Five-Legged Iguana

A Rundown of the 13 Best Horror Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Year
[8 of 13]


RED WHITE & BLUE
(January 2010)


Simon Rumley’s The Living and the Dead made quite the impression on me (unearth the review from the Archive), so much so that when I first got a whiff of Red White & Blue, I kept track of its development and production, knowing I was eventually going to check it out.
And while this is a different sort of cinematic animal from The Living and the Dead, it’s got the same kind of jarring disquiet in its onscreen action, action that also takes place in that viciously desolate wasteland where psychology and tragedy collide. But just as Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles had its volume jacked up in the U.S.-set Volume Two, Rumley’s narrative sensibilities are likewise amped to better reflect the tone and atmosphere of this American tale of love and isolation, of desperation and revenge.
The performances (by Noah Taylor, Amanda Fuller, and Marc Senter) are raw and unpolished, the editing jarring, the narrative’s trajectory and propulsion coloured by its staccato rhythms.
This is sordid stuff and it’s interesting how Rumley and his cast can make an audience involved and invested in a tale whose characters are not especially likable.
Now I’m even more excited to see Rumley’s contribution to the upcoming horror anthology, Little Deaths.

Speaking of…

Another Simon Rumley Must-See:
“Bitch,” contained in
LITTLE DEATHS (February 2011)


Multi-contributor anthologies are always a tricky proposition.
Given that there are X number of stories by X number of contributors, there’ll always be a variance in the quality of the collected tales.
There’s also the distinct possibility that, for whatever reason, some stories may work for some of the audience, while others may not, and that’s perhaps more to do with the subjectivity of art than the actual pieces themselves.

The horror anthology Little Deaths is a rarity in that all three stories are excellent, without a real weak link in the lot.
Still, as much as Sean Hogan’s “House and Home” (which kicks off the anthology) is a well-made little bit of sex and grue, it’s still overshadowed by the truly mondo bizarro “Mutant Tool” by Andrew Parkinson, and Simon Rumley’s “Bitch,” where the power and dominance games played in a very atypical sexual relationship reaches a dangerous tipping point.

As made readily apparent by its title (which it shares with an anthology edited by Ellen Datlow), Little Deaths is a showcase for erotic horror, and what’s on display in the contributions of Parkinson and Rumley is rather disturbing and unsettling and not for the squeamish nor prudish.
You’ve been suitably warned…

(Red White & Blue OS courtesy of impawards.com; Little Deaths OS courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)