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Frightmare: Standard Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (6th November 2024). |
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The Film
 BBC TV make-up artist Jackie (Deborah Fairfax) tries to maintain a cheery, carefree facade even as she believes her fifteen-year-old half-sister Debbie (Kim Butcher) for whom she has assumed guardianship after she was expelled from an orphanage is more than just wild and could use some psychiatric counseling. Debbie thinks that Jackie is a hypocrite, not really waiting up for her at all hours but waiting so that she can sneak off herself as she does periodically in the middle of the night. What Debbie does not know is that Jackie makes weekly trips to a remote farmhouse in the country to deliver strange, bloody packages to her stepmother Dorothy (House of Whipcord's Sheila Keith) who was recently released from a mental institution and is being fretfully watched over by her husband Edmund (The Oblong Box's Rupert Davies). Jackie finds some pleasant distraction when she meets young psychiatrist Graham Heller (Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter's Paul Greenwood) friend of her colleague Merle's (Love is a Splendid Illusion's Fiona Curzon) boyfriend Robin (The Flesh and Blood Show's John Yule) but when she constantly has to duck out of their dates early, Graham takes it upon himself to meet and counsel Debbie who has recently gotten into trouble with her biker boyfriend Alec (Silver Dream Racer's Edward Kalinski) who she goaded into a fight with a barman (Quest for Love's Michael Sharvell-Martin) who refused to serve her due to her age and is now missing. Jackie tries to establish boundaries with her family, but she becomes increasingly overburdened as Graham tells her that Debbie should know that her parents are actually alive and when Edmund confesses that he thinks that Dorothy is only faking being better and may have fallen back on old habit that is, luring unsuspecting customers to the farm for palm readings, killing them, and then feasting on their brains. Frightmare is the pinnacle of Pete Walker horror films and certainly the crown jewel of Pete Walker/David McGillivray films a short (for Walker), well-paced, biting, grim, and utterly grisly piece with the bleakest of endings. While Die Screaming, Marianne's protagonist was a bit too world weary to be relatable, and The Flesh and Blood Show and House of Whipcord were "ensemble pieces" of barely-sketched exposition-moving characters, Frightmare's Jackie is one of Walker's and McGillivray's most compelling main characters. While the negative element of her family life initially seems to come from her stepmother and transferred to her half-sister, a series of compactly-written scenes depicting some very recognizable (even triggering) scenes of manipulation, guilt-tripping, and enabling even figuratively throwing characters under the bus in their presence knowing their objections will fall on deaf ears or that they will not even bother to defend themselves reveals that some of Jackie's own coping strategies like her attempts to "mother" her half-sister and stepmother come across as respectively hypocritical and authoritarian, and are as destructive as her father's emotional co-dependency to his wife despite how much she terrifies him, proving that blood is not always thicker than water. Although the film belongs to Sheila Keith who commands the screen under sometimes hellish lighting schemes by Walker regular Peter Jessop, Fairfax does not have to rely on any of the cheesecake antics of Walker's heroines in the surrounding films. Greenwood gives a good performance but he is stuck with the usual ineffectual Walker lead male role and is easily overshadowed by Yule and Kalinski but most of all Davies in one of his last theatrical roles. Die Screaming, Marianne's Leo Genn has a special appearance as Graham's superior along with Gerald Flood (Patton) who fills Graham in on Jackie's and Debbie's parents, but Fawlty Towers fans might not recognize Andrew Sachs as the film's first victim. Trisha Mortimer (London Voodoo) and Victoria Fairbrother (Cry of the Banshee) appear as featured victims. 
Video
Frightmare was also released by Miracle Films with Tenser taking an executive producer credit even though Walker was his own producer and chief funder and then had pre-cert releases from Derann and Intervision (stateside the film was retitled on video "Frightmare II" and "Once Upon a Frightmare" to distinguish it from the eighties American horror comedy The Horror Star which had been released theatrically and on video as "Frightmare"). The film made its DVD debut stateside from Image Entertainment, and it was presumably mastered either from Redemption's 1995 video master or an even newer transfer as the open-matte transfer was the best-looking of the Euroshock Collection Walker releases by a mile; so much so that the anamorphic upgrade from the Anchor Bay UK coffin set only seemed like a minor upgrade when it turned up stateside from Shriek Show. Whereas the titles in the first Kino Lorber Pete Walker Collection were released separately the following year, the HD master debuted through Kino Lorber first as a single-disc edition along with separate releases of three other Walker titles and then as part of The Pete Walker Collection Volume 2 (which did at least include a bonus disc featuring Walker's Man of Violence and The Big Switch which had both been remastered by BFI and subsequently reissued last month by 88 Films). 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen transfer is described as a "restored HD master" meaning that they have done more clean-up and regrading of the existing master; however, it is a substantial improvement. Once again, a yellow tinge has been timed out so the skin tones look of the living characters look pinker and healthier apart from Dorothy's white visage during Jackie's nightmare and facial features now stand out more from the warm firelight that is the sole source of illumination of the farmhouse sitting room. Shadow detail could be better, but some of the night exteriors scenes are just night-for-night and the visible noise suggests the shadows were always underexposed. Damage repair of unstable frames is evident in a few close-ups where there is a flash of smearing from one frame to another but, for lack of a new scan, this is still the better viewing option. 
Audio
The original English mono track is presented in 24-bit LPCM 2.0 mono. We do not know if they have also had any additional clean-up over the older master, but the track is clean if unexceptional. Dialogue is always clear enough for lines to be intelligible but uneven levels are sometimes evident as well as occasional overdubbing Walker himself does vocal cameos while effects are supportive but only occasionally striking like the power drill, a few screams, and the cacophony of the final scene. Optional English HoH subtitles are included.
Extras
The film has been afforded three commentary tracks including an audio commentary by screenwriter David McGillivray, moderated by film critics Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw in which Newman and Forshaw suggest that the Battersea fairgrounds setting of the prologue represents "Britain past its best," and once again discusses the Hindley/Brady case as an inspiration along with the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash over The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Newman and Forshaw also point out the difficulty of transplanting cannibalism to contemporary England with the only other example being "The Thirteenth Reunion" episode of Hammer House of Horror and point out how appropriate it was the Dorothy attracted customers by publishing articles in Time Out which was one of the journals serial killer Dennis Nilsen would use to find victims while McGillivray reveals that the earlier version of the script was more of a remake of Walker's favorite noir Out of the Past with cannibalism. McGillivray also reveals that he prefers writing for the character actor villains over the "juvenile" leads, although they speak as flatteringly of Fairfax who sadly had few other lead roles as they do Keith. Frightmare has been afford three commentary tracks including an audio commentary by screenwriter David McGillivray, moderated by film critics Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw in which Newman and Forshaw suggest that the Battersea fairgrounds setting of the prologue represents "Britain past its best," and once again discusses the Hindley/Brady case as an inspiration along with the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash over The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Newman and Forshaw also point out the difficulty of transplanting cannibalism to contemporary England with the only other example being "The Thirteenth Reunion" episode of Hammer House of Horror and point out how appropriate it was the Dorothy attracted customers by publishing articles in Time Out which was one of the journals serial killer Dennis Nilsen would use to find victims while McGillivray reveals that the earlier version of the script was more of a remake of Walker's favorite noir Out of the Past with cannibalism. McGillivray also reveals that he prefers writing for the character actor villains over the "juvenile" leads, although they speak as flatteringly of Fairfax who sadly had few other lead roles as they do Keith. They also point out that the movie Jackie and Graham go to see on their date is Marco Ferreri's Le Grande Bouffe a movie in which four lifelong friends gather together to gorge themselves to death on food and sex under the U.K. title "Blow Out" but the audio is from House of Whipcord. Also new is an audio commentary by British horror experts Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth who use the film to discuss the McGillivary/Walker quartet as the high point of the latter's filmography, the peripheral involvement of Tigon's Tenser, and the efforts of Walker and Norman J. Warren to update British horror from the likes of Hammer (while also noting the use of the same Gothic credits font as Demons of the Mind, one of the few Hammer Gothics where the monstrousness is psychological and comes close to matching Walker's films in violence and hysterics). They suggest that the Christmas release and the concurrent IRA bombings had an effect on the reception of the film along with Walker's hardline conservatism rubbing more liberal viewers the wrong way in his attitude towards capital punishment.  Ported from the earlier edition is the audio commentary by director/producer/co-writer Pete Walker and director of photography Peter Jessop, moderated by biographer Professor Steven Chibnall in which he reveals that he was able to get Sachs, Genn, and other such actors for a day's work through his relationships with their agents. He does note issues with the the matting of the red credits over the Tarot card background during the opening which suggest this was always an issue and not a weakness of the older scan that might have been rectified by a new one. Walker also discusses his conservatism here, his attitudes about British justice, and also his opinions on psychiatry as a "waste of time" but like McGillivray he does not really comment on the supernatural aspect of Dorothy's readings. He also opines that the lack of sex in this film over what came before was because it simply was not necessary. He reveals that the film was written for Keith although she still preferred House of Whipcord of her works, and that her character was overly inspired by his own mother who was "so terribly nice" while "sticking the knife in," but seems in good humor when Chibnall and Jessop rib him by teasing out possible other biographical aspects. In "Editor Robert Dearberg on Frightmare" (7:34), he recalls coming to work for Walker through Matt McCarthy's post-production sound and editing company, describes the film as "fairly gross," and speaks vaguely of a project he was to work on with Walker in the late eighties in the U.S. that fell through, suggesting that Walker could have done well in Hollywood but he wanted to be his own boss. The disc closes with a theatrical trailer (1:16).
Packaging
The disc is housed with a reversible cover featuring original artwork.
Overall
The pinnacle of Pete Walker horror films, and certainly the crown jewel of Pete Walker/David McGillivray films, Frightmare is a well-paced, biting, grim, and utterly grisly piece with the bleakest of endings.
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