Necronos - Tower of Doom

Mark Rohnstock's Necronos - Temple of Doom is looking like 'the' gore fest for 2010. The makers of 'Graveyard of the Living Dead', and 'Dungeon of Evil' bring you what looks like the real shocker of the year so far. Still in production, the film stars the fantastic Manoush and Annika Straub amongst others!

We've seen the totally uncensored trailer of the film, which is very unlikely to recieve any kind of uncensored release in the UK (barring any festival runs). And if you want to see what we've seen......including a very note-able nod to the great Ruggero Deodato cannibal films, then please follow the link. Be warned, it's not for the faint at heart!!!
Chainsaws, cannibals and chics hung on sticks.....here at SFI, we're really looking forward to this little beauty!

Andy Bourne

UNCENSORED TRAILER 

Taxi Driver Remake Rumours ??

A recent report from Variety, about the Taxi Driver remake rumours!!

Berlin and the Internet have been abuzz with rumors of a Martin Scorsese-Robert De Niro-Lars Von Trier collaboration -- and, at least for the time being, they appear to be true.

The idea behind the project is similar to the film "The Five Obstructions" that Von Trier and Danish helmer Jorgen Leth made in 2003. In that film, Von Trier challenged his colleague Leth to do a remake of his own 1967 film "The Perfect Human." Von Trier gave Leth the task of remaking five times, each time with a different obstacle, such as making the film animated.

In the new project, Von Trier will challenge Scorsese and De Niro to remake their 1976 classic "Taxi Driver."

The story took on a life of its own after a Danish newspaper published an interview in which Peter Aalbaeck Jensen, von Trier's business partner and executive producer, said he could neither confirm nor deny the rumors.

"There will be a statement coming shortly," he said -- although another Danish source confirmed the collaboration.

Scorsese is in Berlin to tubthump his thriller "Shutter Island," which unspooled Saturday night here, while von Trier drove down from Copenhagen to be a part of the pre-sales meetings of his forthcoming sci-fi film "Melancholia." That film is to be shot within the next year, so the Scorsese collaboration would probably have to wait.

Over the weekend, when Scorsese was doing press in Berlin, he did not mention the Von Trier project, as discussion focused on features in pre-production, such as a 3D adaptation of Brian Selznick's novel "The Invention of Hugo Cabret." 

Coming Soon - World Cup, Footy violence reviews special!

With the impending World Cup coming from South Africa this summer, we're gonna list and review the best and the worst of the great UK footy violence flick.

From Green street to Awaydays, The Firm to The Rise of the foot soldier!

Watch this space!

The Descent (Part 2) - Directed Jon Harris

Reviewed  -  Andrew Bourne

I was hoping, whilst watching Descent 2, that I would not find myself looking back to the original film and reflecting how brilliant the first one was, and how rubbish part 2 is. Thankfully, that wasn’t ‘completely’ the case. Unfortunately though ‘Descent 2’ is very much overshadowed by it's superbly original and hyper scary predecessor! And it would have taken something seriously brilliant to have topped the first one.

The second film sees us back in the caves of the Appalachian Mountains, and depending on which version you have seen (either the downbeat UK ending, or the more uplifting American one), we see Sarah MacDonald, thrust back into the fun and games of the underground caves. Having earlier found the blood-soaked and delirious Sarah whilst searching for the other missing cavers, the Sheriff, (who is not at all convinced poor Sarah doesn’t know what has happened to the other girls ) decides to drag her back to the underground caves to help out the search party.

What the hell would make Sarah head back down into the hell she had escaped from?

Well, with great convenience, she has suffered a massive bout of amnesia, rendering the events of the first film just a vague, hidden nightmare, trapped and lost somewhere in her confused mind. Forced back into this underground hell, it doesn’t take long for her memory to come flooding back.

Where this film delivers less than Marshall’s brilliant first film is not only in the setting and style of this adaption. Although the film does look very similar to the first ,dark, dripping, unavoidably claustrophobic tunnels whilst the fear of what lies beyond their darkness is still there. It is the overall tone of which Harris’ sequel fails to capture in Descent 2 which is the most obvious, and crucially missing ingredient. Where the first film leaves you with an inevitable feeling of total despair for the caver’s predicament ( you feel there is no way of them surviving what they are faced with), ‘The Descent part 2 has an overall less fatalistic feel to it. Because of this, to me, the whole horror of the first film is therefore removed, leaving a scary (well, jumpy at times) gory genre display. Overall the film has a lighter feel to it, the dialogue, at times, verging on the camp/schlocky, and doesn’t seem to be afraid of being so.

In conclusion, although I started by saying I hoped not to compare this sequel with it’s superb predecessor, comparisons are just inevitable, as the Descent 2 tries to imitate, whilst offering nothing new. And although Harris’ film is an enjoyable, action packed and gory romp, the lack of the original's claustrophobic, dark and hopeless feel lets it down in the end.

THE DESCENT TRAILER