CRADLE OF FEAR

Director: Alex Chandon

Starring: Dani Filth, Eileen Daly, Emily Bouffante (Emily Booth), Rebecca Eden

Cradle of Fear is a spirited Urban Gothic-type British anthology movie from the director of Pervirella, here teaming up with the lead singer of Goth metal band Cradle of Filth (whose other members feature in cameo roles). Obviously made with a very modest budget, the film frequently seems amateurish (a microphone features prominently in an early shot, for example), but, on the more positive side, it has bucket-loads of gore, some pretty decent special effects courtesy of Hellraiser veterans Creature FX, and some cute babes running around with very little – if anything – on, so it’s generally very entertaining.

All the luverly gore comes courtesy of the BBFC, who, despite what you might have read elsewhere, have passed the film completely uncut: a sure sign that things have changed radically at Soho Square. The disc is coded for Region 0, in PAL format.

The 1.85:1 transfer is pretty grotty: it’s letterboxed, but not anamorphic, which is, frankly, inexcusable. It also regularly exhibits extremely nasty MPEG tiling artefacts. The audio is simple stereo (at 192kbps). Other than that, the disc is nicely presented, and offers a revealing twelve-minute Making of… featurette (focusing on a handful of key scenes, it offers a good sense of what being on a movie set is like), an extensive photo’ gallery and a couple of trailers.  According to the film’s official website the team are already prepping a 2-disc special edition. Don’t say you weren’t warned!