Poltergeist 25th Anniversary Edition - By James Ellaby

One of the scariest things about the Poltergeist trilogy isn't even in any of the films. It's the Curse. Dominique Dunne, who appears in this first movie as teen daughter Dana, died soon after in a fight with her boyfriend. Six years later, her screen sister Heather O'Rourke, who played Carol Anne in all three movies, died at the age of 12 after complications from surgery, having been ill throughout the making of Poltergeist III. Julian Beck and Will Sampson, two of the stars of II also both died during filming or soon after, while there's all kinds of other stories surrounding these films. And they don't exactly need anything like that to make them scary, because the first two do that very well on their own. For me, II is far creepier because of the ghoulish Reverend Kane character (made all the more spooky because Beck, who played him, was dying of stomach cancer at the time), but the combination of Tobe Hooper as director and Steven Spielberg as co-writer and co-producer makes the original a better film, while Jerry Goldsmith's Psycho-esque soundtrack brings a real edge to suburbia. What makes it so effective is just that, its setting in an everyday house on an everyday street in America (ok, most aren't build on Indian burial grounds, but never mind that) and the use of such a mundane and commonplace item as a television as the focus of the scariness (a trick repeated in Ringu of course). Throw in some good humour and the wacky mini-medium Tangina Barrons (Zelda Rubinstein) and a possible real life curse and you've got one of the best horror films of the 1980s as well as a fairly rare scary movie that has no obvious monster or murderer or gore. Where this DVD slightly lets itself down is in the lack of bonus features, which you'd expect there to be plenty of in a 25th anniversary edition. There's a nice documentary about poltergeists, but nothing really about the film itself. Mind you, if you were in this film, with its record, would you want to go round talking about it?

Return To House On Haunted Hill - By James Ellaby

The original House on Haunted Hill is famous for two reasons. Firstly for director William Castle's gimmicky approach to showing it in cinemas (getting a flying skeleton to swoop over the audience's heads, etc), and secondly for supposedly being the film that inspired Alfred Hitchcock to make Psycho. It was made in 1959, and was remade without the flying skeleton but with rather more impressive special effects, forty years later. Replacing Vincent Price as the star was Geoffrey Rush, while Famke Janssen and Taye Diggs also appeared, while the 'house' was now a former insane aslyum that was the scene of horrific experiments and mass murders, all setting it up for lots of gruesome and scary ghosts and ghouls to flicker around the place. It was incredibly silly of course, and not exactly a classic of the genre, so it's rather surprising to find a sequel appearing eight years later. The first question you have to ask is whether there is anyone out there who can really remember what happened in the first film (the remake, that is) without getting confused with the awful spoof of it in Scary Movie 2. Let's hope so, because Return To House On Haunted Hill doesn't make many concessions for anyone who has no idea what the plot of that film was. The plot of this one centres around the sister of one of the survivors, who ends up going to the House (good move!) along with a bunch of other mostly forgettable characters. And they mostly meet horrific deaths inside at the ghostly hands of the sinister Dr Vannagutt (Jeffrey Combs, returning from the first film), the evil psychiatric doctor who ran the aslyum. Films like Saw and Hostel have ramped up the gore factor necessary in modern horror films since the 1999 House On Haunted Hill, so Return follows suit by making the death scenes much gorier and more disturbing, which will no doubt please fans of that kind of thing, but any sense of campy class that Rush brought to proceedings first time around is sorely missing here. It's not a complete waste of time and fans of the first remake will probably enjoy it, but there's not really too much to recommend it for anyone else.

Meat Loaf - 3 Bats Live DVD - By James Ellaby

Having returned from semi-retirement last year with Bat Out Of Hell III, Meat Loaf should be riding high, as that series has always been what has underpinned his success throughout his career. The first one obviously kicked things off, and after drifting listlessly in the 80s, Bat II brought him back into the spotlight with the massive single I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That), but part III was a bit underwhelming. It's still a decent Meat Loaf album, but with his relationship with chief collaborator Jim Steinman collapsing in the process of making it, the magic just wasn't there this time. However, having completed the trilogy, it certainly makes sense to have a live DVD like this showcasing a tour based on songs from all three albums (regardless of the fact that he's had few hits from any other albums, so any setlist would be dominated by the first two Bats in any case), and 3 Bats Live does exactly what it says on the tin. Kicking off with the awesome Paradise By The Dashboard Light should indicate a stunning show ahead, but something is wrong right from the off. Meat Loaf comes on stage with a wig on, restoring the long, flowing locks of his youth, and it's quite a neat idea in the context of the show and the song, but right away his performance is surprisingly weak. He seems very breathy and sings a lot of the song quite strangely, a bit muted and rarely on the note. What should be a spunky duet ends up a bit laboured and it's because of him rather than his female counterpart, who is excellent, and any hopes that this is just a tricky start (or that he's doing it on purpose for some reason) soon evaporate when he continues in this vein throughout the show. Meat Loaf has obviously had lots of health problems down the years, collapsing on stage more times than most of us have had breakfasts, and the overall impression of 3 Bats Live is that this may have either caught up with him, or that he is under doctors' orders to rein himself in when performing live. Either way, it definitely affects this show and despite plenty of famous songs and great tunes (like the stunning Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are) that are delivered poorly by a singer not on top form. With some lacklustre new material thrown in too, 3 Bats Live is hardly an essential purchase, and that's a shame because it really should have been.