This is another one of those bad batches of films and I decided to hold off on writing this round up until I either had a film that was good or one that I couldn't link to the other three in any way. Thankfully the former is the reason I'm doing this now but I'll take them in order.
I can't believe I'm even writing this (because it really didn't look good at all), but I caught An American Haunting on sky. Why? A combination of the cast (Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek) coupled with almost clinical boredom 
. The story ("based on true events") is that Sutherland has broken church law by charging too much interest on a loan to a local woman suspected of being a witch. He loses the trial in theory but doesn't have to compensate the woman financially. Thereafter she curses him and his daughter, and strange things start happening at Chez Don. The film has no genuine tension, it's plodding, predictable and the overly frenetic score merely adds to the feeling this is a film that is painfully trying to be scary, rather than being scary. Unrecommendable.
Thereafter I went from a horror film to a film that gave me the horrors, not that it was scary, just at how bad it was. Trouble is this one had a good reputation, Shane Meadows' Dead Man's Shoes. I could be here all night slating this film but I'll be as brief as possible. It's a revenge flick where Paddy Considine returns home from the army and starts popping off a load of local drug dealers. Whoever did the sound mixing should never be allowed to work on a film again, it's horrendous. So is the overtly simplistic nature of the message, it's so incredibly tired that after we've seen these "characters" (who just play up to every stereotype designed to make the Loaded generation cream themselves) mess around for so long ... that the most obvious, juvenile and uninsightful way to conclude the film is chosen. It's almost as if it was written by 14 year old lads for 14 year old lads. The film is put together in such an artless way, padding out the scant plot with music montages and black & white flashbacks ad nauseum it's just a complete bust on every single level. Considine is the only bright spark in a borderline incompetent cast but barring the odd scene or two even he can't raise this dreck out of the depths of atrocity.
Back to the real horrors, I tried to watch Suspiria because it has a reputation, as does its director Dario Argento. It's just unwatchable, there are no scares to be found, lacks any tension whatsoever, again the sound is appalling with naff music rendering the (badly) dubbed dialogue unintelligible and the performances are wooden. Couple all of that with no real visual flair at all and the general exploitation has nothing to fall back on. It was so poor it had me flicking to Wimbledon on the other side (a film I am far too much of a tennis fan to ever condescend to watch). That Wimbledon prevailed for 5 minutes before switching off the television completely is almost the ultimate insult.
The final horror was a film I watched tonight on the Sky Sci-Fi/Horror channel and what a deceptive place to put such a moving film as Testament. It's about how a family deals with the aftermath of a nuclear attack. It's similar in approach to On the Beach (a film and book I really enjoyed) in that it only shows the practical repercussions of dealing with the radiation rather than the carnage or destruction of the attacks. The film is almost shamelessly manipulative but it is genuinely moving, albeit the final half hour or so is a pretty difficult watch. Jane Alexander is lovely in her oscar nominated performance and the ensemble cast is full of nice turns. Just a nice, simple film that goes after the heart and the tears and almost succeeds in capturing both. Given the films I'd had in the build up and the channel I saw it on, a delightfully welcome surprise.