Life of a legend from The Graduate to Graceland

Salem’s Lot (15, 114 mins)

Verdict: Too silly to be scary

October is upon us and with it the inevitable bloody drip-drip-drip of scary films, serving the ravenous monster that the Halloween industry has become.

Of the two that arrive in cinemas this week, Salem’s Lot comes with the shinier pedigree. It’s an adaptation of the 1975 Stephen King novel about a New England town bedevilled by vampires, and was first screened as a TV mini-series back in 1979, starring David Soul at a time when he was far better known for driving a Ford Galaxie 500 in Starsky & Hutch, than for driving stakes through the hearts of bloodsucking ghouls.

The character he played, Ben Mears, is this time played by Lewis Pullman. He’s a writer, as the protagonist so often is in King’s stories, and has come back to reconnect with his home town, Jerusalem’s Lot, after being forced to leave aged nine following the death of his parents in a road accident.

October is upon us and with it the inevitable bloody drip-drip-drip of scary films, including Salem’s Lot (pictured)

It’s an adaptation of the 1975 Stephen King novel about a New England town bedevilled by vampires

I saw Salem’s Lot at a gala screening at which there was a lot more laughing than shrieking, but at least they seemed to enjoy it

It’s the mid-1970s, coincidentally the Starsky & Hutch era. Soon, Ben and the most eligible young woman in town, Susan (Makenzie Leigh), are an item. But they’ve barely had time for a spot of innocent necking than a less wholesome kind of necking starts happening.

If the town’s sheriff had any guts he’d know to pin the mysterious deaths of two young boys and their resurrection as vampires on newly arrived antique-shop owner Mr Straker (played on telly by James Mason and here by Pilou Asbaek), who all but wears a sign on his head saying ‘dangerous creepy guy’. But he’s a ᴅᴇᴀᴅ loss, sadly.

So it’s left to Ben, Susan, kindly teacher Matthew Burke (Bill Camp) and spirited 11-year-old schoolboy Mark Petrie (Jordan Preston Carter) to nail Mr Straker and his evil master Mr Barlow (Alexander Ward), whose dastardly plan is to turn the town into a vampire colony.

This they gamely try to do in a film that gets progressively more overwrought and silly. I saw it at a gala screening at which there was a lot more laughing than shrieking, but at least they seemed to enjoy it.

 

Terrifier 3 (18, 125 mins)

Verdict: Deeply unpleasant

Who, I wonder, will enjoy Terrifier 3, which is not really for the squeamish in broadly the same way that a plate of tripe is not really for a vegan.

David Howard Thornton again plays Art the Clown like a deranged version of Marcel Marceau, with his grotesquely disfigured former victim Victoria Heyes (Samantha Scaffidi) now his psycH๏τic sidekick.

The levels of depravity and gore in Damien Leone’s film (a pleasing detail, him being called Damien) will challenge all but the most committed of slasher-horror enthusiasts. You have been warned. Alas, I wasn’t.

The levels of depravity and gore in Damien Leone’s Terrifier 3 will challenge all but the most committed of slasher-horror enthusiasts

This time the carnage takes place at Christmas rather than Halloween, with Art obtaining his Santa suit like any self-­respecting psycho, by ritually torturing and then slaughtering the chubby old grandpa to whom it belonged, using a canister of liquid nitrogen to weaponise a carrot. Yes, that old trick.

But that grisly death is not the half of it: even before the opening тιтles, Art in his Santa costume has dismembered a family in their home. These set-piece killings are so relentlessly, graphically nasty that the narrative feels almost superfluous, as if it’s simply a way of marking time before the next choreographed monstrosity.

Nevertheless, there is a story of sorts, in which Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera), the traumatised but doughty survivor from Terrifier 2 (2022), eventually comes face to face with her demonic nemesis, even though she decapitated him last time around. The spillage of blood and guts is horrible throughout but Terrifier fans will doubtless, if only figuratively, lap it up.

 

Transformers One (PG, 104 mins)

Verdict: Slick animation

My double-bill on Monday afternoon, as whatever might be the collective noun for film critics gathered to watch this week’s releases, was Terrifier 3/Transformers One. As a Saturday-­afternoon football result, that would represent a solid home win.

Transformers One is a slick, energetic animation directed by Josh Cooley, who co-wrote Inside Out (2015) and directed Toy Story 4 (2019)

As an almost four-hour viewing exercise it tested my mettle, although not quite as fiercely as the robots on the planet Cybertron had their metal tested, as they punched, zapped and crushed the living daylights out of each other.

Transformers One is a slick, energetic animation directed by Josh Cooley, who co-wrote Inside Out (2015) and directed Toy Story 4 (2019). That on its own is an impressive set of credits, and he brings all his expertise to bear on an origin story that, if nothing else, is extremely loud.

We learn how Orion Pax (voiced by Chris Hemsworth), a humble miner, turns into the mighty Optimus Prime, and how his former buddy D-16 (Brian Tyree Henry) ends up as his sworn enemy, Megatron.

With metallic characters such as D-16 and B-127, you’d think a spot of WD-40 might ease relations, but anyway there’s lots of angry fighting and an A-list voice cast also including Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne and Jon Hamm.

All films in cinemas now.

 

Life of a legend from The Graduate to Graceland

In Restless Dreams: The Music Of Paul Simon (12A, 219 mins)

Those familiar with the lyrics of Paul Simon know that he’d rather be a sparrow than a snail, rather be a hammer than a nail. Director Alex Gibney applies the same approach to his documentary In Restless Dreams: The Music Of Paul Simon. It was intended to run in two parts, but as a single film it lasts a mighty three and a half hours (plus), and is best enjoyed with what the Americans call comfort breaks.

On the other hand there is an awful lot of story to tell about one of the greatest of all singer-songwriters and Gibney tells it splendidly, perhaps lingering a little too much on Simon now, still pᴀssionately singing and composing (he turns 83 this weekend and has lost most of the hearing in one ear). But also taking plenty of time, with fabulous use of archive material, to chronicle the great man’s extraordinary life and career.

It’s all there: friendships, marriages, musical influences; meeting ‘Artie’ Garfunkel when they were both 11; recording the soundtrack to The Graduate, marrying Carrie Fisher; making the amazing Graceland album.

As a single film In Restless Dreams: The Music Of Paul Simon lasts a mighty three and a half hours (plus)

There are marvellous factual nuggets throughout, some of which I already knew, for instance that Mrs Robinson in his famous song was originally meant to be Mrs Roosevelt, and some I didn’t.

‘The Ryecatchers’ was mooted as a name for the act that became, immortally (and daringly, at the time, given how Jewish it sounded), Simon and Garfunkel.

In cinemas on Sunday for one night only, available to stream and buy on Blu-ray from October 28.

Alice Lowe’s Timestalker (15, 90 mins, ***) is a hit-and-miss comedy that mines the same comedic seam as Blackadder, extracting laughs from the manners and morals of centuries past.

The conceit here is that Lowe plays the same lovelorn woman, apparently reincarnated between 1688 and 1980 via 1793 and Victorian times.

There are some woefully feeble gags (‘Au revoir’… ‘I didn’t know you speak German’) but it’s pleasingly daft at times.

Timestalker is in select cinemas. In Restless Dreams is in cinemas on Sunday for one night only, then streaming from October 28.