Harpoon Whale Watching Massacre (3 Stars)

This is an Icelandic horror film. After the ban on whale hunting in 1986, fishermen found a new way of making money. They took tourists on boat trips to watch whales. As they proudly proclaimed, Iceland is the country with the third largest number of whales, after Japan and Norway.

The film shows a mixed group of mostly obnoxious foreigners: a horny drunk Frenchman, a chauvinistic Japanese man constantly bullying his wife, an American, an Indian family and a few others I couldn't identify.

The ship's captain has an accident and is unable to steer the boat, so it sails in a random direction. The passengers are taken on board by a whale boat. Saved? Not quite. It's a family of unemployed whale hunters who want to kill everyone. Is there a reason for it? No. When did mass murderers ever need a reason for their crimes?

The DVD I watched today isn't in the original Icelandic, it's dubbed into English or German. I started by watching it with English dialogue, but it was awful. The dubbing artists sounded bored. So I switched to the German dialogue, and wow! It was like night and day. Germans take their dubbing seriously. Most German dubbing artists are experienced stage actors, so they can perform well. Why can't the English and Americans do such a good job?

"Harpoon" (shortening the title) is "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" set at sea. There's a lot of gore and senseless violence. Normally I'd like a film like this, but the problem, compared to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", is what I mentioned above. The victims are so unpleasant that I didn't care when they were killed. Good riddance!

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Lamb (4 Stars)

This is the 21st film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

"Lamb" is a film that divided the audience. Some people loved it, some people hated it. It's a slow moving film with very little dialogue. The film's genre isn't well defined. Wikipedia calls it a supernatural horror film, but that's not quite accurate. There are fairy tale elements.

Ingvar and Maria are shepherds who keep their flock in a remote part of Iceland. The film begins with lambs being born. One lamb is born later than the others. Is it days or weeks later? It's impossible to tell, because time progresses as if in a dream. All we know is that it's the last lamb born in the season. For some reason, Ingvar and Maria love the lamb more than any of the others. They call her Ada, the same name as their daughter who died shortly after birth. Instead of leaving Ada in the barn with her mother, they take her into their house, letting her sleep in their bedroom. They treat Ada as a child, dressing her in children's clothing.

Ada's mother keeps standing outside the house, trying to get to her daughter. This annoys Maria so much that she kills the mother.

Ingvar's brother Petur visits the farm to stay for a few weeks. He's shocked by the way Ada is being treated. He thinks his brother is mad.

I greatly enjoyed the film. I might rate it higher next time I see it. The film is simply beautiful. Ingvar and Maria are a simple couple, happy with their hard work in the cold, barren land. The scenery is beautiful, and the director makes sure that there are many outdoor scenes. It's an intense film that has to be seen to be believed. I can understand the people who don't like it, but it's worth watching at least once. Give it a chance.

Metalhead (3 Stars)

This is a coming-of-age drama made in Iceland. It takes place from 1983 to 1992.

Hera Karlsdottir lives with her family in the north of Iceland. It's a small community inhabited by only a few farmers. There are only three children in Hera's school class. When she was 12 her older brother had a fatal accident while he was driving a tractor. This had a drastic effect on her. She burnt all her clothes and from then on only wore her brother's clothes. He was a heavy metal fan, and he had a large collection of the shirts of his favourite bands from the early 1980's. She grows to like her brother's music, if she didn't already, and she becomes a metalhead, much to the disgust of the God fearing farmers in the community. She learns how to play an electric guitar.

In 1992 she's left school and she works on the farm with her parents. They can't pay her anything, so she gets other jobs, such as slicing meat in a slaughterhouse, but she's too rebellious to hold a job down.

There are news reports about heavy metal Satanists burning down churches in Norway. About 50 churches were burnt down from 1992 to 1994. There were movements in Iceland calling for the banning of heavy metal.

Hera hates the church, because she blames Jesus for letting her brother die. The new village priest tries to talk to her. At first she rejects him, but then he shows her that he has an Iron Maiden tattoo on his arm. He was a big metal fan before he became a priest. They spend time together listening to music. She tries to seduce him, but he rejects her. This leads to her burning down the local church.

One thing confuses me. She's visited by a musician from Oslo. He says he has a small record label and he's impressed by a demo tape of her home recorded music. He says his name is Oystein. What? Is that supposed to be Oystein Aarseth, the guitarist who founded the Deathlike Silence label in Oslo in 1991? It would be the right time, because he wasn't murdered until August 1993, as shown in "Lords of Chaos". The film doesn't openly state that it's him, but it's a blatant hint.

The film is enjoyable, especially the music, but it moves too slowly to excite me. There are too many cows and not enough burning churches.

The film can be watched on Amazon Prime, but it's only available on disc in Iceland and Germany.

I remember you (4 Stars)

This is the 49th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

This is a beautifully eerie ghost story, set in an abandoned town in the north west of Iceland. The film set didn't have to be built, it was already available. The director was able to find a town that's been abandoned for 70 years, just as eerie as the film itself. There's no electricity, no Internet and no telephone reception, so the cast and crew were cut off from the world while they were filming. That's a big sacrifice to make.

The film is made up of two stories which are shown in parallel. The first takes place in the abandoned town by the sea fifteen years ago. The second takes place in the present in a small town somewhere in the middle of Iceland. (The places aren't named in the film, but I'd love to find out where they are). In the present day story a doctor is sent to help with the post-mortem investigation of a woman who has hanged herself in a church. The doctor is still suffering from the loss of his eight-year-old son who mysteriously vanished at a petrol station. A schizophrenic patient of the doctor speaks about his son being together with Bernodus, a boy who disappeared in the abandoned town while it was still populated.

And there are ghosts.

The atmosphere of this film is perfectly balanced. It's scary without being grotesque. It's probably the best European ghost film I've ever seen.

101 Reykjavik (3 Stars)

Hlynur is a man in his mid 30's who still lives with his mother. He doesn't work, and he's never left his home town of Reykjavik. Though Reykjavik is the capital of Iceland it only has a population of 120,000 and has a distinctive small town atmosphere.

Hlynur spends the days surfing the Internet for porn and the evenings going to bars and getting drunk. Nothing ever happens in his life until Lola, a flamenco teacher played by Victoria Abril, arrives from Spain and rents a room in his mother's house. His mother falls in love with her and a torrid lesbian relationship ensues. Lola seduces Hlynur, using him to make a baby to bring up as his brother.

An off-beat comedy, this is the first film I've ever seen that was made in Iceland. The film is a curiosity. Maybe I'll have more to say about it when I've watched it again.

Incidentally, the DVD costs $32 in Anerica and £4.50 in England. Poor Americans!