawed logic.

I understand that a sequel has already been cleared for development, and my hope is that Romero uses that film to repair the damage done in the second half of Diary. There are plenty of glimmers for hope. The supporting characters here are much more interesting than Creed, and in following their story Romero could return to the shifting perspectives of disparate bands that is one of the strengths of his output. There are some superb moments of black comedy and insider jokes, which, coupled with the generally positive character development and set-pieces mentioned above are further testament to Romero’s undiminished role as a director at the top of his game. What is beyond dispute is that he has such a great eye for zombie films that we should all be extremely grateful that he is still making them.

On paper, you could be forgiven for thinking that you probably had seen it already, as many of the elements that would define the series are present and correct from the start – a man in a rubber monster suit smashing up miniature replicas of Tokyo, the anti-nuclear subtext, hundreds of Japanese people screaming in panic… But whilst subsequent Godzilla films have their moments, they’re a world away from the heart and soul that you’ll find in the very first film. There is absolutely nothing camp about this movie; instead it’s a stately, emotional and at times even harrowing film that treats its subject matter thoughtfully and with gravitas.

Godzilla is of course an ancient monster woken up after millions of years and given terrifying powers by the Japanese H-bomb tests. Obviously, this puts the theme of nuclear weaponry front and centre in the film, but to describe it as simply an anti-nuclear polemic is an over simplification. Godzilla is far more multilayered than many subsequent horror and sci-fi movies that use a simplistic environmental warning as a narrative rationale for monsters and zombies; instead, director Ishiro Honda’s triumph is the way he rejects upfront preaching for a sophisticated threading of ideas throughout the film. Godzilla indeed represents the destructive power of the atomic bomb both on a literal and an allegorical level; however, Serizawa’s dilemma over the deployment of his Oxygen Destroyer (which occupies most of the second half of the film and is written off too easily by many critics as a simple plot device) reflects the wider issues surrounding the ethics of atomic power: should a discovery be suppressed if there are many ‘bad’ applications for it above and beyond its immediate advantages? And once a discovery has been made, can there ever be any turning back? That the Oxygen Destroyer ultimately saves the day, despite being an even more destructive superweapon than those lamented in the film, suggests a thoughtful ambivalence about the nuclear issue, rather than the soapbox grandstanding of lesser directors.

But as well as brains, the film has a very human heart to it as well. Honda deliberately resonates with recent events that would sit very heavily in the Japanese national memory; characters discuss openly the horror of nuclear warfare that hit the country only nine years previously, and the opening scene on the boat is uncomfortably close to the Castle Bravo test earlier in 1954, where the crew of a Japanese fishing boat was poisoned by the fallout from American nuclear testing. These are scars that run deep, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the scenes surrounding Godzilla’s first attack on Tokyo. Subsequent films shied away from showing the human cost of the monster’s rampages but here it is in full force: orphaned children in hospitals sending Geiger counters into overload; a hysterical mother sitting with her two babies on her doorstep shouting that they’ll all be joining their dead father soon; schools of children praying for an end to the onslaught. It’s sobering, harrowing stuff, made all the more emotional by the dispassionate way Honda’s camera simply records the events as they unfold.

Crucially, the effects – although creaky by modern standards – don’t let the side down. This is partly helped by the noir-ish black and white look of the film, where most of the monster action takes place at night, but equally it’s hard not to be impressed by just how well Godzilla’s destruction of Tokyo is realised. Unlike the friendly green dinosaur he would later become, here the monster is a dark, brutish killing machine who towers over the city with ominous force. Helpfully, the actors play it for real as well with no mugging to the camera, and it’s hard not to find at least some pathos in the central love triange of Serizawa, Ogata and Emiko.

Honda and his team made plain their debt to King Kong nearly twenty years earlier, and whilst that film may have been the first to successfully realise the concept of a huge creature running rampage in a major city, to my mind Godzilla remains the finest giant monster movie ever made. The spectacle we expect from such a film is there if that’s what you’re looking for, but almost uniquely for the genre, it is overshadowed by the concepts, ideas and genuine emotion. In subsequent films we root for the monster and cheer when he knocks down another skyscraper, but here Honda successfully conveys the sheer terror of living through such an unstoppable onslaught. Godzilla is never preachy or presumptive in its nuclear subtext, but instead offers a harrowing and heartfelt yelp of pain from a culture that had all too recently suffered the worst destruction that science could then concoct.

Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator ticks all of those boxes. I confess here that I haven’t yet read H.P. Lovecraft’s “Herbert West: Reanimator”, but I don’t think it’s too essential. One of the beauties of good splatter horror is that the means are as important as the ends, and on every level Re-Animator is a joy to experience.

That is not to say that Gordon ever takes the attention of the viewer for granted, nor is he content in offering the film equivalent of junk food. The premise of the deliberate re-animation of the recently deceased is a worthy a subject for discussion as any you will find. Where I think Gordon is especially canny is in framing his story such without ever letting such deep and sombre themes act as a drag on viewer enjoyment.

This is especially obvious in the development of the central character, Dr. Herbert West, who is beautifully brought to life by Jeffrey Combs. When we first encounter Herbert he is styled as your typical creepy mad scientist, just returning to the USA from Europe where some level of mystery surrounded his activities. We are first expected to view him as the outcast, whose gory machinations are being pursued with an utter disregard for the moral and physical consequence. About mid-way through there is something of a gear change though, and in his disregard for the moral questions surrounding his work are hints that he wants to conquer death either because he fears it or to help those who do fear it. This was deftly handled by having the utterly likeable, all-American Dan Cain befriend Herbert. By providing the viewer with the reassuring moral compass of Dan we don’t get too bogged down.

That is as well, because when Gordon opens the throttle Re-Animator descends into some of the most manic, memorable and thoroughly enjoyable gore I think you’ll see. At times, his imagery practically jumps off the screen at you. You realise what a complete package Gordon offers when this violence is tied into a fantastically dark comedy script. He keeps the cast on something of a tight leash in terms of direction, and to excellent effect. By having them play it straight, it retains its artistic integrity and retains the freedom to really push the boat out in it terms of its visuals. The headless Dr. Carl Hill is one example of many.

There is no shame in a film choosing to deliver its message by going down the splatter horror route. When it is done badly, it should rightly be dismissed as pointless exhibitionism. When it is done properly, it offers up an utterly refreshing experience on every level of viewer engagement. Re-Animator could serve as a master class in getting it right, and I only hope that the upcoming House of Re-Animator brings it to the attention of a new generation of viewers.

As is probably clear from the plot summary, Tenebrae finds Argento in a self-reflexive mood. Apparently, he was inspired to make the film by a disturbing series of telephone death threats he received from a deranged fan, and it’s not hard to see fairly obvious parallels between Peter Neal, the crime novelist celebrated for the lurid brutality of his prose, and Argento himself, who if nothing else really pushed the envelope in terms of the elegant, poetic presentation of gut-wrenching brutality. There are some fun scenes which play on the director’s reputation including a sequences in which Neal is quizzed on whether or not his novels are sexist by a feminist journalist (who, it transpires, is a lesbian – which is endemic of Argento’s somewhat passé approach to gender politics; in any case, she’s one of the first to get butchered), and the policeman Inspector Giermani is in many ways the archetypal dumb fan – enraptured by Neal’s work but incapable of really understanding it.

That said, Tenebrae isn’t really a commentary or defence by Argento of his work, but the parallels between the director and his character do add a certain mischievous frisson to the proceedings. It also serves to make the grisly twist at the end of the film even more ghoulish if you think too long about its implications. On a first viewing, I’ll admit to finding the movie’s resolution somewhat gimmicky compared to, say, Deep Red, but on re-watching it does work on a meta-level and adds to the blood-soaked aura of fun that pervades the film. Like Deep Red, Argento has all the pieces in place so that the final unveiling of the killer makes narrative sense; the red herrings he throws you throughout are all accounted for and the final set-piece is a hugely satisfying bloodbath.

One area in which Tenebrae continues to receive criticism is in the look of the film. True, compared to the likes of Suspiria the modernist architectural structures in which the film takes place feel overly stark and washed out, but in some ways this more muted backdrop boils down Argento’s trademark presentation of murder to its very essence, focussing his camera on just the victim and the murderer. There are some incredibly arresting scenes in this film – most notably the celebrated panning shot over the top of a building tracking the killer’s pursuit of the people inside, but also incidental shots such as the close-up of the gloved hand of the killer smashing a lightbulb with a razor blade. Combined with Goblin’s thumping incidental score – probably the most overtly synthpop they’d contributed to an Argento film at this point, and which at times even starts to foreshadow Faithless – Tenebrae sometimes takes on the feel of a music video, but whilst it’s somewhat removed from the sonic and visual palette of his previous works it’s still every bit as stylised as his great works and, in its own way, just as beautiful.

The acting’s pretty passable for a dubbed Italian movie as well; Anthony Franciosa is clearly having a whale of a time in the lead role, and he makes a nice double act with Daria Nicolodi, aka Mrs Dario Argento and frequent collaborator. Ultimately, Tenebrae is probably not as significant a movie milestone as Deep Red or Suspiria, but as a rip-roaring murder mystery it’s probably one of his slickest, most taut and most enjoyable films. The prevailing impression is that of a director at the top of his game having a ball with his material, and sense of fun that runs through this gory shocker is utterly infectious. Highly recommended.

Well yes and no. If (like me) you sit down to watch it with high hopes then you’ll probably come away disappointed. One of several flaws is a real mismatch between the dialogue and the characters, which means that the ten-year-old lead ends up with lines that Samuel L. Jackson would be proud to deliver. At times the humour element of this masks the wider problems with character development. More often than not it doesn’t. As a result we’re left with the oddity of young and mildly annoying Michael investigating the oddities afflicting his town almost single-handedly. It’s okay though, as it turns out he’s well trained in the use of most fire-arms and is also a hell of a driver.

These might seem like glib points (and common enough features of horror films), but they really bite when combined with the turgid pacing of the first two-thirds of the film. As a result Phantasm never really gels together, and the problem is you really feel it. Thus, the usual filler scenes (here involving the adventures of an ice-cream vendor turned wannabe rock star) seem to overly dominate the plot.

It’s a real shame because Don Coscarelli obviously had some interesting ideas. Working with a minuscule budget he does manage to craft some pretty impressive set-piece scenes. The revelation of the other-worldly link is beautifully rendered and offers a nice respite from the otherwise dated feel of the film. The premise underlying Phantasm is novel enough to attract attention in itself, which is why it’s even more annoying that it’s never fully utilised or explored beyond a sneaking glance of the Tall Man’s den. The Tall Man himself is quite rightly the public face of Phantasm, providing as he does tantalising glimpses of what might have been had the character been properly deployed. Angus Scrimm dominates the screen, even if he does look like David Walliams.

There’s just about enough in Phantasm to keep genre enthusiasts going, but the general viewer will probably be left wondering what all the fuss is about.

A first time viewer might be surprised, given the film’s reputation, that the titular exorcism only really takes place in the last 20 minutes. But the demonic possession of the 12 year-old Regan McNeil is not so much the film’s raison-d’etre as it is the catalyst for three different plot strands which span the supernatural and the personal: actress Chris McNeil’s relationship with her daughter following her breakup with the child’s father; Father Merrin’s apparent awakening of a demon on an archaeological dig in Iraq; and Father Karras’ crisis of faith, compounded by the death of his mother. When Regan is possessed – and it’s only halfway through the film that we become aware that she is – the film is not just a display of overt, graphic horror; the possession has consequences for these very real people. The infamous displays of violence and abusive language are secondary to the fact that – for the audience – the fate of the child matters.

All this is helped by the absolutely pitch-perfect performances of the lead actors. Ellen Burstyn runs the full gamut between tenderness and hysteria in the role of Chris, and she is never less than convincing. Likewise, Jason Miller’s is immensely likeable and sympathetic as the conflicted Father Karras, and forms a good contrast with Max von Sydow’s legendary turn as Father Merrin. Von Sydow captures – perhaps more so than any other film I can think of – the essence of a man whose faith is so strong that it in turn strengthens him into a powerhouse whose presence and gravitas hulk over the latter part of the film.

At the heart of the film, though, is Linda Blair as Regan. Since the film, Blair has been tainted somewhat by dubious career moves and personal controversy, and it’s widely felt that she was robbed of an Oscar for her role here by Friedkin’s initial unwillingness to disclose that the voice of the demon was provided by Mercedes McCambridge rather than Blair herself. She is, though, astonishing in the part, showing a precocious range that is way beyond her years. Her chemistry with Burstyn in the film’s early scenes is immensely touching, meaning that her coldness in the earlier throes of her possession are actually more disturbing than the creature that she becomes. To see the ‘ideal daughter’ of the film’s opening masturbating with a crucifix and using obscene language is nothing less than horrifying.

Ultimately, The Exorcist succumbed to the fate of all great genre movies – franchising, foreign rip-offs, second-rate homages and special editions. At the centre of it, though, is this relatively simple, heartfelt and utterly devastating film, which over thirty years on has lost none of its ability to draw you into its world and shock you. Peerless, and highly recommended.