Cradle of Filth became a sensation in America shortly after the Scandinavian “black metal” became trendy. While the Nords adopted a childish Satanic theme (basically going by childish notions), or going after folklore, Cradle of Filth focused more on Gothic tales. Bram Stoker versus Tolkien (or childish Satanism). One last note about the silly Satanism, there were bands that wrote Satanic lyrics in a horror style that was atmospheric and chilling, so there were some exceptions to the sillier-than-thou approach).

Many black metal bands banked on the sensationalism of one guy who stabbed an effeminate bandmate in his underwear, and another guy who stabbed a homosexual for hitting on him, or whatever, and the various arson stories of churches being destroyed. The story of the band was more important than the music, which resembled punk rock more than metal, but some bands had good musicians.

Cradle of Filth was one of the bands that boasted musicianship as well as atmosphere, and they enjoyed a surge of popularity for those aspects. While there was also a fair share of metal fans who ridiculed the band, including my reviews and interviews, there is no question that the band rose to the top at one time.

In later years, the fervor abated.

During the period when the band was riding high, one of my fans sent me a VHS bootleg of “Cradle of Fear.” When I watched the first ten minutes, I thought it was shot on a camcorder. Back then, I did not know why some footage looked like movies while other footage looked amateurish, but I later discovered that cinematic motion results from 24 frames per second, while 30 or 60 frames per second looks bad. Sports fans might like it, but movie fans see garbage, even if they don’t know why.

When I heard this was to be released on Blu(e)ray, I held hope that there would be frame rate interpolation, but the cheesy camcorder look was preserved. I asked one of the people at Unearthed Films, and he explained that he did not want to interpolate the footage because he was worried about gliches. It seemed he didn’t know that the digital tools these days are not like those of yesteryear. It’s too late to do anything, but I wanted to tell him that even if there were gliches, the digital artifacts would be worth the cinematic improvement.

I had to turn off that part of my mind that kept complaining about the cheesiness of the frame rate. The move would have looked much better. Maybe there will one day be a special edition with both frame rates, ha ha.

Ignoring my intense dislike of the camcorder look, I tried to look for the good things. Those things were boobs. No matter how bad a movie is, boobs can reverse the frustration. There is an ample amount of ample bosoms.

People who love gore might like that aspect of this movie. There are some digital effects too, but they have more to do with action shots. The bloody stuff is mostly what is called “practical” which is a gay way of saying “real world with fake stuff.” Some fans get very gay about gore effects that are made with computer effects.

The story has a “Tales From the Dark Side” flavor. There is also some dark comedy in some scenes.

This is a fun look into the past. You might not have been around for the Cradle of Filth craze, but you knew what those days were like. If you are too young, then you might still enjoy seeing what life was like. For instance, there are telephones in this movie.

The synopsis was compelling, but when I watched the movie I felt like I was fooled like a person at a carnival who believed that for the price of a ticket I can see a six-legged sheep.

To put it bluntly, this movie is afraid of its subject matter. The synopsis warned of a scene in which a man violently forces himself on his stepdaughter, but the scene is so bad that it;s comical. The “violence” is him slapping her, which knocks her out. This actually made me laugh out loud, especially with the slapstick sound effect.

In case you’re not aware, this is a Japaneses movie, which makes the failure more ridiculous because there are many Japanese movies that handle this subject matter masterfully. The only visceral thing about this movie was trying to resist ejecting it from my player. That was a constant struggle.

The dialogue is so bad that you can derive more drama from an old Godzilla movie. I tried to imagine that the writing was stylized so as to give it a chance, but it was impossible. It truly seems like whoever wrote the screenplay had no social interactions in real life and definitely conducted no research into anything depicted in the movie.

I wasn’t kidding about the acting being so bad it was funny. The sexual scenes are hilarious, especially when an old man is trying to pleasure the young woman with a massage, and she looks like she is having an epileptic seizure, all while hiding her nipples and being engulfed in a blanket from the waist down.

In addition to desperately hide breasts at all costs by the characters themselves, the cop-out technique of having nudity obscured by objects in the scene being at the right place in front of the camera is aggravating, not artistic.

Nothing is accomplished through acting. Rather; dialogue replaces action. Instead of the woman being seductive, a co-start says. “You are seductive.” You can place the voices over two rolls of toilet paper side-by-side and you would have the same performance.

Every character is either a caricature or a a lifeless prop.

Don’t trust any of the sales points or the synopsis. It is pure deception.