Cradle of Fear

This is a film that is just pure horror. If you like your films with loads of blood and gore than you will like this. Why? well the body count will rise and rise as the horror moves on. Fans of the band Cradle of Filth will like this for the lead role is played by the lead singer, and the rest of the band are in cameos. I also feel this film works on what has gone before, and kind of pays tribute to that. The sort of stuff I'm thinking of is Hammer Horror and B-Movie type films. Worth viewing if your a fan of the band or if you are a fan of B-Movie's and Hammer.

Here's the whine. :)

I knew before viewing that this would be an over the top film. Between Danni Filth from Cradle Of Filth and the Hammeresque setting I expected a schlocky gory horror film. I was wrong, very, very, very, very wrong!!! To sum it up the film is terrible and a let down in many ways.

First and foremost have to be the splatter effects. You don't need a huge budget or powerful CGI systems to create convincing effects. Look at several low budget productions like Lucio Fulchi's 'The Beyond', Dario Argento's 'Suspiria', or George A. Romero's 'Dawn Of The Dead'. All three of those films were low budget productions staring either low rent or no name actors. Yet all three manage to set up a tense atmosphere, gross us out with exploding heads, ripped out intestines, and a multitude of grisly slashed throats, and allow us to suspend our disbelief for 90-120 minutes.

Now lets look at Cradle Of Fear (Or low budget wanna-be music video as I call it). Danni Filth can't act to save his life. I knew within the first 5 minutes of watching the film that it was going to be bad. This mans acting is brutally stiff and devoid of any emotion or believability. Id actually rate Tor's acting in Plan 9 From Outerspace above Danni Filth (and that's frightning). Unfortunately Danni's not the only hack in the film. I don't recall a single believable line of dialogue at any point during the movie. Characters deliver the lines like they're reading from a teleprompter. Worse yet the inspectors acting makes William Shatner's acting seem lucid and elegant.

What this film reminds me of the most are not the Hammer classics I grew up with. This tragedy reminds me of the films Troma puts out. Only I enjoy Troma films because they're supposed to be cheap and outrageously funny. Cradle Of Fear is supposed to be a dark and frightning film. Unfortunately it's not scary but laughable. Worst of all the film is far too long for its own good. At over 2 hours it's about 30-45 minutes too long for a movie with no major plot or story behind it.

Summary----

The film is low budget (not a crime as I like quite a few low budget flicks) and it shows.

The acting is stiff, unbelievable, and many times almost monotone.

The dialouge itself creates some of the poor acting. I could not imaging using the work Fu (you get the idea) as many times in one week as the inspector does in 15 minutes. As pointed out previously by another reviewer Tarintino this guy ain't. Hell Lloyd Kaufman of Troma films looks like a master compared to Chandon.

The effects are just plain bad. Prosthetics that look like they were bought at a nickel and dime store. Blood that appears black (are we killing humans or embalmed corpses), and over use of blood (the human body does not contain 50 gallons of blood, and unlike Shogun Assassin this effect is not used in an artistic manner). CGI that's reminiscent of The Last Starfighter (which looked great in it's day, but pales in comparrison to many PC games these days), and is used out of place in many instances.

Poor video quality. For a movie shot mostly at night and in the dark, it's important to use good film stock and a good low lite camera. I guess Chandon forgot that seeing the movie helps alot.

Too serious for it's own good. If I wanted to laugh I would have popped in Braindead (aka Dead Alive) or Toxic Avenger.

Rating 4/10 (and I'm being kind)

Suggestion, if you want a gore soaked movie laced with atmospheric elements of horror go out and buy the unrated edition of Lucio Fulchi's 'The Beyond'. While it's not heavy on plot, it's not the joke that Cradle Of Fear is. Should you want a more twisting gothic, yet bloody work check out some of Dario Argento's work. Suspiria, Tenebre, and Opera come to mind as some of Argentos better films, although I've yet to see one I did not like.

...and you can look at that statement in different ways, by the way. First of all, it's a mess because of all the gruesome and extremely violent scenes. Your wildest imagination doesn't even come close to some of the explicitly shown scenes here. Entire parts of this movie are just plain sick, disgusting, offensive, brutal and they bring you close to puking your guts out. Now, I love horror movies and I am very 'pro-violence', but I do think that it has to lead somewhere !! Is that too much to ask ? Cradle of Fear is just a series of utterly sick and twisted thoughts. The "movie" contains out of four separate chapters connected by a wraparound story. This results in endless showing of torture, murder and sickness only to find out that the victims have something in common. Not very informative, if you ask me. And yet - it has to be said - the basic plot idea surely HAS potential. It's about a cannibalistic hypnotist who made a deal with the devil himself to avenge himself and cause misery and death to everyone who was involved in his trial. Personally, I think that is an interesting topic, so they should have focused on that a little more instead of wanting to create the most disgusting movie ever.

Secondly, the whole production of this movie was a mess. They didn't have much of a budget and they spent it all on fake blood and guts...Tons of it !! The acting performances are a joke and some of the worst I've ever seen. Any other special effects besides the make-up looks very amateurish ( Like that attempt to a realistic car crash, for example ). There's no tension or atmosphere to detect anywhere...not even an attempt to build up one.

Cradle of Fear is a failure and a missed opportunity to say the least. With the presence of death-metal icon Danni Filth ( from the band Cradle of filth..get the link ? ) this movie is obviously only meant for the eyes of twisted teenagers who try to be controversial. Troubled girls and boys who take pleasure in worrying their parents by watching crap like this. And then people keep complaining that the amount of suicides and juvenile delinquency is increasing...Bah. I can imagine that this movie can cause a lot of damage when you're easily influenced or dispose of an unstable mind. For every self-respecting horror fan, this movie is an insult.

Having been a fan of the band Cradle of Filth for many years, I was inclined to watch this movie. Alex Chandon had previously done a video for the band (From the Cradle to Enslave) which is one of the most visually original music videos of all time. With this background information out of the way, here is a checklist to see if you will like this movie. 1. Can you tolerate bad special effects? The effects in this movie are about one step above crappy because it had a limited budget. It does take some work to get past the poor effects and get into the story, but it can be done. 2. Do you have ADD? One thing I did enjoy about the movie was that it weaves together 4 story lines which really helps to keep your focus during the movie. It's far from stagnant. 3. Are you offended by anything? Anything at all? If so, you will hate this movie and possibly feed the need to speak to a pastor after viewing it. The effects, as previously stated are poor, but the material the movie deals with is very intense and often satanic with references to Crowley. If you answered yes to 1 and 2 and no to number 3, you will probably enjoy this movie. In my opinion, it's worth at least one watch if you enjoy horror movies. One last time though, the special effects are weak and this movie is not for the faint of heart.

I didn't have very high-hopes going into CRADLE OF FEAR. The first scene shows some "scary" goth-kid killing some guys in an alley, with pretty poor gore FX and an insanely obvious SOV feel to it. Number one - people who dress up like vampires at an S&M party are about the most un-scary things humanly possible - and two - I typically don't care for extremely obvious SOV productions...so you can see as how from the first five minutes I didn't think I would be feelin' this one. I have to admit though, that as it went along, CRADLE OF FEAR ended up being quite entertaining, despite (and in some cases because of...) it's numerous flaws...

The film is made up of four vignettes that center around a mental patient who was a hypnotist and child rapist/murderer. In each vignette, one or more people die in different splattery ways, that are related to people that had to do with the hypnotist's incarceration. The stories themselves are all relatively entertaining: the first dealing with the same goth kid from the beginning (who is apparently mind-controlled by the hypnotist) who bones a semi-hot goth whore and some crazy baby/spider-thing busts out of her stomach. The next has two friends who rob an old man and the robbery goes seriously wrong. The next is about a one-legged guy who goes to seek a "donor" for his missing leg, and the last (and in my opinion, most interesting) story deals with a kid who becomes obsessed with a snuff web-site. The four stories are all semi-amusing excuses to show some tits and gore, and still stay within the context of the film...

CRADLE OF FEAR is a very disjointed film. The way it's shot makes it look like a bad UK soap-opera. There are some decent performances from some of the cast - others are atrocious. There are a few sets of decent goth-chick tits in this one, and that's never a bad thing. Some of the gore FX are convincing or at least decent - others suck completely. There are a few CGI special FX that are so bad they're absolutely hilarious (car-chase/crash, anyone???) - but somehow this mess of a film still works. It is a little long, clocking in at a solid two hours, and could probably use a little bit of a trim, but even so - it manages to stay pretty quick-paced and entertaining throughout. Not a great film by any stretch - but it's quirky and worth a look to splatter fans...8/10