Errand, The (1980) [short]

Directed by:

Nigel Finch

At some gated top secret military post, Captain Garrett (Edward Kalinski, who was apparently dubbed by Andy Milligan movie regular Berwick Kaler) is tapped for a special assignment. A warrant officer tells him he's just going "out for a spin," while his superior (Peter Howell) informs him that it's "little more than an errand." Nothing to get all worked up over. He's to drive into the country and retrieve some papers and then return. Simple as that. After arriving at his destination, a crumbling old home out in the middle of a wheat field, he meets up with a suspicious-acting female contact (Philomena McDonagh), retrieves an envelope and starts to head back to his Land Rover. Immediately after realizing someone has tampered with his vehicle, a man with his face painted black (Brian Attree) jumps out of the backseat and starts garroting him with a wire. Garrett is able to temporarily distract the attacker with a wrench blow to the head but as soon as he exits the jeep, the woman contact shows up and starts attacking him with a knife, landing a few good stabs to his midsection. The terrified and confused Captain then takes off running down the road with his assailants in hot pursuit.

Though able to elude his attackers in the woods, Garrett is now severely injured and out in the middle of nowhere. He's also without transportation as the assassins circled back around and stole his jeep after they were unable to locate him. A weakened Garrett ends up falling over by a road. An old man riding a bicycle spots him and crouches down, as if to administer some help. Nope! He steals Garrett's watch and raids his pockets instead. Mustering up just enough strength to drag himself to a nearby farmhouse, he's met with a mixed response from Maurice (Ray Roberts) and Sarah (Dorothy Alison) Clemens, the elderly couple who live there. While she insists they "get rid of him" and suggest they "take him down to the road and dump him," Maurice refuses to mistreat a dying man.

Refusing to involve herself in the situation due to a similar bizarre occurrence she and her husband observed earlier, Sarah jumps in her car and takes off, leaving Maurice without a vehicle. He instead promises to go retrieve help by foot, but just as he's preparing to go Sarah returns with Lieutenant Barnard (Timothy Morand), who claims he and his men have been out looking for the fallen soldier. Along with him are some other military officers and a couple of doctors, at least a few of whom look awfully familiar.

While 28-minute short looks cheap and grainy (not necessarily a bad thing), the locations are good, the atmosphere is there, the score is eerie and it's entertaining and well made, though the twist at the end (which at least adequately explains nearly every character's peculiar behavior) is a bit predictable. This was written by self-described "prolific hack writer" David McGillivray, who not only has a fine sense of humor but is also well known to us classic horror lovers for writing some of Pete Walker's best films, like FRIGHTMARE (1974), House of Whipcord (1975) and THE CONFESSIONAL / House of Mortal Sin (1976). McGillivray was also one of the executive producers.

Director Finch's most lasting work would be as a producer on Jennie Livingston's documentary Paris Is Burning (1990), which chronicles the New York City drag subculture, was met with widespread critical acclaim and a boatload of awards and was selected as important and culturally relevant enough to be preserved in the National Film Registry in 2016. He also made a Stonewall (1995), a dramatization of the events leading up to the Stonewall riots which sparked the gay rights social movement. That film was released after the director sadly passed away from AIDS in 1995.

The Errand made the rounds at film festivals (including the Chicago International Film Festival in 1981) before vanishing into obscurity. It's recently been remastered and given a second chance at life as the ninth and final short included in BFI's 2 disc "Shock Sharp Shocks" Blu-ray collection. Preceding it on the set are Lock Your Door (1949), The Reformation of St. Jules (1949), THE TELL-TALE HEART (1953), Death Was a Passenger (1959) and PORTRAIT OF A MATADOR (1959) on disc 1, and Twenty-Nine (1969), THE SEX VICTIMS (1973) and THE LAKE (1978) on disc 2. Even though this one isn't bad, The Lake is the only short from the set that I'd consider mandatory viewing for horror buffs. Of special interest in the special features is A Crazy, Mixed-Up Kid, a great 43-minute interview with McGillivray. This is also given script and short story galleries.

BFI followed their first set with a second: "Short Sharp Shocks: Vol. 2" in 2021. It includes the shorts Quiz Crime No.1 (1943), Quiz Crime No.2 (1944), The Three Children (1946), Escape from Broadmoor (1948), Mingaloo (1958), Jack the Ripper with Screaming – Lord Sutch (1961), The Face of Darkness (1976), Hangman (1985), The Mark of Lilith (1986) and one I'd already seen and reviewed here prior to that release: THE DUMB WAITER (1979), which I'm sure looks a hell of a lot better than the copy I ended up viewing!

★★1/2

Karma – Enigma do Medo (1984)

... aka: Karma: Enigma of Fear

Directed by:

Custódio Gomes (uncredited)

"F. Faez" (Fauzi Mansur)

Some kind of supernatural evil is let loose at a secluded farmhouse. Elaina (Tatiana Mogambo) hears distorted moans and has visions of a knife spinning on a table and a dagger falling from the ceiling. The handyman stabs a tied-up pig to death with a sword (for real) and then Elaina's husband, Fausto (played by co-director Gomes), miraculously dies in the exact same manner. His ghost exits his body and meets up with a blonde spirit guide (Alan Fontaine) and then the two travel back to the 19th Century so he can bear witness to why the farm is being haunted. A hundred years earlier, a quartet of bandits invaded the farm and started slaughtering everyone in sight. However, it backfired when one of the injured men got his hands on a gun and shot and killed them, too. The mastermind behind that attack was a jealous, bitter ex-lover of one of the women.

Fausto and the guide return to modern times and to the farm, which seems to also double as some kind of hotel retreat / bed-and-breakfast. A varied bunch of other characters start showing up. There's a professor (Heitor Gaiotti) in thick glasses who's also an expert in the paranormal, an obnoxious drunk (Walter Gabarron), his unsatisfied and unfaithful wife (Eliane Gabarron), a nun, a young student and others. Everyone is the reincarnation of those slain a hundred years earlier at the same location and are played by the same actors. The student, Samuel (Tony Paez), also happens to be the reincarnation of Felipe, who was Elaina's lover in her past life, and the two quickly pick up right where they left off. Ya know, despite the whole "My husband just died a few days ago under mysterious circumstances" thing.

The guests soon start dying one-by-one and lots of other weird (and frequently nonsensical) things happen. A woman and her husband try to flee after she sees a levitating body but the ghost of the 19th Century jealous traitor guy (Mauro Pinto) shows up, shakes their car and sends them running back inside screaming. The drunk passes out on the floor, wakes up the next morning to find his wife hanging above the bed by a sheet and then just crawls into bed and goes to sleep (!) The dead wife then returns as a ghost and goes to a lake where two men are fishing. She leaps out of the water, grabs one, pulls him under, drowns him and then that man's ghost emerges from the lake to strangle his friend.

Another woman finds her own dead body draped over a tree limb and then gets attacked by a ghost-vampire that drinks her blood. Gates and doors move by themselves. Beds shake. One of the characters is possessed. Corpses return to life and start killing others. And there's a lot of death by a lot of different means, including pitchfork, sickle and sword. Though IMDb and some other websites currently have this title listed as either a "thriller" or a "drama," the genre is never really in question: This is a straight-up horror flick.

While not a "good" film by any means (the acting is mostly poor, the editing is frequently terrible, it seldom makes any sense and it steals all of its music from other films, most notably FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III), it's an entertaining one. The supernatural stuff is extremely fuzzy throughout, but in a unique way that adds some additional interest. Aside from the unusual touch of having the first victim return as a ghost to helplessly witness the current goings-on, the main bad ghost lures his victims by impersonating whomever was the last person he killed. Many of the supernatural events are seen in negative image, which seems to signify what's going on in a ghost world parallel to our own as well as revealing which body the evil ghost is inhabiting at any given time.

This ticks the right boxes when it comes to body count and blood for slasher fans and there's also some full frontal nudity provided by the leading lady in a couple of scenes. However, the nudity isn't nearly as excessive as you'd expect given that nearly the entire cast is comprised of Brazilian adult film performers!

Speaking of adult films, both directors started out as pretty mainstream filmmakers before descending into hardcore themselves. While Mansur would continue to make regular movies in between the sex flicks, culminating with the late-decade gore films SATANIC ATTRACTION and THE RITUAL OF DEATH, both of which received U. S. video distribution (incredibly rare at the time), Gomes descended right into the gutter after this with a handful of, shall we say, interesting-sounding films. One of them - the excellently-titled Alucinações Sexuais de um Macaco / "Sexual Hallucinations of a Monkey" (1986) - involves a bored porn actress fantasizing about having sex with a dwarf in a monkey suit. And then there's the PETA-nightmare double feature of Meu Cachorro, Meu Amante / "My Dog, My Lover" (1986) and Aberrações Sexuais de Um Cachorro / "Sexual Aberrations of a Dog," whose content you may be able to guess given the titles. If not, here's a hint: The latter stars a bunch of porno actresses and a Saint Bernard.

After its domestic theatrical release, Karma was given a video release in Brazil on the Alfa Cinema E Video label but was never officially released anywhere else. There are English fansubs available for this, but they actually fail to make it any more coherent for English-speakers than just watching it in Portuguese! A DVD-R release I've seen being sold by several bootleg outlets also contains the subs but save your money. The quality is no better than the copy that's currently on Youtube.

★★