African / South African horror

[Fenril]

"In the spirit of slayrrr's sister threads to the Mexican horror one, I'm starting threads about horror movies from assorted countries other than the US, UK, Italy or Japan (simply because those are the countries whose horror film productions are easier to find on a global scale, so they would be better known)."

Seen any horror movies from South Africa and / or any african country and if so, what did you think of them?

Note: I was going to make a separate thread for South Africa, since a lot of SA productions have recently been distributed internationally. But then I realized that while other African countries have plenty of film producions (Nigeria and Kenya, for instance), they are rarely seen outside of film festivals, so it made more sense to just lump them in together.

[Bartwald]

I think the only one I've seen is the paranormal horror Wingrave (made in Egypt). Unfortunately, I didn't like it at all. Here's a good review of the movie if you're interested: www.coldfusionvideo.com/archives/wingrave-2007/

[slayrrr666]

As for African, there's the awesome Italian/Egyptian mummy effort, Dawn of the Mummy, which melds the traditional mummy framework onto a zombie effort, as the desecration of the tomb unleashes the mummy who raises his zombie-like followers in an effort to aid his revenge. You love the cheesy Italian efforts of the late 70s/early 80s, track this one down.

As for South African, I know there's a lot of them that have been shot there but I can't say for certain whether they'd be called a South African picture. I know the three Shark Attack films where done there, but I can't say for sure about anything else.

[Fenril]

Those two at least sound interesting; well, if the review is accurate Wingrave sounds like a failure, but at least it's a start. As for Dawn, just mixing those two mythologies is... original, I guess? I'll have to look out for it.

So, a few I've seen:

- Yeelen (Mali, 1987). A dark fantasy tale of the match between two dueling sorcerers.

- Saitane (Niger, 1973). Another movie with an evil sorcerer, through with a twist.

- The breed (South Africa, 2006). Fairly good killer-dog movie.

- District 9 (South Africa, 2009). More sci-fi than horror, but it seemed worth mentioning as it's about the most sucessful of several recent SA productions and at least it doesn't pretend it's not an African production. Unfortunately, it's also very uneven, with a good setup and visual design for the aliens, but with a rather lacklustre second half. Based on the short "Alive in Joburg" (2005), which was actually much better.

Other recent SA productions include the slashers "Return of the family man" (1989) and "Slash" (2002). I guess the Shark Attack films count, as does the killer-lion film Prey (2007).

I do wish SA productions would try to distinguish themselves more from their US counterparts, through...

[Bartwald]

District 9 was great - I just didn't think of it as a horror movie and that's why I didn't mention it. Also, I forgot about Prey - it did have some tense scenes, but the finale wasn't very convincing and Peter Weller's role was just an extended cameo. Shame as I love the guy's charismatic presence.

[Fenril]

Yeah, I mostly put District 9 as an example of a "proper" South African production, but as I said, it's more sci-fi (and adventure).

I agree with your comments about Prey, as well.

[slayrrr666]

Wow, looks like I forgot a couple SA films, The Breed, Prey and Slash.

The Breed wasn't all that bad, but it took way too long to get going and really didn't keep the intensity going once it started. Some nice attacks later on to make up for it, but overall I thought it was decent.

Prey was a little bit better but like you guys said, the attacks weren't all that great and there was a couple parts that really left me a little cold.

Slash is probably the best of these, and that's not really saying much. The killer's kinda cool, the kills are all right, just not really all that interesting when they're not happening. Pedestrian, but watchable.