Cheap thrills: five essen­tial straight-to-video stock­ing fillers

As Christ­mas looms and cinephiles busy them­selves wrap­ping up DVDs and Blu-rays of var­i­ous crit­i­cal hits, box office sen­sa­tions and restored clas­sics for their doubt­less enthralled pals, lovers of down and dirty direct to video genre films, cult movies, ​‘bad’ movies and pure edgelord trash should look clos­er at a ver­i­ta­ble trea­sure trove of stock­ing-ready 2019 releas­es await­ing their atten­tion just under the radar.

Fans of DTV com­bat films search­ing for the per­fect gift should look no fur­ther than Jesse V Johnson’s short, sharp shock of a revenge flick Avenge­ment, a film which com­bines the filthy wit and colour­ful cameos of the mod­ern UK gang­ster film with inven­tive fight chore­og­ra­phy and admirably kinet­ic cam­er­a­work. The sto­ry of cock­ney hard man Cain Burgess (Scott Adkins) locked up for a tough stretch and sub­se­quent­ly out on a one man mis­sion to take down the dodgy geezers who set him up, most of the action in Avenge­ment plays out in a bru­tal prison and run down East End pub.

These are per­fect­ly spare, atmos­pher­i­cal­ly ren­dered spaces for all kinds of inge­nious­ly sweary slang­ing match­es, griz­zly kills and epic con­fronta­tions to play out in strik­ing­ly ambi­tious cin­e­mas­cope and accom­pa­nied by the mourn­ful synths of Sean Murray’s impres­sive­ly momen­tous score. It’s a film to be trea­sured for its dark wit, resource­ful­ness and panache, as well as bursts of won­der­ful­ly OTT ultra­vi­o­lence. Love­ly stuff.

While mas­sive bud­get video game adap­ta­tions con­tin­ue to dom­i­nate the­atri­cal­ly with every­thing from Detec­tive Pikachu, Juman­ji: The Next Lev­el and next year’s Son­ic The Hedge­hog mak­ing noise every­where, trash con­nois­seurs should make space in their shop­ping bas­ket for a rather more fru­gal 2019 iter­a­tion in the shape of Doom: Anni­hi­la­tion, a cheer­ful­ly cheap and nasty nom­i­nal sequel to the big bud­get Dwayne John­son film of 2007.

Belong­ing to a hand­some tra­di­tion of low-bud­get video game movies most­ly direct­ed by Uwe Boll, Doom: Anni­hi­la­tion is a glee­ful­ly nasty and effi­cient action hor­ror chron­i­cling the mis­ad­ven­tures of a squadron of futur­is­tic sol­diers tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing a mys­te­ri­ous acci­dent on a remote space sta­tion. Bear­ing some pass­ing visu­al resem­blance to the look and feel of the most recent id video game, the lim­it­ed bud­get is nonethe­less used to pleas­ing­ly tacky effect as a game­ly over­act­ing cast do vicious bat­tle with var­i­ous prac­ti­cal­ly and dig­i­tal­ly ren­dered zom­bie mon­sters. It’s a film to be enjoyed as much for its no non­sense approach to cheap thrills as for its sus­pi­cious­ly earth­bound look­ing ​‘aban­doned sewage works’ locations.

Straight to video can also be the phoenix-like realm of more chal­leng­ing-to-posi­tion work that makes a noise crit­i­cal­ly, per­haps on the fes­ti­val cir­cuit, but nev­er nev­er quite makes it to cin­e­mas. A Vig­i­lante is a won­der­ful case in point, a bold and provoca­tive SXSW 2018 sen­sa­tion repo­si­tioned for DVD as a straight­for­ward fem­i­nist revenge flick in I Spit on Your Grave mode.

This is a rather more com­plex and trou­bling work how­ev­er, a film about vic­tim­hood and per­verse cathar­sis, focussed around Olivia Wilde’s bril­liant­ly nuanced depic­tion of a trau­ma vic­tim on a bloody mis­sion to res­cue women from their vio­lent part­ners. Com­bin­ing sub­tly intense hand­held cam­er­a­work, styl­ish­ly direct vio­lence and ter­rif­ic act­ing, A Vig­i­lante is that per­fect low-bud­get genre object, a film which acknowl­edges the tropes and icono­gra­phies of its grimy sub­genre while bring a refresh­ing and ambiva­lent twist to proceedings.

For every block­buster or major auteur con­tri­bu­tion that emerges to pres­tige and box office suc­cess each year, there is of course always to be found cheap knock offs and cash-ins jump­ing on a craze to make a quick return. At least three effec­tive­ly nasty Man­son films emerged on home video over the Sum­mer in the wake of Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood, all of vary­ing qual­i­ty. The best of these is sure­ly Mary Harron’s Char­lie Says, a Venice 2018 title which creeped onto DVD this year and boasts some impres­sive­ly nasty recre­ations of Spahn ranch and rather shrewd psy­cho­log­i­cal exam­i­na­tions of a trio of the Man­son girls, all played well by a tal­ent­ed young cast.

But for those look­ing for some­thing alto­geth­er more trashy, unpleas­ant and exploita­tion-esque, The Haunt­ing of Sharon Tate is a pret­ty full on stare into the void. Framed extreme­ly spec­u­la­tive­ly as pre­mo­ni­tions of her fate appar­ent­ly expe­ri­enced by the doomed Tate (Hilary Duff), this is a low bud­get film which com­bines the great­est dual­i­ties and con­tra­dic­tions of exploita­tion cin­e­ma, in that even as it frames itself as a paean to vic­tim­hood and an anti-vio­lence screed, it rev­els in gore and sen­sa­tion­al­ism. An ugly spec­ta­cle it may be, but an end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing one.

And last but not least, don’t for­get to make space for Rob Zom­bie this Christ­mas, a much-maligned trash mas­ter still glee­ful­ly ham­mer­ing away at his very unique and gar­ish aes­thet­ic. His lat­est, the spec­tac­u­lar­ly vio­lent and upset­ting Three from Hell is a con­tin­u­a­tion of a tril­o­gy which he began with the­atri­cal fea­tures House of a Thou­sand Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects.

Shar­ing all the wit­ti­ly pro­fane dia­logue, full-on vio­lence and cheer­ful nihilism of those films, Three from Hell feels rather more con­strained in terms of its bud­get, and a switch to crisp dig­i­tal video does rather alter and soft­en the 1970s grind­house aes­thet­ic of its pre­de­ces­sors. But this is a hap­py return for Zom­bie, a film which goes against the grain in terms of con­tem­po­rary hor­ror by ful­ly embrac­ing gore, unpleas­ant­ness and sex­u­al deprav­i­ty in its core. Long may Zom­bie con­tin­ue to upset people.