Once upon a time, Britain used to be pretty good at this horror anthology lark as any quick glance at the cinematic history books will tell you. Starting back in 1945 with Ealing Studios’ haunting Dead Of Night, the sub-genre got something of a shot in the arm thanks to the Shepperton based Amicus Productions that hurled out a string of titles that gave you more bang for your buck due to getting a whole bunch of horror stories for the price of one. Films such as Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors, Tales From The Crypt and Asylum because warmly loved by fans and one of them plainly was low budget filmmaker Alex Chandon who, in 2001, tried to homage them in the impossibly grungy Cradle Of Fear.
However, not only did the filmmaker want to bring back the British Horror Anthology, he also seemingly wanted to do it via the aesthetics of English extreme black metal band Cradle Of Filth and their frontman, the appropriately named Dani Filth. Was the world ready for an extremely low budget – and often amateurish – explosion of gore, sleeze and threadbare production values?
Made up of four tales woven together by a fourth, overarching, story, we find haggard looking Inspector Peter Neilson attempting to make sense of a string of violent crime scenes that seem to involve the presence of a strange figure known only as “The Man”. The first story sees goth party girl Melissa pick up the pallid Man in a club in the hope of enjoying a night of energetic sex, but after waking the morning after to find her glaring lover gone, she soon starts experiencing strange hallucinations. While most of us have spotted the odd weirdo outside of a Pizza Hut in London more than once, this goes way beyond when Melissa’s visions get way more extreme. But after crashing at a friend’s house, she soon discovers a major drawback of cheap sex once she finds she’s pregnant with an inhuman force.
The next story sees two wannabe burglars, Steph and Emma, break into the home of a grotty old man rumoured to loaded with cash. However, when said old man turns out to be home during their break in, the more forthright Steph takes control of the situation with something of a heavy hand when she bludgeons the geezer to death. Unable to trust her stunned accomplice, the greedy killer expands on her budding body count, but she hasn’t counted on a spot of vengeance from beyond the grave to stop her crime spree in their tracks.
We meet recent amputee Nick, who is growing increasingly despondent about his lost limb despite his girlfriend having no issues including his stump in their sexual escapades. But as his libido rapidly wanes, he takes extreme methods when he highjacks a leg from an old criminal colleague and get a doctor to graft it on him at gun point. However, it seems nobody has asked the leg it’s opinion on this and it soon takes steps (hah) to get revenge on it’s new owner.
The final story involves reporter Richard, whose growing obsession with snuff films and violent pornography first leads him to assault a work colleague during a date and then sees him frantically trying to get onto a snuff site online that you control.
But as his obsession leads him into a brush with Karma, Inspector Neilson deduces that the incarcerated serial killer known as Kemper may be connected with all the weirdness…
Despite being rather hyped up by the British Horror press at the time, Cradle Of Fear certainly lacks that polished edge. Not that horror films need that professional look thanks to movies such as The Evil Dead and The Texas Chain Saw Massarce fully embracing that home made feel – but on the other hand, those films didn’t come complete with flat, student film performances, visible camera equipment and infantile plotting. Well, The Evil Dead did, but it’s energetic direction managed to turn most of those minuses into glorious pluses. While Alex Chandon certainly has the enthusiasm (I still remember his short film, Bad Karma, winning a competition in the pages of The Dark Side Magazine), he just hasn’t got the goods to deliver an overlong and often childish slog through misery and degradation. However, while noticable patches of Cradle Of Fear veer between being either laughable or downright dull, the old student filmmaker that still dwells within me kept teaming up with the horror fan I was back in the 2000s to find aspects of Chandon’s opus to be quite delightful despite itself.
For a start, you have to give the filmmakers credit for not being lazy and simply cashing their chips on a basic slasher film even though that would have been infinitely easier. And while Dani Filth certainly has hopes of becoming a horror icon in the same vein as Pinhead and Freddy, his attempts at intimidation end up being endearingly cringey, even when he’s scrunching the heads of muggers or seducing 2000’s horror host Emily Booth.
However, while the scrappy, no-budget filmmaker in me delighted in recognising the weak lighting and questionable set decoration (why does everyone have vintage horror posters up on their walls and who keeps their booze next to the Marmite?), there’s a definite sense that each story becomes progressively less effective that the one that proceeds it.
The first story, that sees Booth’s night of passion end in the hideous birth of a literal spider-baby may please the host’s fans thanks to her frequent nudity, but it’s short and punchy. The next story that sees a pair of girls rob and murder an old man is notably less so and features a bizarre scene where the two murderers decide to inexplicably clean themselves up afterwards by sharing an impromptu nudey bath in the old guys house. From there, things get even worse as the third story involves a peculiar case of Grand Theft Leg and features the prominent cheekbones of Razor Blade Smile’s Eileen Daly, but the main offender is the final story that feels horribly overlong as it’s protagonist gets hooked on snuff websites with predictable results.
However, while the overarching story manages to salvage things a bit thanks to some predictably excessive gore and a genuinely startling monster reveal, the bad acting, worse dialogue and confusing twists (the reveal that the Man is the son of the hypnotist serial killer literally feels like it was made up on the day) condemn Cradle Of Fear to the hellish realms of so bad it’s good. It’s good to have a low budget film with actually ambition to remind us that you too can make a movie of your very own if you want it hard enough, but it would be nice if it could have persuaded us that that film could also be good.
Anyone looking for a bit more than goth flavoured nudity and slashy gore may ultimately find Cradle Of Fear wanting, but I find myself incapable of completely writing it off due to the genuine enthusiasm and love Alex Chandon has for Amicus anthology movies, Dani Filth and those aforementioned gothic boobs. However, it’s adolescent eagerness to be as nasty and distasteful as it possibly can only ends up being more quaint than disturbing, with the most troubling thing among all the murder, torture and animal sacrifice is that Steph apparently doesn’t even keep her milk in the fridge.
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