Review for Trail of the Screaming Forehead

Trail of the Screaming Forehead
2007
Dir: Larry Blamire

 

Film

Going into a release such as "Trail of the Screaming Forehead", it does not take much genre know-how in order to have an inclination as to what to expect. A small American town is plagued by an invasion of alien fore-heads in this bizarre, slightly insane spoof from director Larry Blamire. As the epidemic occurs, a pair of scientists are somewhat coincidentally extracting "foreheadazine" , believing it to be the key behind knowledge in humans. A convincingly wooden Andrew Parks (Dr. Latham) unfortunately allows his equally loopy partner to inject him with some of the extract. Clearly, this was never going to be a wise decision, and things worsen for the town as folk become addicted to the same product, and run rampant with their swollen, gargantuan brows.

I'm not familiar with Blamire's previous work, but the man has apparently been carving quite a niche for himself within the world of retro-spoof genre cinema. This 2007 effort came under the Ray Harryhausen banner and slots neatly into that category.

Even right down to the setting, the humour is err, heads and shoulders above the standard spoof fare. Long-head Bay is the dubious locations of the events, and it's a blank, bland, small-town slice of American hokum. This is one bright, garish movies, akin to the old Science Fiction movies of yesteryear in terms of its rigid, dubious décor, but updated with eye-watering primary colours filling the screen.

Equally as demented as the colour scheme is the ensemble of ridiculous characters that comprise the town's population. A hard-boiled sleuth of a cop, forehead obsessed scientists, and Amos, a jolly chap who does a supposedly unmisseable trick with a hat, are just a few of said treasures. The arrival of Sea-faring crew in the shape of Big Dan and Dutch is also absolutely spot on, recreating the jolly, ludicrously stagy banter of such characters in classic studio pictures. A highlight of the picture for me.

Characters endure such dubious exchanges as "then you really could help me?", "I'll do better than that, I'll assist you anyway I can!" Words such as secrete and excrete are confused, even by scientists prodding for a clue behind the "foreheadial gland" Obviously the dialogue is, in traditional terms, somewhat terrible. But the sophistication in the script comes from being so sharp, and on the money in terms of reflecting the source material for such wooden banter. Actually, everything about this film is somewhat terrible, but then again, that is the whole point.

The finer details are a joy to behold, down to being filmed in the "new screen miracle of Craniascope!" The delightful opening title sequence also includes a superb theme song "your not dreaming… your forehead's screaming.." If those little touches do not tickle your fancy, then this isn't likely to the film for you. Equally however, there is much that does not work. The performances often lapse from intentionally poor, to simply amateurish, while often the combination of unbelievable shoddy effects, and cheap costume design conspires to make scenes insurmountably nauseating. Certainly, while the agenda on hand here is somewhat admirable, it often makes for a frustrating experience, similar to that of an immature student presentation.

Extras
None.

Conclusion
Larry Blamire's feature is by no means for everyone. It is certainly the sort of entertainment more than likely to bore to death those who dismiss the cult films of yesteryear. Kitsch, trashy, and well, utterly barmy, it's as daft as one could expect. Like the films which it pays tribute to however, this is a rather slow, deliberately paced affair. It doesn't bother to update it's story into a post-modern, Braindead style, break-neck plot. Instead, it just fumbles along like an unwanted barnacle in at times, interminable fashion.

Block-buster special FX are also not on the agenda, and realistically, if there is one category this material risks falling into, it's probably the "so-bad-it's-good", Ed Wood school of filmmaking. However, "Trail of the Screaming Forehead" is a level above that. It is a knowing, either very intelligent or simply mind-numbingly stupid, and accomplished effort. Just as Quentin Tarentino successfully paid tribute to the Grindhouse films that he loved with Death-Proof, Larry Blamire throws in all manner of wacky gestures towards the inane but fun disaster and Science Fiction tales of the Fifties and Sixties. This is an ode to an exploitative, but more innocent, simpler period in genre filmmaking, and with it, comes all of the naive inanities that a seasoned viewer could expect. Whether it adds up to a good film or not, probably isn't for me to determine. Or perhaps anyone else for that matter. How do you respond to an internationally terrible film featuring talking alien foreheads?

"Who can sleep with brows on the prowl?" Indeed.