THE GHOULS
DVD. Cine du Monde.

Cine Du Monde continue with their admirable mission to release Chad Ferrin’s challenging back catalogue with his 2003 film The Ghouls, a nihilistic tale of urban cannibalism and one man’s descent into a very personal Hell.

Ferrin regular Timothy Muskatell stars as Eric Hayes, a burned out freelance news cameraman who specialises in crime scene footage, the more gruesome the better. We see early on that Hayes’ moral compass is somewhat off kilter, as he films a brutal murder without making any effort to intervene (in fact, he seems fairly complicit in the act), and as he scores drugs, gets drunk, insults his news boss client and smokes himself to death, it’s clear this is a man on a path to self-destruction. When he drunkenly stumbles upon what he thinks is a gang rape by homeless people, his instincts are to grab his camera and film rather than help – but as he stands in front of the gang filming, it becomes clear this is no sexual assault. Instead, the mutated looking attackers are eating their victim. Managing to escape, he runs to the TV studio thinking only of how much money the footage is worth, but then discovers he didn’t even have a tape in the camera. Humiliated and sensing the profit to be made from the story, he persuades a fellow ambulance-chasing news hack to return to the alleyway with him in search of the cannibals. But he soon finds himself out of his depth.

This is a much better film than Unspeakable, Ferrin’s previous production. It shares that film’s technical crudeness (you find yourself wondering just how old the cameras Ferrin used were), with bad sound and visuals, but the story this time is far tighter. Muskatell – also a producer – usually plays unsavoury sex perverts in Ferrin’s films, but here has a more human character. He’s not exactly sympathetic – this is a man on a downward spiral who seems determined to speed up his descent as much as possible – but Muskatell, a strong actor, still manages to bring a degree of humanity to the role. Hayes is so jaded by the death and destruction that he no longer has any human empathy, a fact hammered home in a confrontation with his girlfriend over a tape showing him filming children burning alive in a house fire while doing nothing to help. But he’s more a pathetic figure than a villainous one, and Muskatell does a good job of portraying his inner conflict.

Admittedly, Ferrin does veer into the gratuitous from time to time – an early scene of a naked woman being stabbed to death is leeringly graphic and adds little to the plot – but on the whole, the explicit gore of the film (and there is plenty of it) is a necessary part of the plot, and once the story kicks in, a surprising degree of restraint is shown.

The Ghouls is certainly difficult viewing, and if you are not a fan of edgy, zero budget indie horror then you might find the combination of nastiness and technical shortcomings too much. But if you enjoy the more extreme end of the genre, then this will have much to offer.

Cine Du Monde’s disc is packed with more content that you’d find on many a big budget film. As well as a commentary track, trailers, deleted scenes, outtakes, interviews and auditions, there is a 52-minute making of that is remarkably candid and raw. For anyone interested in zero budget filmmaking, it’s essential viewing and pretty much worth the price of the DVD alone.

DAVID FLINT

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