I’ve got to admit that at this point, I’m just not all that excited going into
Haunted 4 A quick check up on IMDb shows that this and part five were both released in the same year, which leads me to expect something similar to two and three… A long back to back shoot with a lot of ghost hunter troops and meandering, but not a lot in the way of actual scares. I hope I’m wrong.
I’m not.
The one thing that Stephen Smith has going for him is his perpetual leading man Jon Paul Gates. Gates is extremely good at what he does. He creates characters that you really like spending time with. I’ve made this comparison before, but much like Phantasm’s late series sequels really started becoming family reunions, time to spend with Reggie and Angus and Don and Bill and Mike… Smith and Gates achieve that same effect here. It’s easy to just kind of sink into these films as an excuse to hang out with those guys… And that’s probably the best way to approach them. That and 1.5x speed, especially because this one’s a whopping two hours and twelve minutes!
I know I praise those part two credits, but really, we’re getting the exact same credits now for the third time in a row. It’s weird. We’ve also got the same TV host/announcer, but this time we’re at the house for our haunted location. The owner says there’s opening and closing down, doors slamming, things turning on and off, and fire spontaneously appearing in the barbecue pit.
We also have the same American ghost hunter with John Paul Gates. Gates finds a ghost of a child upstairs, in a sort of vortex going on up there. We’re throwing a tea leaf reading into this mix this time too.
Evp manages to retrieve the word “devil” upstairs, so it’s time for them to start asking it questions. The ghost makes itself known with some loud noise, knocking the cell phone to dead black. The ghost is trying to find her sister, and keeps going from person to person trying to communicate… At least that’s what Gates tells us. It’s still all talk – nothing is ever shown. In this upstairs, after trying to communicate with that girl, we are rewarded with more action than usual in exchange for an extraordinary long section of film. Knocks and
people experiencing touches and computer read outs and such.
Makeshift Ouija board Downstairs and more hunting electronics upstairs. We’re an hour and 15 minutes into it, but it feels longer. Outside, Gates sees an image of the girl standing in the window, pointing down. He describes a vision she shares with him – a vision of her sister being physically abused, beaten and hurt. There’s also an army man here, Sergeant Major Mark Stevenson… He said he’s the abusive father.
These are really the best parts; where Gates is hearing from the spirits and basically telling us the backstory. Much of the rest of the ghost hunting bits are people talking with each other and a lot of faces staring at farms or other equipment.
Finally, we hit the last seven minutes or so where they’re coming to an end and getting ready to cleanse the house, burning sage and praying blessings over the house. Suddenly, the barbecue pit burst in the flame, just as Was described at the beginning of the film. And yet, gates can feel the bad energy and bad spirits leaving the house. Little girl is feeling better he says.
And that’s it. As far as these Haunted movies go, that may be the single most anticlimactic ending so far. I almost feel like what I’m watching is a master class on how to build one of these ghost hunter shows, and I sort of fictionalized attempt to show what the most ideal outcome would be. If you didn’t know this was fiction, this one in particular could very easily be mistaken for the real thing. Not sure I like that. With so many genuine ghost hunter shows all over television,
I’m not sure what the point is to watching a staged ghost hunters show… Well, one where they admit it staged anyhow!
June 27, 2024 | Categories: Director Retrospective, Horror Movies, movies, Steven M. Smith | Tags: Haunted, Jon Paul Gates, Steven M. Smith | Leave a comment
Haunted three starts off exactly the same as part two – so much so I had to check to make sure I was watching the correct movie. Same journalist, same location. I almost wonder, if not last couple of minutes we saw at the end of haunted too or actually from this film (it was).
This is the day after… Where everybody had been dared to come back. Jon Paul Gates seems to be taking things a lot more seriously… Saying things are far more dire this time around. Whatever the ghost in the tent was last night, he’s back and this time around he really wants them out. That’s one of the interesting things I’m noting about these. Each successive film gets more dire and more intense. On this entry we’ve got tension and threat from the word go because we’re building upon the previous film. Nevertheless, 20 minutes in and I already pretty much know what I’m going to see here. It’s basically a rehash of the last movie… with perhaps a touch more paranormal activity and a proper finale.
We Finally get to do the experiment that the American ghost hunter wanted to try last film… Stacking up chairs and seeing if the ghost will knock them down.
So much boring chatting. Just so much. I mean I suppose we have to do something till the time while we wait for the chairs to get knocked down, but the chatter is endless and I’m fairly certain that that’s what’s making John Paul Gates sick… Not ghosts.
In any event, it’s a good excuse to get everybody out of the room while they put a static camera on the chairs for them to fall.
After arguing about whether or not it was a ghost or a rat that knocked over the stools, they break out the dousing rods and hand them to one of the punters. Rods are always a sketchy tool to begin with, but they do try and answer it with EVP in addition so we can hear the girls reaction and what else is going on as the rods cross. We don’t get a lot from that, but hopefully we’ll get more as we do another one of these improvised Evp and Ouija board sessions. Honestly, it’s following a lot of the same beats as the last film… It almost would have made more sense as a TV series. But then again, this isn’t real… It’s not a documentary, it’s fiction, driven by Smith’s experience in reality television. And that may be part of the problem. Film and television need different attention, different lighting, different pacing. Indeed, Smith would do a lot of very similar schtick Three years later in Ouija hosts, but it would land better because of the obviously fictional and the cinematic approach rather than the TV production values were seeing here
The ghosts are very worried about who the owner might sell the land to… In fact it might be better off if he didn’t sell it at all. In the last few minutes, we find ourselves outside in the cold and dark. There’s a bonfire burning in the distance, so, obviously we’re gonna have to go over there and investigate! Wait, there’s smoke coming from the tent. The mannequin in the tent comes alive! Then, they find themselves around the bonfire and gates is praying. Suddenly, he screams.
“Do not break the circle!“
The group fades away, but the fire remains.
I have no idea what just happened, but I was 100% correct… It wasn’t gonna happen until the last couple minutes.
At the end of the day, I assume both of these were filmed back to back, but I really wonder if they were just meant to be one movie… And they discovered they had so much footage that they could stretch it out into two? Ultimately that’s actually a problem… Because they need to use less of this footage, and pick up the pace to make this thing really move along. Instead, they’ve gone the exact opposite. There’s a mistake many rookie filmmakers volunteer, where they’re in love with every frame of footage that they shot and want to use as much of it as possible in the film. Smith is far enough along in his career that he shouldn’t be making this mistake, he should know enough to be able to edit brutally to hit all of these high points and still craft it into one ninety minute film.
At this point, just going into one of these films, I’ve got my thumb hovering and ready to mash the fast forward button as a mere act of survival, because I know nothing of any significance is really gonna happen until the last few minutes.
June 13, 2024 | Categories: Director Retrospective, Horror Movies, movies, Steven M. Smith | Tags: Haunted, Jon Paul Gates, Steven M. Smith | Leave a comment
I’ll give this to
Haunted part two, it’s got a better looking credit sequence than the previous one. A desaturated fly through an abandoned location, with radiation signs up and broken fences. Also nice is this one’s just an hour or 20 minutes. It starts much the same way though a talking heads describing going to a secret location in Essex for a paranormal investigation.They’re also investigating how much these Paranormal investigations shows are real.
The owner has brought Jon Paul Gates in his property to investigate his property which is rumored to be haunted. He’s also brought in an American paranormal investigator to handle the scientific side of it. It’s an old farm in disrepair, that was in use until the 40s… until it got the reputation for being haunted.
We’re getting a lot of the same ghost hunter stuff that we’ve seen before. Walk through this tent, Gates feels the presence of somebody who used to shave with his gun nearby. Back into a storage area what’s around here? The American wants to set up an EP later… We’ve also got another group of unsuspecting guests to come with us and chatter away about the experience. The owner confesses that while it’s kind of a haunted tourist stuff, but he’d really like to do is build usable structures here. He’s warned that it’s not like it when you do that. They don’t like their structures touched.
Interestingly enough, Gates isn’t sensing energy so much from that property, as he does from one of the audience. He asks that person to stick close to him tonight (except – NOTHING COMES OF IT!). In the meantime, the American investigator wants to do some tests, like setting up a chair and seeing if the spirit could knock it down. Actually, while he’s talking about that, owls in the barn. They run in, and do a test which seems to indicate that it was something paranormal. Suddenly, Gates freaks out… As if something attacked him.
When he recovers, it’s time for a makeshift Ouija board session. This reveals that the place is haunted by mail goes, and it’s not sure whether or not it wants to hurt them or not. It does feel threatened by them.
EVP session is next. It’s the same thing you’ve seen in every ghost hunter show, cleverly paste and design so you have to strain to hear things. They get a few responses, most notably a lot of growling.
The host journalist is skeptical, and quite disappointed with the evenings results, and his negativity is really pissing gates off. The host keeps referring to it as a show… Really sets gates off, but then again… The journalist has a dark energy about him that Gates can see and suspects this might be coloring his perceptions.
There’s some sharp words exchanged here in the last 12 minutes…But basically everybody is dared to come back the next day.
If I understand correctly, The next day is then represented by a quick one minute montage of everything going horribly, horribly wrong.
I do feel like we got a little more action and definitely a more engaging film this time around, but the real payoff is once again crammed into literally the final minute or two other film. I’m not sure what to think of this. I could understand getting away with this is in a one off, but there’s five of these things… Can they really all be the same thing?
May 30, 2024 | Categories: Director Retrospective, Horror Movies, movies, Steven M. Smith | Tags: Haunted, Jon Paul Gates, Steven M. Smith | Leave a comment
At first glance, I had kind of thought Hooligans at War would be an actual wartime film. You know, soccer thugs getting drafted and having to go after Vietnam or something. But no, this is really just a good old fashion gangster story with some military bits thrown in. It’s not my feel like the whole mafia thing we are used to in America, but these are still small time gangsters creating their own empires in the south and north of London.
It starts off with a brawl before flashing back to those days in the service, guns in the field and shenanigans in the mess. It’s while they are there that they realize they could come back and run the town, one in the north and won the boss of the South. We actually get an interesting introduction to everybody, mostly in the pub (Though it keeps popping up throughout the entire movie)… In a way that’s 
reminiscent of Goodfellas.
The film flashes back-and-forth between the Bosnia scenes and the London scenes. Well I imagine it’s meant to give a lot more depth and characterization, I really only comes off as confusing… Choppy There’s not enough paralles to whats going on in the past vs the present (which would have made for a more interesting narrative) and quite frankly, I never feel convinced this is actually Bosnia and not just the English countryside. I’m far more invested in the main narrative about the gangs, particularly as we hit the 30 minute point and get back to that brawl that we saw getting started at 
the beginning of the film.
Throughout the film, it’s basically British thug life at its best. We drift from encounter to encounter, nothing particularly flashy or too complicated. It almost feels like a documentary. Like one of those re-creation bits that we get in the middle of crime doc television like America’s Most Wanted or Unsolved Mysteries. That’s really where I think this movie finds its best destiny. As a “day-in-the-life” sort of film, an opportunity to step into the shoes of a London gangster for a bit, complete with the deals, jobs, and fights that go along with it all.
It’s not a bad film, especially since I enjoy the genre, but I could do with a solid narrative… A well defined journey from point a to point B. The plot we get here is weak at best. Tense towards the end, but meandering through the rest. of. It’s a good curiosity to toss into the middle of Smith‘s crime films if you’re doing a marathon, otherwise you can safely give this one a pass.
May 16, 2024 | Categories: Director Retrospective, Horror Movies, movies, Steven M. Smith | Tags: Hoodlums at War : North vs. South, Jon Paul Gates, Steven M. Smith | Leave a comment
A writer comes to a church looking for… Stories of the underworld… Perhaps… Tales of the Supernatural?
Sometimes titles The Soul Catcher, this film is gonna be an anthology, but it might not be all that bad, interestingly enough, Smith doesn’t direct everything here. This time he’s working this film with a partner, Daniel Johnson, a veteran of short films who contributes two stories to this collection – Bryan’s Daughter and Paralysis.
We’ve got a good framing device… Not only do we have the writer in the church looking for stories, the devil himself is arrived. There’s some pretty serviceable special effects in the section as well. Good composites, and some smart practical moves as a devil chases a young man out of the church and through the streets of town. It’s no use though, and he finds himself in an empty basement, tied to chair. The Devil double checks his watch as he taunts the young man. And now, it’s time for the Devil’s stories.
The Book.
A writer with a deadline, and an unfortunate case of writers block. But the publisher has just the cure for that… Suddenly shes waking up from a nightmare about a car crash only to discover a different life that she doesn’t recognize. It all has a very Twilight Zone field to it. At least, until the zombie shows up. Then it’s just confusing.
Back in the basement, the devil kind of tries to explain the plot, but only makes things more confusing. The young man tied up needs to feel the pain of each of these souls… Each of their stories.
The next story is Bryan‘s daughter.
Bryan, is of course, dead. But his daughter already knows before her mother tells her. And now she’s acting strange. It’s a quickie creepy kid haunting. A nice short feature, if a bit sloppily shot. You can tell this is one of Johnson’s bits.
The Hike… Which is exactly what it seems like. A fellow with a map in the wilderness but we get strange POV shots… He’s being followed.
Something with a light foot and a height voice flits about in the woods, unseen.
he comes across a small village with a singularly unwelcoming group of pillagers. He can’t leave, this is where he belongs… And indeed… he can’t seem to escape these people. Ayoung girl advises him, “keep going! Stay on the path and don’t look back”. He flees. Suddenly, he’s surrounded by the wicked looking villagers. A blade comes out. So does a confession.
Then we go to Paralysis. A story about sleep paralysis specifically., But her doctor really can’t help her… She has nothing useful to tell her. It’s merely unnerving until she finds herself paralyzed and an unsweet hand reaches towards her, falling down the bedsheets at 4am. The next day, she’s wakes up with a gash torn across her chest. This one falls a little bit flat. The make it feel tense and freaky, but it’s really just a voice over over an occasional double exposure. Johnson’s segments tend to feel lo-fi, like they’re shot on cheaper cameras with few post production resources. This one is more of a dud, and that’s a shame because it’s got potential.
The next story is called Naked. It starts off with blood in a bath. Stark black-and-white with a dire girl in the corner as a doctor scrubs up. She tells the doctor about a recurring dream she’s having, in the office, looks down and she’s naked. She goes home and decides loud music is the answer to her trouble. Her husband‘s not too happy though when he comes home to it. It’s been a bad day.
The doctor decides on hypnotherapy.., which is how we discovered she committed suicide? I think? Maybe the doctor is a ghost too?
Diary of a Disturbance is our next bit. Farm in trouble and evil spirits… Definitely not a good mixture. We have weird Halloween masks and a big cleaver. What kind of farm is this anyhow? Graveyard farm It looks like…
Extra grain on the film to make it look old Timey. 24 hours ago, the farmers daughter was playing in the barn with ghosts while he and a technician get the milking machines working on the cows. The little kid ghosts are actually quite creepy, with nicely composite eyes. There’s a couple demonic things around here with those eyes as well. The farmer is drinking, and the bank wants to foreclose on the farm. Why would anyone want a haunted farm? Seriously. This entire short is really just a bunch of jumbled images, it’s a mood piece rather than a actual narrative I bought a bother resurrecting his daughter through diabolical means. What are the nice bits here though is the Devil and zombie girl from the first short all shop in this store as well, adding connection and continuity, just in time for us to get to the end of the wraparound story.
I can’t say this is a high recommend. I like it as part of this director retrospective, but ultimately, it really falls short for me. It feels like the perfect sort of movie to put on in the background of a Halloween party or to run on the screens at a Gothic nightclub. The movie promises that “the demon will return”, but I’d really just as well if he didn’t.
May 2, 2024 | Categories: Director Retrospective, Horror Movies, movies, Steven M. Smith | Tags: Steven M. Smith, Tales of the Supernatural, The Soul Catcher | Leave a comment
After a flash of horrific warfare in World War I, we get a shot with a couple of psychics coming back to the Morley rectory before it was demolished. One of them wistfully talks about Love at first sight, and the feeling that one of the spirits… A male spirit is back. We come back in time and come to the soldier we get started getting moving in. The rectory is going to be a listening point, but he doesn’t yet know that it’s haunted by a ghostly greasepaint nun.
Visions and bad dreams plague him. Gradually, he becomes aware of the presence in the house, and seeks out information. The haunting is well under way now. Before the war, the caretakers and was looking 
after the house, preparing to move in when he got married. Whispering in the air and praying in the distance in the house, and then one day, she saw her standing in the doorway. As quick as she saw it, it was gone. But it was a bad omen.
Cut to him finding the books he needs, but he’s interrupted by his commanding officer paying a visit. The CO is worried about his drinking, but it’s an important listening post.
Slowly the hauntings increase and the present starts to intrude on the 
past, merging into a haunting nightmare.
This is one of the better films of it”s kind, and I kind of dig that the director, Steven Smith, frequently works with Lousia Warren. It may not be a buy, but it’s a good one if you happen to come across it on a streaming service like Tubi or even youtube.
April 18, 2024 | Categories: Director Retrospective, Dollar Store Movies, Horror, Horror Movies, Steven M. Smith, Uncategorized | Tags: Steven M. Smith, The Haunting of Borley Manor, The Haunting of Borley Rectory | 1 Comment
The doll master is Stephen Smith’s first haunted doll film. The credits roll over a flickery old newspaper, zeroing in on the names of the crew that get underline and circled. It’s nice and efficient, a good introduction and Mood setter
Credit to give way too creepy imagery and nightmares in the head of a mental patient named Norman. He’s been in therapy for years. Describe him having visions and delusions that all involved dolls. Still, there’s a confidence that as long as he’s on his medication, it could be managed… Though if he were to get off of it, he may turn violent.
Norman, bearing a strong resemblance to Nick Frost, from the nightmare and creeping around searches for the disembodied sounds in the house, he searches for Hugo. Hugo Hansen, popping up when he least expecting it, as he brushes his teeth, or making breakfast. He makes extra for Hugo. By the arrival of crooked social worker. he leaves soon enough , But not before trying to buy the doll off of him. He says it’s valuable…
At night, he comes back and breaks into the house to steal Hugo…
I’m gonna wake up in a panic, finding text messages threatening him. We have Hugo, come to us or he will die. Norman drives out to a remote area, wooded and littered with junk. “Even the junkies don’t come up here,“ the cabbie tells him. “They say is cursed.“
Down he goes, into the depths of the tunnels, played the entire time by scary flashbacks and changing color filters. In the darkness, doll girls wait for him… Slowly waking up.
We cut the black and suddenly we find ourselves in the middle of a ghost hunter sort of reality show. They are interviewing the owner of the property before they head down into the tunnels. That’s where they find Norman. Turns out, the social worker was really just during normal here so they’d have him for that production.
It’s cruel and heartbreaking, but diabolical in its ingenuity. However their attempt to get any information or usable footage as a interview from him is confusing and just useless… And it goes on for too long. Still, we make progress and they head off into the dark to try and find Hugo.
We finally get some murderous doll Mayham around 51 minutes in.
The journey leads them through unfinished houses and eventually to a strange passage filled with mannikins. Norman is ahead of them, lost in the labyrinth. Time to time, Hugo up from behind the wall, Azhar characters stumble around the bleak and gloomy Stone corridors.
Norman find some self there, in the passage with the manikins, and the dolls begin to come alive for him. It’s beautiful and eerie and surreal… And they welcome him home. Now that he’s there, they can complete the spelling and take the evil back with them. And world to anyone else who finds their hidden chamber.
The film suffers a bit from low production values, your make up looks like it belongs in your local haunted attraction. The pacing is way, way off. Beautiful, and the stories engaging, and there’s certainly something here. Good job of giving us the backstory and presenting us with the theory, but the whole thing needs to be tighter. Moreover, this isn’t a killer doll movie. I realize why it’s marketed like that. But Hugo is really a minor character, little more than a MacGuffin. Is easy to build a campaign around, though, and much easier to explain than what’s going on in this very strange film. Nevertheless, I you’re gonna have a lot of people grabbing this because they want to see a Chucky movie or a puppet master movie… And those people are going to be upset, even no what this is, is still pretty interesting. As a DTV dollar tree tubi movies go, this isnt a bad one. Where it succeeds does still on its imagery, and definitely gets me excited for what else is to come
April 4, 2024 | Categories: Director Retrospective, Horror Movies, movies, Steven M. Smith | Tags: Steven M. Smith | Leave a comment
In 2013 a production company want to make a pilot for a live paranormal investigation TV series called Haunted! The difference with the series was to explore the human psyche and how skeptical people can experience unexplained events. The production company picks people who are not interested in the paranormal believed in ghosts
What you were about to see is
Real reaction, real fear, real ghosts.
But not really.
This is a mock buster, five entries long. This is Steven M Smith’s franchise, starring longtime collaborator Jon Paul Gates.
These are not short movies either, with this first one being one clocking in at 1:42, in the last two both running past the two hour mark. That’s strange, because one of the things Smith is excellent at is 90 minute films. Short stuff. On the other hand, this is exactly the sort of thing I’m used to seeing from Smith. A number of his films are this sort of haunting or paranormal investigation kind of schtick. Nevertheless, there’s not much in the way of dynamic imagery in these movies – so don’t expect much in the way of pictures.
We open up in a car with some getting to know you stuff as they had to the site. It’s an old railway museum that is rumored to be haunted The location itself is a beautiful character… That’s exactly what this sort of story needs, and we’ve got a talking head given the history of tragic head engineer. Back in the car, it’s an interesting conversation about whether the idea of ghosts is all in your head, do you psych yourself out? Also interesting is that Gates is playing a medium in this movie, but it’s still his name. It’s still that familiar British celebrity name and face not just a character. He believes that his residual energy here, also, more than one… Like 20 or 30 people there and from quite sometime ago.He sees is woman. Is Vera guide us he sees he’s a young woman. His spirit guide is describing all of these different girls.
It’s a long introduction taking up a full 26 minutes
cutting back-and-forth between the audience and Gates, and then back to the limo where people are chatting. The limo seems really interesting, but I feel like there’s less and less relevant stuff for them to talk about… Especially when compared to the ghost stories and ghost hunters stuff… In fact, it reminds me a great deal of the dead files with Amy Allen and Steve sharpie… Where we have a medium and a detective who acts as the folklorist
Things finally get started when the limo arrives… after dark. Jon warns that whatever’s here is very negative.
The limo ride may have been a warning… because we’re getting more of the same chatty footage, only now it’s done through shaky cam and night vision. The stuff with Gates describing the story is far more interesting. Especially considering we’ve already heard a lot of these stories already during the intro.
We change locations in some of the deeper areas… But Gates warns, that the ghosts are following them now. Several of them… The engineer, he doesn’t want them to be there
We’re here a disembodied knock.
Gates feels great weight on his shoulders. Like one of the ghosts riding but not something you can communicate with. It’s debilitating. At halfway through the movie though, I have seen more activity than just gates reaction. Still, it starts to creep you out a little bit. Down the track, this is someone… An outline or a shadow on the platform… Just slightly clips by the light at least, that’s what they say. There’s a lot of telling and not showing. A lot of describing what they’re saying.
Whatever it is, it’s moving towards them slowly.
Head up the track. There’s a sort of Blair building with those coming up, Flash of a face in what looks like an engineer… Or is that just one of the crew? The ominous musical drop suggests it’s not.
Some of the guests start to argue and I feel like we’ve dropped out of an episode of ghost hunters and into an episode of the real world. At least, until one of them drops.
Time to head to the evidence review recap. Nothing new here.… And the same things we’ve already heard. But then, the thing suddenly takes a game show twist where everybody votes who gets to go into a solo investigation of a haunted area of the train station that they’re currently sitting in. They leave him alone, then they shut the lights off. Out of nowhere we get a brief flash of an underlit face in the distance of the train car with him. Literally it’s an actor with a flashlight under their chin. I had to rewind it exactly what that was. There’s no real explanation for it… But it freaks the kid out and Gates has to check to make sure he isn’t possessed.
Final walk, final investigation
With eight minutes left in the movie, we finally get ghostly weird camera double exposures. But that was way too long to wait with not nearly enough hauntingly to really satisfy indeed, it’s not like Digging up the Marrow, where we have a real adventure and story through line, and it’s nowhere near the quality of something like Grave Encounters where the premise is what is a reality show found not ghosts. We don’t have any real meaningful encounters with the ghosts until the movie is almost over, and at an hour and 42 minutes, it’s far too long to wait. It is indeed a dramatic climax, the Blair Witch comparison is valid. But The Blair Witch did more to ramp up tension long before we ever got its iconic final shot. In any event, this film lives and dies on its final eight minutes. I think I’d really rather see this thing cut down to an hour, perhaps even just 45 minutes. It’s all you need a store. I’m hoping that we get something better from our next installment.
March 21, 2024 | Categories: Director Retrospective, Horror Movies, movies, Steven M. Smith | Tags: Haunted, Jon Paul Gates, Steven M. Smith | Leave a comment
Red Army hooligans starts off with the cops coming in to breaking up a boxing match on the other side of the credits
Tony, played by Stephen Smith regular Jon Paul Gates, he is the head of A British mob, but is recovering from a head injury sustained from a boxing fight. His associates are trying to take over, but the only thing he wants, is to get back in the game. It’s disturbing to see him… Forgetful, not quite understanding how to brush his teeth… A little bit too familiar to me in the days I watched my father sink in to his own dementia.
It’s not just his emotions and her answer, he keeps asking about his daughter Bridget… I notably absent presence. It starts to get very unnerving around a half hour point, A tragic meditation on our own 
mortality and The frailty of the human body.
That’s really what this is about, the ailment and perceptions that Gates suffers from. This isn’t a gangster film in any way shape or form – the mob stuff is kinda just background noise. It really makes me wish that this movie had a different name because it’s a very different kind of movie. This is a heartbreaking drama and a genuinely good role for Gates, a challenging performance smartly filled by Smith
March 7, 2024 | Categories: Director Retrospective, movies, Steven M. Smith | Tags: Jon Paul Gates, Red Army Hooligans, Steven M. Smith | Leave a comment
It’s funny, I spotted I Am Hooligan at the dollar tree, under the name Gangland Hooligans. Still, that word “Hooligan” lept right out at me and I knew it was one of Steven M Smith’s films. I’ve got to say, after watching it, I like the original name I Am Hooligan far better. It’s a better description of what you’re going to encounter here, and I can just imagine that if I picked this up without understanding what I was getting into, I would’ve been fairly disappointed with the lack of mobsters and crime syndicate action going on here.
The story centers around Justin, a young 20 something who’s kind of adrift at the moment. Not really knowing what his purpose is, not really fitting in anywhere… Just sort of existing in the British projects with his mother and wife beating father. His perspective on life all changes when one of his friends, Kevin, a football hooligan, invites him to hook up with his mates and be part of the gang. There is an instant acceptance as they embrace him into their group and you can 
immediately see where this is going. Soccer matches and fights
every weekend.
We move on to planning at the bar. They’re planning a trip up north to start fights with rival team supporters, and they want him to come along. In the meantime, Justin, now calling himself Jay begins to alienate himself more and more from the familiar faces around him, old friends become strangers.
There is some internal struggles, trying to worry about who he’s becoming. Especially after the initiation, which is to simply beat up the first person who comes through a well used alleyway. It makes for a compelling drama as he sinks further into the life. Still, you can see why he’s drifting into this world. Back home at “the estate“, life is dreary, and his father is horrible. His parents are miserable because of 
it and he just wants to escape into a different universe; someplace where he’s relevant and needed. But the real question is, what happens when things go too far? At the end of the day, Justin may find that leaving the life is just a bit more difficult than he ever dreamed, and that even when you walk away from the life, a bit of it still sticks with you.
I came to Steven M. Smith for his horror work. That’s what caught my eye. But there’s some directors who have other sorts of stuff on the résumé that you end up liking even more. It’s kind of like exploring Don Coscarelli‘s filmography because of Phantasm, and then from there discovering Jim the world’s greatest and Kenny and Company (Which by the way, if you pair those two with the first phantasm movie… You end up with a thoroughly satisfying thematic trilogy. They fit together in ways they have no right to).
This is what I’m discovering with Smith’s Hooligan movies. I Am Hooligan really feels like the apex of this genre for him. He finally successfully manages to marry the pathos with the drama and the gritty underbelly that he’s been trying to mix together in previous attempts like Essex Boys or even other fare like Time of Her Life. He gets it very right here. I care about all of these characters, and you feel Justin‘s desperation to get out of the estates. You want him to pull himself out of the slums, get together with a girl, and get out of the thug life.
If you see this, either by this name, or the American release Gangland Hooligans, this is a definite buy. This needs to be in your collection.
February 22, 2024 | Categories: Director Retrospective, Horror Movies, movies, Steven M. Smith | Tags: Gangland Hooligans, I Am Hooligan, Jon Paul Gates, Steven M. Smith | Leave a comment
The Howling swears up and down that it’s not a remake or related to the Joe Dante film in any way shape or form. Yet we open with a backlit girl (in the same stony underground set from “Doll Master” and a couple of Smith’s other films) being told by a male voice”turn around”. The whole thing feels very homage to the scene between Dee Wallace and Robert Picardo in the porn show from the 1981 Howling. It gets kissy and stabby though, and kind of goes it’s own way.
An “unsolved mysteries” kind of show recounts the local urban legend about a mad scientist and his creatures that lurk at his home in the wilderness. There’s even a blurry photo of something resembling….a werewolf?
That’s where the similarities end. (Seriously, WHY did he use this title?)
It’s halloween and a brother and sister (is it a brother and sister? Maybe she’s just the girlfriends BFF? It sure FEELS like a brother and sister relationship though) are talking about the legend of Dr. Rathborn. (That is…after the sister jokes about watching porn. I swear, between this and the constant schtupping…if this isn’t another backhanded reference to the first Howling….maybe I’m just seeing things because I JUST watched the movie?) Sister, Brother and his girlfriend head out to the woods and look for him and his creatures.
Into the woods we go. The lo-fi camera and whole black and white almost give it a Blair Witch feel…except for the girlfriend constantly complaining about no wifi. I hope she gets eaten by the werewolf first.
Sis gets tired of listeing to the brother and girlfriend and thier constant horizontal jogging in the tent next to her and decides to head out and search the woods at night. (Love it.) They find a dimly lit tunnel opening in the distance.They are greeted by a servant….I think….who leads them further into the building…a disused hospital looking place.
“Do you have wi-fi here?”
“What is wi-fi?”
He finds them beds to sleep in for the night., and dinner looks REALLY strange. A black room, a candelit table, cloth cover chairs- a two tier cake in the center and the strange servants who promise all questions will be answered by the master….
It’s Jon Paul Gates in strange glasses – he is the master… Rathbone. And this is his compound.
His lab is amazing (one of the best sets I’ve ever seen from Smith. I wish he would have loaned this one out to Louisa Warren for Doctor Carver!) and he scrubs and prepares for another ghastly experiment, aided by his assistant who keeps asking when he will fix her face. He promised!
As the shenanigans start up in the compound, Smith does an excellent job of creating tension and mood through lighting, using this black and white palette to it’s fullest. IT feels much like this is his attempt to do a straightforward universal/hammer horror film, within his limited budget. It’s a very Island of Dr. Moreu bit (or perhaps he’d prefer Frankenstein. There’s a touch of the Bride in on of his patients). We get 
color to see his atrocities. Blues to shock with lighting and reds to make the bloody faces pop.
Brother and sister have had enough. Time to leave. But no, the master needs to see the brother on a matter of some urgency. Some french speaking murder I think.
If there’s a real flaw here, it’s that the movies loses steam as it goes – running out of story too soon and compensating by upping the mayhem. It’s a good trick, and this provides us a satisfying amount of gore, but I can feel the whole thing beginning to drop off a cliff. Still, Smith shows some real flair here – knowing when to keep makeups in the dark shadows, and when to light them up. He never falls into the rookie mistake of lingering on them though. It’s flashes, enough to shock, but not enough for your mind to register the flaws. And even as we get to some of the weirder stuff (resurrections and commentary on humanity) towards the end, it’s still done with an almost art house flair, making this one of Smiths strongest films, and a definite must watch.
February 8, 2024 | Categories: Director Retrospective, Horror Movies, movies, Steven M. Smith | Tags: Steven M. Smith, The Howling | Leave a comment
The time of her life is actually billed as “Steven smiths the time of her life”. It begins with a overacting young man in period dress Throwing flowers into the lake. It’s so pretentious it hurts still, I should give him a break. This is his first film.
We get two girls chatting at a bus stop and then heading home. Our lead character, Ally. She dreams of the past, and The dream disturbs her so much that she stays home from school. Instead she goes out to photograph rainbows. Better be careful, I bet Louisa Warren’s leprechaun is lurking right around the corner!
No, it’s not the leprechaun, it’s her best friend. And she sent them up at double date.
They head out to explore an old English state, which is of course, a for the other couple too. Alleys date, tries to get some, but gets re-buffed. And of course, in the woods, a ghost watches. Buddy pops off to take a leak, and the ghost chasers in through the grounds. He goes to self, it leaves her in a slightly catatonic state, and she continues to dream of the past, eerily lit in black light. When she wakes up the next morning, the ghost followed her home.
Estate, to photograph it., Ghosts and all. We get glimpses of the estates passed, flashbacks of the ghost’s story, as she takes photographs. And we get the full backstory as she takes it to her through the house. Next, she visits the church on the neighboring property, complete with a graveyard, where are all the family in the house of buried. She sees a ghost in the tower, and the local vicar admit, you see strange things from time to time around here, but you’ve learned to live with it. Well she can’t live with that, and when the next ghost appears she and her very tight jeans run off. (seriously, she does not change these very… curve Defining… Pants do this whole movie)
More dreams.
When she returns to the property, the ghosts finally reached out… Excited that she can actually see it! He says, it takes time to be driving and he wants her to help him. Is she perhaps the reincarnation of someone who lived in that house? Someone the Duke son loved?
Watch check. 53 minutes in, 42 to go.
Ali find the letters between the Duke son Emmett, and her past life Catherine. We get the entire story through them. She was a servant girl, and he was in love with her, but could not marry her. They took long walks through the grounds, the Woodhouse, surrounded by nature, and more importantly, location they didn’t have to pay for the way they would in the manor.
Leduc found out though, and he made Catherine disappear. Emma never found out what happened to her, but Allie knows… That answer is in her dreams.
I feel like this is a Hallmark movie directed by Neil Breen. It’s shot on video, cheap, with a blue tint and weird phenomenon, ghosts and reincarnation. To make things more difficult, the soundtrack is overpowering. Not just loud, but heavy… And never ending. Powerful where it needs to be subtle, and almost oppressive in its pervasiveness.
The film is also too long. You can see it… It’s a rookie mistake in filmmaking. Smith is in love with every frame that he shot, and it all has to go in. We linger over the shots, repeating them from scene to scene, which has the unintended consequence of in advertently patting the film. Some judicious editing could easily cut this down to 80 minutes from the agonizing 96 that apparently clocks in at.
I give Smith credit, he’s limited by his budget and resources, but he tries to show at least as much and as often as he tells. It’ll be easy to just give the entire backstory in dialogue, but he makes a real effort to illustrate it in film. During a period piece… Or half a period piece… For your first film is ambitious as well. He pulls it off by keeping them isolated, therefore not needing more than two or three. Costumes at any given time, and setting it on a historic estate (Hylands house in Essex).The setting does have his work for him. It’s a shame we can’t actually go in the house most of the time. I bet they had a single days worth of shots there, Lincoln Ford anymore.
The film is not nearly as pretentious by the end as it felt at beginning, but it does aspire to be more than it’s capable of, and the shortfall is felt. Still, it’s reasonably well-made, and definitely a good enough: card to set up for future projects.
Or perhaps it’s just too gentle for me, but what I really want is schlock.
January 25, 2024 | Categories: Director Retrospective, Horror Movies, movies, Steven M. Smith | Tags: Steven M. Smith | Leave a comment
Steven M. Smith is one of those artists that I’ve been watching for a lot longer than I realized. I’ll admit though, The film that made me sit up and take notice was Dollhouse. The familiar Greenway Entertainment logo came up, but then, much to my shock and delight, I saw Louisa Warren as part of the cast. I knew she had done just as much acting as directing, but this is the first time that Smith‘s name clicked in my head in association with hers. I recalled seeing her talk about completing a film called the Ghosts of Borley Rectory on her Facebook page and sent back for a moment. That name sure did sound familiar. I ran back into my library and dug through my stack of DVDs from the dollar tree. It wasn’t there, but rather something called the HAUNTING of Borley rectory was. I checked the name. Another one of Smith‘s films.., and one that I had watched just a month or two back. I recall liking it.
I had planned on watching doll themed movies all day that day… But once I noticed another one of Smith‘s films in that stack – Alfred the doll – my plans changed. It was time to do some cross-reference on IMDb and learn a little bit more about Smith.
Smith is an interesting filmmaker in that he’s been in the industry for quite a while, involved in a bunch of different positions on various films, with a lot of producer credits to his name. He’s done so much outside of directing, that Director isn’t actually the first thing to show up on his IMDb page and I am forever scrolling down to the third section whenever I’m trying to check my list.
It’s a varied filmography as well. A jumble of television, horror, and gangland interest… All especially with a more rural feel. We see his Native Essex frequently featured prominently in his movies.
There’s also an interesting approach I noticed that he shares in common with Warren. It’s the reuse of a single location. A large building that has various rooms and decor and themes in it… much like the large farm client that we see Warren repeatedly go back to, Smith is always filming in this building. He’s in multiple horror films in the same place… Often with the same cast, despite them all being completely separate stories and continuities. It’s one of those quirks that rather than being tedious, almost becomes fun to watch for.
Smith has a lot of highs and lows, but they’re not necessarily proportionate to his experience or where he is in his career. He’s made some genuinely great films… And at the same time he’s made some real stinkers. Hang out, this year we’re gonna see if we can’t cover them all.
January 11, 2024 | Categories: Horror Movies, movies, Steven M. Smith | Tags: Steven M. Smith | Leave a comment
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