Mad God

Cast: Alex Cox, Niketa Roman, and Satish Ratakonda 

Director: Phil Tippett

84 minutes (18) 2021 

Acorn / Shudder Blu-ray 

[Released 5th December]   

Rating: 9/10

Review by Christopher Geary

Is the curious art of stop-motion animation due for a revival? It’s not often that animated films get adult certificates, but Mad God is a prime example of a winningly experimental form. It’s dazzling movie-making by Phil Tippett, who did stop-motion effects for ED-209 in RoboCop (1987), and its gloomy sci-fi horror is more than inventive enough to deliver a weirdly composed, wholly anarchic, underworld mythos, influenced by Czech directors Karel Zeman and Jan Svankmajer, and also David Lynch’s amazingly bizarre Eraserhead (1977). There’s plenty of muttering, and highly emotive vocal effects, but no dialogue to denote characters. Expressions or body-language conceal as much as they communicate directly, yet lots of brutal judgements and obvious misery are messaged.  

A pet-project begun 30 years ago, this production was shelved when its model animation style became unfashionable in the 1990s, as computers conquered the studios’ tool-kits. Jungian psychology is a recurring theme here, much like anything by Jodorowsky, while writer-director Tippett crafts a dynamic yet brooding quest-saga combo, with Art-house references and uncanny genre riffs that emerge rapidly during a blitz-o-mation of grisly or surreal images. Mad God concerns a ‘terrorist’ carrying a time-bomb, but it’s a mission-movie only in the sense that a Quay brothers’ narrative, like Street Of Crocodiles (1986), tells any kind of biographical story. Just imagine a disturbing Hieronymus Bosch puppet-show version of something stranger called ‘Escape From Noo-Yuck’, where nothing more than cruelty and misfortune favours the bold. 

The killer descends into and through the bowels of a hell-scape where bio-mecha terrors, and mutant grotesques, casually churn up waves of relentlessly violent splatter effects. There’s an eye-rolling despair here, with creatures born only to die horribly struck by a meaningless fate, while the protagonist discovers evidence of many other predecessors, and drives on through an apocalyptic war-zone of rusty tank battles. Astonishingly eerie black-comedy tracts readily evoke Terry Gilliam’s wildest fantasies of doomed heroism, particularly 12 Monkeys (1995). Alex Cox, auteur of Repo Man (1984), essays a loony boffin displaying Coffin-Joe styled fingernails, as an apparent dictator of a shadowy militaristic realm, far above the subterranean levels where the cursed assassin journeys into a ghastly, gothic labyrinth of death-traps and damnation alleys. 

Mad God is like garage-Harryhausen meets grind-house Giger, bored with fantastic alien erotica. A nurse (Niketa Roman) rescues a mewling newborn... something, but even that nightmare nativity offers nothing to hope for as this multicultural wasteland devours any chance of evolution. Picture factory-ruins extruding huge slabs, perhaps cousins of those famed monoliths of Kubrick’s magnum opus, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), for a line soon toppled over like giant dominoes, and later tumbling like cosmic dice thrown out of a yawning Black Hole. Tippett’s masterly approach to mysteriously horrific absurdities ensures a 100% cult movie. Don’t blink, or you’ll miss some amusing bits of extraordinarily gruesome fun. 

This excellent Blu-ray includes a first-class package of bonus material:

• Commentary track by Phil Tippett and Guillermo del Toro
• Cast & crew commentary
• Interview with Tippett
• Mad God influences & inspirations
• Maya Tippett’s The Making Of Mad God
• Maya Tippett’s Worse Than The Demon
• Academy of Art University & Mad God
• Behind-the-scenes montage
• Behind-the-scenes photo gallery

Dog Soldiers

Cast: Sean Pertwee, Kevin McKidd, and Emma Cleasby

Director: Neil Marshall

105 minutes (15) 2002

Rating: 9/10

review by Emma French  

The opening scene of Dog Soldiers presents a clichéd scenario of an amorous couple in a remote spot, far from help or other people, being brutally attacked by an unseen and non-human predator. The reasoning behind this unimaginative start becomes a little clearer when the soldier-protagonists arrive on the scene. The contrast emphasises that whilst a couple of horny campers might have no chance against a bloodthirsty group of monsters, the British army’s hardest might have a better shot. With no particularly obvious hero, you can never be quite sure which of the soldiers is going to make it to the end of the picture un-mauled. Given the savagery of the first couple of attacks, the odds of any of them surviving seem poor. 

Writer and director Neil Marshall has a strange film pedigree: he was the make-up artist for TV’s Smack The Pony, and the driver on John Carpenter’s Ghosts Of Mars, as well as writing and editing the 1998 feature Killing Time, before he made this film. Marshall’s directorial inexperience does not show and he converts a limited budget into a distinct advantage. Fleeting images of giant wolf-men put the CGI clone armies of George Lucas to shame. Believing that there are real actors inside the wolf costumes adds a visceral dimension that, back then, was difficult to recreate with computer graphics. On a gigantic budget this was the lesson Ridley Scott took to heart in Gladiator, comprehending that CGI should provide enhancement rather than the whole picture. Old-fashioned gore and suspense is still hard to beat. 

Sean Pertwee is surprisingly good as Sergeant Harry Wells, and rather suits the role of a partially-disembowelled action-man. Chris Robson is the most memorable and endearing of the other soldiers as jocular Geordie Private Joe Kirkley. Emma Cleasby provides some bland but welcome female interest as Megan in an otherwise testosterone-stuffed film. As with the John Landis classic An American Werewolf In London, there is a degree of poignancy too. Half man as well as half animal, for the werewolves their condition is a handicap and an affliction that they must philosophise, theorise, and live with, as best they can.

It is good to see a British film competing so effectively against the slew of franchised Hollywood’s ironic horror output. It’s evident from the very start that this is a straightforward, worthy contribution to subgenre movies (that includes Predator), although there is plenty of humour here too. Perfect for Halloween viewing, Dog Soldiers fares as well on the small screen as it did at the box-office.

Rating: 8/10

review by Michael Lohr 

This is a very entertaining, realistic horror movie about werewolves, the best one since John Landis’ An American Werewolf In London, and Dog Soldiers marked a much-needed return to the traditional horror movie genre. Written and directed by Neil Marshall, and co-produced by Christopher Figg (Trainspotting, Hellraiser), it’s a classic tale of survival, in much the same regard as Night Of The Living Dead, and Alien. Bob Keen’s Image Effects did a fantastic job at making the werewolves of look realistic and terrifying. The odd thing about this film is that it contains quite a bit of humour, but well-written humour that fits in superbly with the stark realism of the terror.

The movie is set deep in the forests of Scotland, and stars Sean Pertwee (Event Horizon), Kevin McKidd (Hideous Kinky), and Liam Cunningham (RKO 281), as a group of soldiers are out on a training exercise when they stumble up the bloody, gut-strewn remnants of a ‘special ops’ camp. What ensues is two hours of panic-stricken frenzy deep in the dark of night. The werewolves themselves were dirty, dishevelled, and downright nasty. The cinematography is dark, moody, haunting, and splendid. 

I heard some American critics say that this movie was ‘too British’ for their tastes. Well, I’m American and I say, sod off you daft buggers! If this movie were US made, we no doubt would have had Britney Spears prancing about with enough boy-band cameos to make me gag on my popcorn. Simply, this is the best horror film that I have seen in a long time. 

Disc extras: 

• This restoration for 4K UHD (with Dolby Vision HDR) release is approved by director Marshall, and cinematographer Sam McCurdy
• Archive commentary by Marshall
• Archive commentary with producers David E. Allen and Brian O’Toole
• New commentary by Alison Peirse
• Werewolves, Crawlers, Cannibals, And More - new 40-minute interview with Neil Marshall
• A History Of Lycanthropy - Gavin Baddeley on werewolf cinema
• Werewolves, Folklore, And Cinema - video essay by Mikel J. Koven
• Werewolves vs. Soldiers - making of Dog Soldiers with Neil Marshall, producers Christopher Figg and Keith Bell, actors Sean Pertwee, Kevin McKidd, Darren Morfitt, Leslie Simpson, and Emma Cleasby, special-effects artist Bob Keen, and more.
• A Cottage In The Woods - interview with production designer Simon Bowles
• Combat - short film by Neil Marshall
• Deleted scenes and gag reel with optional commentary by Marshall, plus trailers, photo gallery.