DVD review: Cradle of Fear (Video 2001)

Cradle of Fear is a independent film made in the UK. It´s a anthology movie consisting of four different episodes, linked together by an imprisoned satanist, hypnotist, child rapist, serial killer Kemper (David McEwen), who is using an evil angel called simply The Man (Dani Filth, lead singer of goth metal band Cradle of Filth) to extract revenge on relatives of those who put him away.
The film is written, edited and directed by Alex Chandon.
First story, Mel (the stunningly gorgeous Emily Booth) who picks up The Man at a nightclub for one night stand. He turns into some sort of monster, and performs unspeakable acts on her naked body. On the next morning, she has the sensation that she is surrounded by demons. Soon she finds out that she pregnant with the offspring of The Man
Second story, Emma (Emma Rice) and Sophie (Rebecca Eden) go to the apartment of an old deaf man believing that there is a large sum of cash there to be stolen, but their robbery becomes violent when the he wakes up and the man just won´t stay dead....
Third story, Nick (Louie Brownsell) has a great complex with his beloved girlfriend Nikki (Eileen Daly) because his leg was amputated in an accident and that makes him impotent. He becomes deranged, and is ready to go to any extreme to get a brand new leg, with tragic results.
Fourth story, Richard (Stuart Laing) works at a Internet company and becomes obsessed with snuff movies on a website called the The Sick Room, where, at least until your credit card gives out, you can cause actually pain, injury and even death to victims. He goes broke enjoying the fun at this site, and then goes looking for it.
In my opinion the first and fourth story are certainly the best ones. The plot in Cradle of Fear is predictable and the flick is a tad overlong. The acting in is mostly mediocre and Dani Filth is, to put it simply, a bad actor, but I didn´t have any high expectations and neither should you. The plot has a lot of holes and the music is sometimes not very good but this is extreme splatter and we get one extreme scene of gore after another as Alex Chandon tries to repulse the viewer as much as he can with grisly images. The special fx ranges from looking very fake to being very good. The visual effects are poor and some of the CGI is atrociously bad.

You should beware that the german version is cut by about 8 minutes.

Rating: 3½ out of 7.  I enjoyed it, it's not art but it's fun. But I would not recommended it to you unless you are into gore and splatter films.

/JL