Beyond The Rave

Its hammer time again after 25 years!! This dont really feel like a hammer film though when you watch it but obviously times have changed! Still this is a brilliant bit of filmmaking with a superb story and an amazing cast. Theres plenty of good bloodshed and the soundtrack is awesome! For a horror fan this is rather a treat and a worthy addition to the collection. Great fun!

I've just sat down to watch the last episode of Beyond The Rave, shown exclusively on Myspace. One hell of a show, leaving an opening for Necro and Lilith to do another one! Well made with great actors. Some dodgy lines though, but I guess that happens in every movie. Right now, I just can't wait to get it on DVD.

At last my long ordered copy of the DVD, Beyond the Rave, has arrived from Play.com. Of course I wanted this primarily because it was the first new Hammer film for 25 years. The big question is, just how much like a Hammer film is it?

That's a hard one to answer. It certainly wasn't a return to the familiar late Victorian era so favoured in many of Hammer's vampire and Frankenstein movies.On the other hand, Hammer was never worried about updating things either. i.e. Dracula AD 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula, not to mention all their psychological thrillers, etc. In that sense, this modern day vampire film was certainly more effective than Dracula AD 1972. And it had a good, wide-ranging cast of character actors, from the squadie on his last day of freedom before being sent off to help the invasion of Iraq, the drug-dealing, thuggish gangsters, the 700-year old vampire who could be oddly charming one moment and a cold-blooded killer within as many seconds as it takes me to type this out, plus many others. I enjoyed it, especially the bonus episode where three of the vampires seek sanctuary overnight in an very odd boarding house. It certainly had touches of the dark humour I always associate with Hammer, while the violence was definitely graphic - and sometimes deliberately funny too - the two-fingered defiance of one of the gangsters in his dying moments was a stand out one for me.

I believe the new Hammer are making the English-language version of Let the Right One In, renamed Let Me In. If they do it as well as they did this I would be more than satisfied.

Was it old Hammer? No. Too many years have passed for it to be that. But in any case the old Hammer was constantly evolving as censorship and public tastes - and tolerances - changed. Compare the late fifties Frankenstein and Dracula with Hammer's productions by the early seventies. If Hammer had not ceased film production, I could believe that Beyond the Rave would have been the kind of film they would have been bringing out today. So, yes, it could be Hammer to me. It was very British. It had humour. It had violence and blood. It had some extremely good character actors. Those are the things I always associate with Hammer. And this film had them all.

The DVD has loads of extras which I haven't had time to look at yet, though I shall very soon.

Recommended for anyone who likes a truly bloody, very British vampire film.

A (slight) return for Hammer Films - to enjoy this film it's probably best to ignore the Hammer connection, it certainly doesn't feel or look like anything to do with the house of horror of old. This up to date (ish) story of a young soldier's last night of partying before being sent to Iraq or whatever does take a while to get going, this is probably to do with the original broadcast of Beyon The Rave as mini episodes on line. There does seem to be too much of the main character and his unlikeable friend in their car (which is a hearse) trying to find the location of an illegal rave. I think this film works best as a low-budget horror comedy - it does have moments of quite funny slapstick thanks to the comedy gangster wide-boys and the gore/horror when it comes is suitably lurid. Where it falls flat is that the vampires are neither scary or menacing enough - at times they come accross as foppy malcontents - and the story does run unevenly bordering on disjointed which may be due to the episodic nature of the material available. Overall though good enough for a night in with a couple of beers but don't expect a Hammer blow of old.